Still Not Understanding It...

Dumb looks still free - great blog name - has basically a good post up, but he hasn't completely thought things through.


September 11th wasn't merely an attack on the US. It really does mark a watershed in terms of how the US will deal with the world.

At the blog ut supra, the blogger - who calls himself simply "A Jacksonian" brings the following description of the Defeatocrats:

Major Symptoms

• An individual constantly criticizes the current Administration for conduct in conflicts in Afghanistan and/or Iraq.


• An individual constantly criticizes the Secretary of Defense for having *shaken things up* or *gotten rid of future systems* or *pissing off long-term careerists in the Pentagon*.


• Takes *any* opportunity that may look even a smidgen bad upon soldiers to indict the entire effort to fight to victory.


• An individual states that Vietnam has proven that all wars are unwinnable and wrong, contrary to centuries of won wars that have established the basis for Nations, liberty and freedom.


• An individual states that NOTHING is worth fighting for, ever, using force of arms.

Now, there are a couple of points that need to be expanded.

First the last: radical pacifism of the Quaker ideal, where indeed violence is eschewed as being fundamentally a sin, regardless of the situation and of the consequences. The Quaker philosophy works fine as long as the Quaker can count on others, sinners, to take care of evil: evil cannot be transcended by good works and prayer. And the completely naive idea, coupled with such radical pacifism, that wars are unwinnable and fundamentally wrong, is exactly that: naive. Wars do settle problems between countries: more often than not they create more problems than they solve (see Iraq), but wars do serve a purpose. The whole field of conflict resolution has been perverted by radical pacifism into conflict avoidance: the two are not the same. Conflict resolution is the attempt to avoid war by resolving the conflicts inherent in international relations: conflict avoidance is the attempt, doomed to failure, of avoiding having conflicts come to the point where there is a war. The one solves the problem, the other tries to pretend that it does not exist, or can be dealt with without resolving the problem. This has been the problem in the Middle East since 1948: conflicts there have rarely been resolved, only postponed via cease fires. The conflicts remain and fester, resulting in the Hobbesian chaos we now see.

But go back up that list to the criticism from the Defeatists: that changes after September 11th, 2001, have failed to serve their purpose and it would have been better to have not changed anything: this is the position of the entrenched establishment anti-Rumsfeldoids, who would have followed the book after September 11th, playing directly into al-Queda's game plan.

You see, the enemy studies us, and studies us well. The attacks on 11 September weren't merely designed to kill as many Americans as possible in an act of random terror, but were also aimed at generating a reaction, one that followed logically from past US reactions when attacked in such a manner. The US didn't declare war and go after the perpetrators, but rather exercised an ultimately futile conflict management scenario, where cruise missiles were fired at targets of opportunity in order to revenge attacks on US personnel, buildings and the like. Works fine in the metaphysical space of escalation management from the Cold War, fails miserably in the War On Terror.

The Taliban and al-Queda expected the US to attack Afghanistan with major armored assets, brought in over 6 months to 1 year, made very difficult by the position of Afghanistan and the terrain. They wanted to suck the US into a repeat of the Soviet experience there, or, in an equally attractive scenario for al-Queda and the Taliban, they wanted to expose the US as a paper tiger, unable to respond to such an attack. In both scenarios, the Taliban and al-Queda win, since on the one hand a massive invasion would have generated the same resistance as the Soviet invasion did, which they consider to have been won by the Islamic movement in Afghanistan, and on the other hand by failing to respond in such a way as to generate deadly danger to the continued existence of the Taliban and al-Queda, the US would have lost face.

Now, as we all know - or should know - the US chose option 3, which was to enlist Afghan forces by hiring them as mercenaries and to use massive air power to decimate the Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Hence the Afghan gambit failed for the Taliban and al-Queda, but less because they failed to get a US response, as much more the US failed to react in the way that they had expected.

Which gets us back to a Jacksonian's point: without having shaken things up, by instituting a revolution in military affairs, Rumsfeld and his approach to US military power was successful in confounding the intents of the enemy.

Critical, that.


The Jacksonian's secondary criteria is also illuminative:

Secondary Conditions

• An individual offers NOTHING BETTER to achieve victory in any conflict or war that the Nation is involved in.


• An individual states that leaving Iraq before it is stable is 'the only thing we can do' to save the troops or that it is 'unwinnable' or a 'quagmire'.


• An individual states that the United States is *the problem* in anything that happens anywhere.


• An individual states that 'free trade' will bring liberty to the world and NOT give cheap arms and armaments to the enemies of the Nation.


• An individual states that Nations cannot achieve 'peace through strength' and that is just another guise of militarism.


• An individual states that there are no individuals trying to establish an Empire that would endanger Free People.


• An individual states that money spent on the military is a *waste* of money.


• An individual states that 'mounting death tolls' indicate defeat and will not use that for *anything* else in any other circumstance to indicate same.


• An individual constantly asks - 'Why do they hate us?'

This underscores the problem of conflict avoidance: an individual how constantly asks why someone hates is avoiding resolving that hate; wars are things to stop, and not resolve.

I'd expand this list with a small extension: that complete and total ignorance of the military is a prerequisite for making recommendations regarding the military.

One meme that is starting to appear in the discussions, albeit rarely, is the fact that it took the US decades to fight for its independence and to create this "more perfect Union", not a matter of mere months. To demand, as the Defeatocrats do, that everything be nicely tied up in a matter of months is to set an impossible goal that per definition cannot be met.

Iraq is a broken country, a failed state, a debilitated and destroyed society. But it was that way before the US intervened.

That is what no one seems to realize. The US didn't march on a lively and healthy society, one that was dedicated to the betterment of Iraqi culture, but one that was centered, by deadly force and torture, on worshipping the worst kinds of thugs and criminals. It didn't invade a functioning economy, but one that had been destroyed not by sanctions, but by rapaciousness and greed. It didn't conquer a unified, civil society, but rather one that had been deliberately radicalized against itself in order to divide and control the frustrations and anger of the population against crushing poverty and despair.

The challenge in Iraq - one that the President has richly documented and always emphasized that would require hard work and sacrifice - is to transcend the catastrophic situation under SH and his Ba'athist thugs and to create an Iraq that actually has a future. Achieving that would be the greatest turning point in the Middle East since the building of the temples in Jerusalem.

That is what the Defeatocrats say must be defeated.

They still do not understand it. At all.

The Doable and the Divine

Clive Crook, in today's FT, unfortunately behind their subscriber firewall, is finally on to something. His OpEd, titled "Bush may be on to something..." recognizes, finally, belatedly, that having a workable solution is better than truculently insisting that you're right and the other fellow is not only wrong, but a stupid git for not realizing just how wrong he is.

His final sentence is telling:

Cutting carbon is what matters, not building a global government.

All I can say is ... hah!

Sorry, but that is what Kyoto and the entire global warming business - and I use that word business deliberately, as it is just that - is about: building a global government. Yesterday's aggreement in Heiligendamm reasserted the role of the UN in governing any future Kyoto-like agreement (and just where will the next conference be held? The poor, suffering dears will have to suffer the unpleasantness of going to Bali to discuss the follow-on to Kyoto! Oh the horror, the horror...), and if you scratch away the veneer of almost any serious carbon-reduction politics, it comes down to a perceived necessity of controlling how the world economy develops.

This is all what is behind the global warming business: trying to take control of the economy away from the shareholders and managers and putting into the hands of people who know better for you.

You will see this in the next months: the repudation of Merkel's compromise of Heiligendamm, the continued vilification of any sort of sensible agreement to reduce pollution, and the continuing forward thrusting of the global warming hysteria.

Crook **is** on to something. He's realized that the politicians are going to do something that none of the global warming scaremongers has dared to do: to talk about what actually can be done, realistically, in the political arena.

Kyoto has been, is and will always be a failure, a fundamentally flawed exercise in political power-grabbing and "feel-good" policies of the worst kind. The fundamental flaw was the desperate attempt back when to at least agree on something, anything that weak politicians could take back home and wave like a Chamberlain from his balcony, an appeasement to the vociferous charlatans of the sky-is-falling global-government-is-necessary crowd.

The Heiligendamm agreement holds the death-knell for this group: it reaffirms the dominance of the political decision over the "scientific" one, due in no small part to the emininently sensible and solid US position, as well as to the fact that neither China nor India is that stupid.

There is always tension in politics between the doable and the divine, between that what is and that what should be. In a perfect world, progress is measured not by what one consumes and uses, but by the purity and beauty of the soul. For all of our sins, we do not live in a perfect world, nor does that perfect world exist except in the imagination - febrile or otherwise - of fantasists, or much more rarely, visionaries.

What will grow from the Heiligendamm agreement? Nothing less than a global agreement on pollution - after all, what use is carbon reduction if, for instance, heat pollution, toxic wastes, etc., are left alone? - that might actually succeed in making life in the terribly polluted, stinking and deadly Third World much better for everyone, not merely the upper levels of society.

And given the inefficiencies of Chinese and Indian industries - think of the US in the 1950s and you have a good idea of what these countries are facing - there would also be a huge incentive for companies to reduce their costs and improve their productivity, which just happens to impact the bottom line. China needs a Clean Air Act, India needs bureaucratic reform and massive investments in infrastructure (China is doing that already), both of which can only happen if those countries continue to develop, with an increasing number of people there in the emerging middle classes.

Replace global warming hysteria with anti-pollution activism, working in those countries that need it the most, and you will have policies that are doable. These succeed: the demands of the global warming business - of seceding national sovereignty to some sort of shadow world government - is doomed to failure.

But as Crook points out, if you're actually interested in reducing pollution, then you'd better be interested in achieving the reasonable, rather than hyping utopia.

The Real Cover-Up...

The Watergate scandal and the collapse of the Nixon presidency wasn't so much about the break-in, but much more about the cover-up. It was the cover-up that killed his presidency.

We see now in Washington a cover-up of similar dimensions, as can be seen here.

It's old news by now: Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Adviser, stole documents from the National Archives and was convicted of that.

But now the plot thickens: he has voluntarily given up his law license, meaning that he can no longer practice law. He hasn't done this as part of his deal with the Department of Justice, but rather to stop an investigation by the DC Bar into what was taken from the National Archives.

That's right, he did it to stop an investigation. The DC Bar can investigate members of the bar who belongs to it for behavior unbecoming to the profession.

What is the cover-up here? The article that I linked to points out that giving up a law license is fairly unprecedented to begin with, and for someone to give it up in order to stop an investigation is completely unprecedented.

So why is he doing it?

To protect Clinton and what's left of his legacy. Clinton's broad legacy was ruined by his impeachment - for which the Senate declined to convict him - and by his failure to get Arafat to toe the line and sign a peace accord with the Israelis.

Clinton's legacy right now is with the faithful of the Democratic Party: those who view his impeachment as being fundamentally unfair, who view Clinton's policies as the cat's meow, who believe the man could do no wrong, whose judgment (apart from interns) was impeccable, a smart and savvy guy who deserved more than he got from history. That's what's gotten him his big-figure speaking engagements, his sweetheart book deals and the like.

I think that what Berger - who can only be seen as throwing himself in his figurative sword to save his emperor - has hidden, both by destroying the documents in question and by supergluing his mouth shut, is that Clinton made some abysmally bad judgments that not only allowed Osama bin Laden to escape, but more importantly showed that Clinton didn't care.

Five memos were destroyed, or more exactly five copies of one and the same memo. Why would he destroy all the copies of one memo? Probably because penciled in the margins were comments like "we don't want bin Laden" or "the government has no interest in al Qaeda" or words to that effect.

Otherwise why would Berger be taking this extraordinary move to voluntarily resign his law license? Like I said, this is unprecedented under any circumstances.

This is the real cover-up: that at the end of the day, Clinton's legacy will be at least his abject failure to properly assess the threat and most likely his willful and deliberate failure to protect the United States because he couldn't be bothered. Berger needs to 'fess up as to his motives: otherwise this is the interpretation that people will put on this cover-up.

It's the cover-up that La Clinton needs to deal with before she has any sort of a chance to become president: if the story comes out and this is the case, she will be unelectable.

Which is probably why Berger is taking the fall.

The Turth About Kyoto...

Now you don't have to believe me: believe, all of sources, the Guardian, not exactly the most conservative of UK newspapers.

CDM, the Clean Development Mechanism, is a scam. The alternative, run by the EU, handed a windfall to big, bad oil companies:

While the CDM is run under the umbrella of the UN, the second market is overseen by the European commission. Before launching, it churned through a mass of figures and produced a maximum number of tonnes of carbon dioxide which could be produced by each nation in the scheme; each nation then handed its big corporations and organisations a set number of permits - EU allocations - defining the number of tonnes of carbon dioxide they could produce between January 2005 and December 2007. But they got their sums wrong.

The carbon market's leading analysts, Point Carbon, recently calculated that this scheme handed out 170m too many EUAs. In the early days, nobody realised quite how badly the commission had miscalculated, and so the price of the EUAs was quite high, at up to €30 a tonne. But individual companies, particularly energy companies, rapidly saw they had millions of tonnes of EUAs that they didn't need, and so they sold their surplus, making huge profits. A 2005 report by IPA Energy Consulting found that the six UK electricity generators stood to earn some £800m in each of the three years of the scheme.

They "got their sums wrong" is actually incorrect: the reality is that there are no "right" sums in this scam, but only wrong ones.

And this really underscores how shifty the whole set up is:

...there is evidence that a significant percentage of current and future CDM reductions, possibly as many as 20%, may have been wrongly checked. This effects not just the 50m tonnes of CERs which have been issued already, but a massive quantity which is sitting in the pipeline as a result of hedge funds pouring an estimated €4,000m into high-profit carbon projects.

In other words, the chaps in charge have bungled this beyond belief. But it gets even better!

Until July 2006, the CDM executive board did not reject a single project. It was short of staff, short of experts and short of funds. So it relied on the specialist companies to get it right. Since those specialist companies are hired by the projects who stand to earn big profits if they are accepted, that is an inherently weak structure. As one carbon analyst put it: "The verifiers are being paid by the people they are verifying. If it turns out the verified is a bad guy, he is paying the policeman to sign him off as a good guy."

Mind-boggling.

The whole point of these carbon credit schemes is to make it even remotely possible to reduce emissions without throttling the economy into slow death.

Instead, the lunatics are running the asylum.

Third Rails and Reality...

There are three "third rails" in US politics. That phrase "third rail" refers to the part of a subway rail system that carries power from the electrical system to the subway cars themselves, and if you touch the third rail, generally speaking you die: it carries high-voltage, high-amperage electricity, and the human body does not cope well with such things.

The first of the three rails is social security. The second is immigration policy. The third is abortion. There's no particular ranking there: each of them is as deadly as the other. Let's take a look as to why one differs from the other two and why each is such a third rail.

First, and most deadly for any politician, is social security. Social security was a reaction to the first really severe economic crisis in American history, the Great Depression. Sure, there were recessions and economic slowdowns in the past, but in the Great Depression you had the largest relative destruction of financial assets in US history that affected a greater number of people than ever before, and were, if anything, a symptom of neglect and abuse of the financial system. Social security was created to provide retirement income for everyone, so that no one would be either dependent on the kindness of strangers or on family for their retirement. As with all pension systems, you have the problem of the current generation, those who are working and want to benefit from the plan: those that are close to retirement age when the plan is implemented either don't benefit meaningfully (but have to pay!) or their retirement funds have to come from somewhere else.

In the US, as is many countries, social security was set up so that those currently benefiting use revenues generated from those currently working. It's an implicit generational contract, with young paying for old, and for many decades the deal was particularly sweet for those grandfatheed into the system, as they received payments well in excess of whatever they had paid into the system.

Such as system - some have compared it to a Ponzi scheme, but that is being unfair - can only function based on two assumptions: first, that demographics will allow the system to continue to work as such, and that excess funds are used to create a buffer to avoid having to cut benefits during economic slowdowns.

The problem, of course, is that the US is not immune to demographic decline: there are more old folks wanting their social security benefits than is good for the system, meaning that when one works through the accounting, a 21-year old that started work yesterday will not receive that which he paid in: there won't be enough young people paying benefits for retirees in 2052 or whenever that person retires. You can deal with this in three ways: increase payments into the system, raise retirement age or change the demographics.

Now, why is this a third rail? Simple: it's a functioning system, and fiddling with it today for the benefit of someone in 50 years is simply too far-sighted for your average voter. Especially when it means cutting benefits: this is, for the vast majority of politicians, something that you simply don't fiddle with, as you can only lose.

The second third rail is abortion. This is so heavily laden with religious and moral opposition to abortion, coupled with progressive demands for abortion, that finding a position in the middle means that you will be unacceptable to everyone for whom this is a major political issue. Suffice to say that most moral, responsible people do feel abhorrence for abortion, but there is also the damning fact that women will seek abortions regardless of the laws. The current situation is ugly and abhorrent for those who believe that any abortion is murder, and barely adequate for those who believe it is the fundamental right of any woman of any age to have the option of abortion. The current situation is satisfying to neither party: those who demand abortion rights ride roughshod over the religious beliefs and sensibilities of those who abhor abortions, and the anti-abortionists invariably fail to recognize that people are fallible and when it comes to romance and sex make mistakes, for which they are not willing to accept responsibility, preferring instead to abort rather than carry to term (I'm ignoring the pregnancy-by-rape argument for now): women have always chosen this option when they see it as necessary, legal or not, and indeed it makes little sense to unnecessarily criminalize desperation.

The third issue, the newest and in many ways most uncomfortable one, is immigration. The US controls its immigration to avoid taking in people who are more of a liability than being or becoming assets to the US economy and political system, and has done so basically from the birth of the republic. The US is, fundamentally, a immigrant society, but has learned that you do have to control immigation in order to avoid creating major societal problems of the kind you can see in the film "Gangs of New York".

Today the problem is more complex. In the past, many immigrated to get away from lack of economic options or because of political repression. There wasn't much of a welfare system outside of private and church support for recent immigrants. Qualified immigrants - educated, trained, with desirable skills - also were quickly assimilated, as they were able to adjust to their new environment more quickly and with less loss than those from less educated and more dogmatic population groups who refuse to give up their identities to become Americans.

Today, the problem is that people come here because they know that they will be better off, vastly so, than if they stay at home. But not because they are working and are climbing up in the economic system, but rather simply because they are here and can exploit the system for really good health care and the like while either working illegally in legal jobs or becoming criminals. The US economic and infrastructure system is simply too attractive for many, who are literally willing to give their entire fortunes and indeed their lives to simply cross the border without being caught.

And they've been successful: there are anywhere between 7 and 20 million people in the US illegally, ranging from highly successful people to absolute losers, deeply criminal. We want the former and I don't think anyone has problems with integrating them: no one wants the latter group. The problem is identifying, finding and successfully resolving the illegal residence in the US.

Now, looking at these three third rails in US politics, we see that abortion is probably the least problematic, driving, if anything, personal commitment for activists on both sides in the political process. Roe vs. Wade remains the law of the land, and it's a good solution because it makes both sides angry: it doesn't outlaw something that will happen anyway, and it doesn't allow it as if it were going to the dentist.

Social security is the one that no one wants to touch, because the point where a hard decision has to be made is far off into the future, especially in political terms (few if any politicians think beyond the next election: the good ones almost always tend to...). To his credit, Bush broached solving the social security system - that the system will run out of money to pay the intergenerational at some point - by moving some of the revenues into personal accounts, i.e. people would also be accumulating capital, rather than simply transferring between generations. As things were/are, the political time is not ripe, nor is it, strictly speaking, necessary: while the sooner one starts accumulating capital, the better, the system itself can bear another 20 years before the problem appears directly looming.

Now, immigration is the biggest current problem. Like I said, the US is a country of immigrants, one with clear and fairly precise principles about immigration that are reflected in the laws of the country. What makes this a third rail is the fact that these laws have been, are and in all likelihood will continue to be broken and ignored: the desire of those outside the US to come here when they cannot get official visas is greater than the fear of being caught. Bringing people into the US illegally is also very lucrative, and simply being in the US is usually very lucrative for the illegals: health care is basically free (the hospitals will not turn you away), you can con your way to welfare, food stamps and other benefits, and even if you find a "legal" job and pay taxes, you'll still be earning vastly more than what you could have back where ever home was.

In other words, just coming to the US is for many a huge incentive to break the law and come here illegally.

Now, this has been a problem for decades, especially in those states bordering Mexico. It's been ignored because there are activists who view it as right and proper that any and everyone should be able to come to the US, the hell with the law, and because of the inherent difficulties in cleaning up the illegal aspects of immigration: arrest and deport, and they'll be back next week.

But now there are demands for amnesty: of legalizing breaking of the law, and more importantly, of fast-tracking illegals to be permanent residents and ultimately US citizens. This last is the critical point, as citizens vote. Illegals aren't supposed to (and there has been voter fraud involving illegals here), but I think that the political calculation of legalized illegals voting for whoever gives them voting rights is fairly accurate.

That's why immigration has become a third rail in US politics: amnesty for illegals, if they achieve citizenship, would significantly change the demographics of a number of US states, and sets a terrible precedence that basically rewards those breaking the law and effectively makes those who took the legal route, with all the costs and delays that includes, to be fools for obeying the law.

Hence the animosity of conservatives to any sort of amnesty. The US government is on the horns of a horrible dilemma: on the one hand, it would be extremely difficult to deport all illegals without screwing it up terribly and creating a huge problem; on the other hand, you simply can't make it legal for people to be here.

Doom and gloom and how much they enjoy it...

Everytime there is a sustained period of economic development, those who tend not to fully partake of the benefits of same seek emotional compensation by choosing some aspect of the good times to blame for everything bad.

Hence now with global warming. It's become now the cause celebre, the enfant terrible of the dissatisfied, with those whose participation in the current huge global upswing is less than they think it is their due, and who want to make life miserable for so many.

This link underscores this: the whole global warming activist scene is one filled with drama queens and kings, screaming "The Sky Is Falling" so loudly that no one dares critique them. The animosity displayed towards anyone daring to challenge the orthodoxy is stifling and dangerous: these people don't merely want to take your money to spend on their pet projects, they really want to control your lives by either taxing certain behavior out of existence or via making it highly immoral and disgusting to, say, take a vacation in the Maledives.

This is, for me, one of the key points that Josie Appleton raises here:

We can see how social anxieties – a fear of change, a sense of the fragility of things – guide the questions that scientists ask, and the kinds of theories that ring true.

The world is, economically, going through rather significant changes, and it is indeed something people have to take into account. It's been a basic fact for my generation that you may have 3 or 4 completely different jobs during a lifetime, something my parent's generation would have seen as a sign of someone not knowing what they want to do in life. My children's generation is even more detached from the concept of career and doing one thing for your whole life: my daughters have no idea what they will be doing, nor do their friends. Contrast that with the certainty that others, less flexible, show and their horror at the idea that buggy whips won't always be in demand.

Consider what Al Gore wrote in his book An Inconvenient Truth:

The climate crisis also offers us the chance to experience what very few generations in history have had the privilege of knowing: a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence; the opportunity to rise…. When we do rise, it will fill out spirits and bind us together. Those who are now suffocating in cynicism and despair will be able to breathe freely. Those who are now suffering from a loss of meaning in their lives will find hope.'

Those are his italics, not mine: this is almost a textbook case of teleology. Put simply, this means that there is no such thing in and for itself, but rather that there is a final cause or purpose inherent in everything.

The global warming folks don't want you to listen: they want to own your soul. Their evangelical fervor is more similar to religious revivals than it is to dispassionate scientific discourse, as anyone who has dared to contradict them publicly has learned (me, I doubt the basis for their temperature reconstructions: there is too much manipulation of numbers by those who have been shown to use the wrong methodologies to reconstruct the past: see Mann et al. for the dangers of fine-tuning your reconstruction curves so that they always give you the same results, regardless of what numbers you put into them). As Josie aptly puts it:

Carbon dioxide becomes the nexus between individuals, the thing that connects us to other people and to the future of the planet. This infuses the most banal acts with a deep moral meaning. Choosing a particular brand of washing machine, or taking the train rather than the car, become acts laden with significance. Washing clothes contributes to the future of civilisation. Buying strawberries affects the fate of the planet. In the main, that effect is negative: by seeking to fulfil our own wants and pursue our own goals, we are condemning other people to death. The way we help the whole is by reining in our wants, for example by buying strawberries in summer only.

The carbon calculator involves an almost pathological indifference towards the significance of the things we do. Plane journeys to see sick relatives or to visit prostitutes are weighed the same, in parts per million. The ways in which human beings judge whether something was worthwhile – Did it have a useful result? Did it bring joy or pain? – are suspended. The planet doesn’t care either way. The planet’s indifference to the passions and trials of human life becomes the worldview we ourselves assume. Again, we see how global warming appears to provide the answer to a dilemma – how we live, and how we should structure and judge our lives – but that it does that by abolishing the question. It solves the dilemma of moral meaning by abolishing all meaning.

I'd modify this somewhat: it doesn't solve the dilemma of moral meaning by abolishing all meaning, but rather subjugating all meaning to be subservient to the higher moral meaning of ecological absolutism. It makes what is fundamentally an open sum game into a closed sum game, one where my mere existence means that others die.

The world is not a closed sum game. You cannot solve a closed-sum game: you can only redistribute the limited options. An open-sum game, on the other hand, means that you can solve problems by thinking outside of the box: the environmentalist extremists would want you to not even consider that. They don't want you to come up with a solution to the problem, because they are making their livelihood dependent on ensuring that it becomes a generational problem that cannot be solved.

In other words, it's a scam, one of the most degenerate and vile scams there are: selling salvation to the damned. Again Josie:

But the more that society defines itself in relation to global warming, the less willing it is to let go. Global warming is now not so much a problem to solve, as an issue around which to reorganise society. This is more Noah’s flood than Clean Air Act, and the lesson is in the sins of hubris and consumerism. Global warming is sent to show people that ... they are ‘wasting their lives commuting to work in cars’. (The) proposed solution – to ‘cut our need for energy by living less consumptive lifestyles’ – will apparently form the basis of a new and happier society.

In other words: it is nothing less than the attempt to build a Brave New World. One of complete and total control, since, as Josie points out, unless that happens, energy usage, flying, trade will all continue to increase.

And that is intolerable to these control freaks.

One man's myth and journalistic ignorance...

So, in today's FT we have this lovely start off line (behind the subscriber line, but you can see what is the problem from the teaser):

I really like the US. It is the American dream that I cannot stand.

Well, gee, Gideon Rachman, thanks for letting us know that you not only haven't understood what the American dream is all about, but even worse, aren't afraid to let the world know that you don't. This is virtually a textbook case of journalistic ignorance.

He goes on to call the American dream, defined by him as "you can be whatever you want to be", a self-evident untruth.

How sad. How sad that he first of all doesn't understand what that simple concept means. It's sad that he doesn't even have the imagination to understand what this very simple concept means, and it is sad that he really, really, really doesn't understand what makes America the most desirable place to live on this planet for the vast majority of humans.

It doesn't mean, as he apparently believes it to mean, that a dishwasher can become Miss Universe: after all, our imaginary dishwasher is male and Miss Universe contestants can't be surgically modified to *that* degree.

It's simpler than that: it means that in the US, no one is going to tell you not to pursue your dreams. If that dishwasher wants to be Miss Universe, there is no way for him to actually become Miss Universe, but there is nothing stopping him from dressing in drag and pretending that he is Miss Universe.

But that's not the fundamental either: the American dream is that the second youngest son of a Ukrainian farming family can leave the farm. His future would have been only a tad better than that of a serf, as his 8 brothers - no sisters - would almost always be ahead of him in the inheritance game. Three of his older brothers entered the military, joining the cavalry with their own set of horses, and his youngest brother entered the priesthood to get away from the drudgery of farming.

He left the Ukraine and emigrated to the US, working first as a day laborer. He could read and write, as well as being able to do his numbers, and went to classes in the evening to learn English. He worked and saved and after learning English started going to evening classes to learn how to be an engineer. He graduated with a BS in engineering from a small university, not particularly prestigious, but he was a good engineer: he left New York and went to Chicago, where a job was waiting for him. He married, set up his own company and became a millionaire.

Not because he wanted to become a millionaire: he just wanted to do what he was good at doing and make a good living. He met payrolls and employed dozens of people, and gave as much back to the community as he could. He had three kids, each of whom went to college.

He was my grandfather, and all he wanted to do was to live the American dream. Which he did: he became what he wanted to be, he became what he worked hard to be: a typical American.

Now, I could repeat this for almost all of my family: we all became what we wanted to be. I live in Germany, but I am also living the American dream. I set goals for myself and I've largely reached them. Where I haven't, it's either been circumstances or my own damn fault.

My wife just yesterday asked me why the US had so many creative and innovative people: did it depend on the school system, did it depend on seed money being available. I simply answered that it depended on the American system simply letting people do what they want to, with no guarantee of success but no shame in having failed.

But apparently Rachman would have preferred that my grandfather stay down on the farm, where he apparently belonged. Better that than taking the chance of falling down flat on your face.

Now that is a case of journalistic ignorance: I can't imagine the man's excuse, as he is the Chief Foreign Affairs columnist for the FT since July of 2006. What a shame the man hasn't even the most basic understanding of what makes the US tick.

Why talk when no one is listening...

There are those who call for a dialogue with Iran.

A dialogue requires, however, two parties that are actually talking to one another.

Iran has made it abundantly clear that it is not interested in a dialogue: as you can see here, in his own words, that, and let me quote, "security council resolutions have no influence" on Iran's actions.

But it goes further than that: his take on the issue, is, fundamentally, correct: the West is unable to act against Iran.

First of all , you have an aysmmetric relationship between the two. Iran is dependent on technology and gasoline (they lack the refining capability), the West is dependent on Iranian oil. Iran can do without the first two - if called upon for national sacrifice, the population will be willing to forego cheap gasoline in exchange for nuclear energy - but losing Iranian oil supplies would drive prices up on the world market significantly. The Iranians believe in themselves, the West, as usual, is dominated by pontificating idiots who haven't understood Iran since the fall of the Shah (if then).

Second, the Iranians have all their puzzle pieces in place: they have started enrichment, probably have the rest of the technological prerequisites in place, and already are working on their delivery systems. The West has no clue as what can be done to stop Iran, just as it had no clue as what could have been done to stop Nazi Germany. And I think we can all agree that while some aspects of the Iranian revolution have nothing to do with Nazi Germany, other aspects are chillingly similiar, largely in the official anti-semitism and the absolute control of all aspects of society (liberalizations are grudgingly permitted, but nothing may challenge the state/church of Iran).

Third, and this is the key problem: political will.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has made clear what its goals are: domination of the region politically, export of its revolution (and subservience thereto: the Iranians learned well from the Soviets) and the elimination of Israel from the map of the world, with the consequences be damned.

The lack of response from the West has only given Iran incentives to continue this behavior: the sanctions don't work. Iran is correct in expecting the commercial interests of the West to override vague notions of any developing threat until the cost of meeting this threat becomes very costly indeed.

What the Iranians have forgotten is that the West does not live by capitalism alone: once the threat has developed to the point where it can no longer be ignored - and Iran's apparent belief that the West will do nothing when Israel is attacked with nuclear-tipped missiles is highly misplaced - and the threat starts to become existential, the West is very, very good at mass slaughter. It would take no more than 14 nuclear weapons to complete devastate Iran in response to a nuclear attack on Israel, one that, given the increasing Israeli/US cooperation in anti-missile systems, might fail.

These scenarios, however, are chilling: what could the West do now to avoid what would be a major setback for peaceful world development?

First of all, massive sanctions, including oil. This is where Iran is vulnerable: right now, it will still take longer to develop the bomb and militarize it than Iran can handle a complete and total trade embargo before the country starts to unravel (virtually no transportation, including the distribution of foodstuffs). Such a massive set of sanctions must run through the UN for any legitimacy, and should be a function of 100% solidarity, i.e. if the Russians and the Chinese fail to go along, this will lead to the deaths of millions of Iranians.

Second, concentrated support for the moderates in Iran, but through their brothers in belief in the Arab world. The US doesn't need to spend the money: those states are well-off enough. The goal? Elimination of the Iranian revolution.

Third, and this will be the most difficult, putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle. The non-proliferation treaty is full of too many dual-usage problems, a new one should be put together, one that also reflects on the massive reduction of the US and Russian stockpiles. Sanctions and penalties must be put into place that make it clear that once a country has been found in non-compliance and/or cheating and/or withdrawal, that this means the end of trade with the rest of the world and complete and total pariahdom.

Another reason not to trust Congress...

As we know, tax revenues in the US are at an all-time high. The federal deficit is well on its way to disappearing, structurally, as the growth of tax revenues exceed federal outlays: despite - I will say because - the Bush tax cuts.

So what does Congress, in its oh so infinite wisdom, want to do?

Well, step back a moment. What drives incomes, what makes it possible for the government to increase its tax income without actually raising taxes?

Growth, economic growth. Without it, taxes become more onerous than they are: taxes become a zero-sum game, taking more away than you can hope to earn.

What has been a major, driving force in economic growth in the US? While I could have to write a PhD thesis to prove this, my fundamental take is that growth in the US, economic growth, the creation of wealth, has been in no small part driven by the easy and prolific use of the Internet to acquire and process information. I know that research that used to take me days in the library, tediously photocopying historical data, entering by hand into spreadsheets, can now be downloaded in a matter of seconds, making me significantly more productive.

So, what does wealth creation have to do with Congress being less intelligent than usual?

They want to tax the Internet.

We know that Congress is full of idiots: it's almost a definition. Their approval rating is even lower than the President's, and that really, really takes some doing.

Fundamentally, any sort of consumption tax, such as a sales tax or Value Added Tax (I pay 19% tax on virtually everything I buy in Germany!), is highly regressive, since those whose incomes go completely for consumption (i.e. lower income groups) are disproportionately taxed in comparison to higher income groups whose incomes allow them to save and/or invest.

The apparent goal of the introduced legislation is basically to level the playing field and force the collection of sales tax regardless of the distribution channel. Senator Enzi, from Wyoming and a Republican, apparently sincerely believes this is a good thing: he's, sorry to say, so wrong that it begs disbelief to think that he actually thought this thing through.

The Democratic Party is infamous as a tax-and-spend party: they may be able to actually bring this outside of committee.

Talk about killing the goose that lay the golden egg.

But this isn't bad enough: they also want to tax your access, basically as they now tax your basic phone service. These kinds of additional taxes are as large as over 17% of the basic service: not exactly peanuts.

But this indicates how completely clueless the Internet Tax people are:

Harley Duncan, the executive director of the Federation of Tax Administrators, said Wednesday that higher taxes will not discourage broadband adoption and his group "urges Congress not to extend the Act because it is disruptive of and poses long-term dangers for state and local fiscal systems."

Increasing the price of broadband Internet access by taxes won't discourage adoption? I guess he skipped his econ studies and never learned anything about elasticities of demand.

Any developed economy needs broadband reaching the greatest number of people to increase the utility of the Internet and its usage. Instead of supporting - and even subsidizing - inexpensive access, these folks want to tax it instead.

Remember, tax revenues are at an all-time high: taxing it would be regressive, not progressive.

This is another reason not to trust Congress...

The truth about progressives...

You need to scroll down a bit here, but it's about time someone realized that this is true:

... progressives are less educated, on average, than conservatives; most of the people on DailyKos don't have PhDs. And too many of those allegedly uberbrilliant liberals apparently enjoy whiling away the hours on websites that consist mostly of rants about Rethuglicans and homespun theories about implausibly vast conservative conspiracies.

Just had to point people to that one. Megan is right: the whole "progressive" thing is something that most people should grow out of when they realize that the revolution sold its soul a long, long time ago and that radical utopias almost invariably end up as Gulag.

And several of the commentators have noted the fundamental difference between right-wing and left-wing talk radio: Rush, the undisputed King of talk radio, is ultimately successful because he is good at it, entertaining, doesn't indulge in ad hominem attacks (he vastly prefers satire and ridicule instead, something that the progressives appear incapable of understanding that humor in a political context can be extraordinarily effective. Just think of Reagan's "There you go again" in the debate with Carter in 1980 and, when asked at the 1984 Presidential debate about the age issue (i.e. whether he was too old to be a candidate) replied "I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." His opponent: Walter Mondale.

The truth about "progressives" and the left is that they have become reactionary, and reactionaries need punching bags and scapegoats to survive.

And conservatives have become the new progressives, wanting to improve the lot of the common man by letting him keep his money and do what he sees fit with it: this the absolute anathema of the left.

In other words, the ideological world has inverted, and that is what dooms the left to irrelevancy.

And the excuse this time is...

Here is an article from the Guardian.

Read it. Iran is planning to kill as many Iraqis and US soldiers as possible. Their goal? Local dominance, bread and circus for their restive masses. Pushing the entire Middle East into a war hysteria as well, bring on the apocalypse before their time runs out.

Than ask yourself: what is the excuse this time for ignoring the threat?


Iran is preparing to inflict as large a cost as possible to the continuing US presence in Iraq: can we say "Tet"?

Remember, the Tet offensive was, militarily, a failure: the Viet Cong was destroyed as a military and political force in South Vietnam thereafter.

But US journalists, manipulated by the communists in Vietnam and venably stupid, picked it as "proof" that the Viet Cong were still in business and that the war was no longer "winnable", as if that had mattered at all.

I'm not going to speculate on what could be done up front to avoid having Teheran try to run a Tet offensive in Iraq, as I don't know enough to do so.

But I can speculate on how it will be interpreted.


Regardless of the outcome - and I think that Teheran is vastly underestimating both the firepower of US forces and the will of the Iraqis to fight - the mere fact that such an offensive is possible will have, politically, exactly the same kind of effect that Tet had. The idiot class in the US will use this to point out that we've failed. They're already saying it: it will provide them with the excuse to cut and run and to hell with the world.

Odd, their expectations. At no point did the US ever say that this was going to be easy or short. They've always been the ones claiming it was going to be fast and easy (only ex post facto, of course).

What will the excuse be this time?

They are setting the US up to be the fall guy no matter what: that is the goal here.

If the US does its intelligence right and decimates the Iranian-backed forces when they appear, the mere fact that they appeared will be trumpeted. That they failed to achieve any meaningful goals and were decimated won't matter: the mere fact of the attack is all that is needed.

If the US takes serious causalties due to surprise attacks, then the war will be considered lost by the press, with both the press and leftie pundits spreading the gospel of a repeat of Vietnam.

Never mind that it isn't; never mind that they're wrong.

They will spread it anyway.

There's that saying that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.

And the excuse this time is...

France reborn...

Those who have read this blog for a while know that I've been rather down on the French.

My mistake: what I really should have been down on was the France of Chirac.

The new President, Sarkozy, is not a believer in politics as usual.

According to the Times, Bernard Kouchner, one of the founders of Médecins sans Frontières, will be the new Foreign Minister.

Let's try to put this in perspective: in terms of politics, it's a stunning, complete reversal of politics. Up to last week, French politics were nothing less than a sop to French commercial interests, i.e. they would be supportive of anyone buying from France, regardless of the actual politics involved. Chirac and his cronies were more than happy to do business with people whose hands were almost literally dripping with blood, merely pausing to wipe their hands off between courses of their diplomatic wooing of anyone who could be part of the French defi americaine. This meant that they besmirched France's own internal philosophies, those that have made France for most of its history a partner of the US: freedom, liberty, human rights.

The first thing that happened to Kouchner is that he was then excommunicated from the Socialist Party. Kouchener had been the Minister for Health and Humanitarian Action under the Socialists, and the fact that he has now been denounced as a traitor by that party underscores exactly how bankrupt the socialists have become.

Further changes: apparently Sarkozy will be selling the French government's shares in the parent company of Airbus, EADS, probably to Dubai, meaning that Airbus may actually have a chance of survival as a functioning commercial company, free of the pernicious meddling by the French - including forcing the decision to build that white elephant, the A.380 - and perhaps able now to compete without subsidies: if the sale does go to Dubai, expect an infusion of capital into Airbus to get the company back on its feet.

Further personnel changes: super-ministries for the economy and the environment and seven women in the cabinet.

But the real change is the rediscovery that Realpolitik, ruthlessly practiced by the French under Chirac, is being replaced by a foreign policy that will also have a moral aspect to it: Kouchner has already called for a potential boycott of the Chinese Olympics if China doesn't rethink its amoral foreign policy, which is pure Realpolitik.

Big changes abound here: as Austin Bay puts it, some may see it as too little too late, especially for Iraq, but it's a damn good start for actual cooperation in the future...

Stay tuned...

hat tip: Austin Bay.

Well, He's Gone...

The Bank won. Wolfowitz is leaving as of the end of June.

As usual, the WSJ has the right take on it: Wolfowitz made the mistake of underestimating exactly how deadly politics apparently are at the World Bank. If he had refused to determine himself what was to happen to Raza, insisting instead that the Bank deal with it, his enemies wouldn't have had any ammunition to use against him, even though he followed instructions, crossed his t's and dotted his i's.

My prediction: the anti-corruption campaign will be effectively dismantled within a year. It will remain, but investigations will take decades to complete and will probably wait until everyone involved is retired or dead before coming to a conclusion that will be released in a press release at 5pm on the Friday before a long weekend.

This is where institutionalized corruption has now found a nice, secure home. How many billions will be siphoned off now?

My thinking right now is that the World Bank has outlived its usefulness. Countries once in deep poverty can now manage commercial loans quite nicely, thank you (think China, Vietnam), and countries with endemnic corruption - India, sadly - should pay a higher risk premium for not being able to reduce corruption, if not eliminate it. That's the price they should have to pay.

Alternatively, relocate the World Bank to one of the third-world countries. Sudan, perhaps, or the Congo; Paraguay might also be a good choice.

I'm sure that there are good people who work at the World Bank, people who really do want to help and make changes. But the institutionalized corruption is simply too deeply seated: the mandarins are in charge, and There Will Be No Change.

He must be doing something right ...

Paul Wolfowitz, so much under fire for working according to the rules of the World Bank (he's done nothing less than to have done exactly what he was supposed to do after checking with the Bank's personnel department!), has apparently now become persona non grata with the German Minister for Development, that lady in red with the unspeakable name, a certain Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul.

He is no longer welcome at the World Bank's Africa Forum meeting in Berlin next week, according to her account in Der Spiegel (unfortunately only in German...).

You know what this really means?

That the powers-that-be at the World Bank - the entrenched bureaucracy - is deathly afraid of him.

And that Wieczorek-Zeul is supporting them.

He must be doing something right if he has managed to make so many enemies at such a place. He came to reform, and reform is the very, very last thing that these folks at the World Bank are interested in.

After all, they've managed to lose around $100bn since 1947 to corruption; a full 20% of their loans are based on corrupt practices; the prevalent picture is one of money being diverted by collusion, kickbacks, bribes and procurement fraud.

In other words, his creation of an anti-corruption group at the World Bank was long over-due, and he has upset the apple cart.

Good for him. He probably won't survive, given the concerted, aggressive attempts to drive him out of office.

If he leaves the World Bank, then hopefully his successor will have a mandate to really shake things up there: "Business As Usual!", the apparent battle cry of the World Bank, can only be the continuation of corrupt practices that need to be driven out.

What did Wolfowitz do wrong?

This summary is as good as any:

Supposedly, Wolfowitz used his position at the bank to promote his girlfriend and shower her with $60,000 in raises.

But according to e-mails and memos, Wolfowitz did the right thing at every step. Before Wolfowitz had one thing to do with the bank, his girlfriend had worked there for years earning a glowing reputation. Upon his nomination to head the World Bank, Wolfowitz had his lawyers inform high officials at the bank of the potential conflict. They said the problem could be taken care of.

When Wolfowitz got to the bank, he tried to recuse himself from any decision having to do with his companion. The bank's ethics committee said nope, you've got to transfer her out of the agency while making sure her career prospects and finances are not hurt. Wolfowitz said that was fine and suggested the ethics committee go ahead and do that. The ethics committee told Wolfowitz, in writing, that he needed to do it. So he did.

And then he submitted the proposal to the ethics committee for their approval. They approved. A year later, someone anonymously complained about the deal, so the ethics committee reopened the decisions and again ruled, in writing, that everything was done by the book.

Now, another year later everyone calls Wolfowtiz the bad guy. The ethics committee chief, Ad Melkert, now among the highest officials at the United Nations, says he never bothered to read the details of the job transfer when Wolfowitz proposed it. Melkert also says that when he said he investigated the situation a second time, he really didn't bother.

In this scandal, one official did his best to do the right thing while another didn't bother to do anything. It is clear who should be fired.

What this means is that Wolfowitz is being made the fall guy. I think it's because of the relative success of the anti-corruption group that puts the fear of God into the mid-to-upper level careerists at the World Bank, who are probably collectively guilty of failing to exercise due diligence in dealing with the billions lent by the World Bank, with at least a few profiting, directly or indirectly from the deals done.

Never riles up a bureaucrat like pointing out that what they were doing should have made them criminally liable. People at the World Bank are highly privileged, with tax-free salaries and not a few perks like their retirement benefits. Threaten those privileges at your own risk.

A rising tide...

So, Greenpeace is grandstanding out on Mt. Ararat, where they are building an ark to highlight ... something or other. They are screaming at the top of their lungs "the sky is falling, the sky is falling": unless we all kowtow to them, "human misery on a scale not experienced in modern times" will be the result.

Meanwhile, others are coming to their senses and have become skeptics. Not the one or the other kooks, but rather this includes those who were instrumental at the start of the scare, as can be seen here.

Let's drop some names: Dr. Claude Allegre, Bruno Wiskel (he of "Kyoto House" fame), Dr. Nir Shaviv, Dr. David Evans (who spent 6 years running carbon models for the Australian government), Dr. Tad Murty, Dr. David Bellamy, Dr. Chris de Freitas, Dr. Reid Bryson, Hans H.J. Labohm, Tim Patterson, Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, Dr. Ian D. Clark and Dr. Jan Veizer.

These folks are being honest: one says that he profited personally from the whole global warming movement, another says he has lost grant money by becoming a skeptic, at least one is politically a socialist, another has seen environmental groups end their association with him, another is the most cited climatologist, another documents the suppression of evidence and another found that empirical evidence contradicted the theories.

And the attacks aren't coming from the right, but now from the left as well, as can be seen here. The key quote is this:

As with the arms-spending spiral powered by the cold war fearmongers, vast sums of money will be uselessly spent on programs that won't work against an enemy that doesn't exist. Meanwhile, real and curbable environmental perils are scanted. Hysteria rules the day, drowning useful initiatives such as environmental cleanup, while smoothing the way for the
nuclear industry to reap its global rewards.

Of course, Cockburn - not one of my favorite fellows - believes that the Merchants of Fear (his term) are not much other than shills for the nuclear industry, which is a rather bizarre - but typical - conclusion.

Now over at this web site, it appears that the core weakness of the global warming arguments is becoming clearer: poor statistics. Not so much that the underlying data is poor - it is, but that is another story entirely, one that in many ways does allow for statistical interpretation - but rather that you have specialists in one field using statistics to interpret patchy and spotty data, to interpolate and to create proxies, yet failing, miserably, to allow others to reproduce their efforts, claiming instead that the data, the raw data, belongs to them (despite the language of their grants placing the data collected in the public domain!) and refusing to release their raw, unprocessed and unmanipulated data so that others can reproduce their results.

There's more: how about using proxies that are really bad at actually being connected to what is claimed, skewing the results? Tree ring size sounds like a good proxy, but turns out to be a function not only of warmth, but also of solar influx, biological diversity and rainfall patterns. In other words, it's not a proxy for warming as such, but is specifically and deliberately used as such.

Now that's a problem. Consider this:

If a practising scientist selected a 1987 data set over more recent versions, failed to cite it correctly, altered the appearance of the data without a clear explanation and didn’t include the data from the last 20 years then I think we’d all be asking serious questions about their professionalism.

I think that this is exactly the question that needs to be asked.

We know the Hockey Stick has become thoroughly suspect (at best: I'd be happier seeing Mann et al exposed to the greater public as having falsified their data for political purposes.), but it seems that this is just the start.

The key is understanding the problem is that what has happened is something that always happens when scientists, however well meaning, overstep their boundaries, usually in the name of some utopian greater good. Good, peer-reviewed work from professional climatologists is not the problem: the problem is when climatologists then enter the world of politics and policy-making, where they should be viewed with about as much glee as they would view a professional psychologist who starts to do climatology.

There is also a fundamental problem with peer-reviewing that is not adressed by most analyses: when an analysis of troubled data - and climatology is filled with troubled data, as proper data acquisition starts only in the last century, which is *why* they use proxies in the first place - is based on methodology that is not vetted by a professional statistician: climatologists review the work, and the errors that Mann et al. show that while at least some professional climatologists think that they have their statistical methods down pat, this is not necessarily the opinion of professional statisticians that have reviewed the methodology (as the problems with the Hockey Stick paradigm have shown).

This means that the peers reviewing the work, while fully capable of professionally reviewing the climatological aspects of the analyses being reviewed, are apparently not capable of professionally reviewing how the underlying data was put together and whether it was put together properly, using proper statistical analysis that can be duplicated by others based on the problematical data set.

This is where peer review fails: if the data is not checked and verified that it has been put together properly, then the validity of the conclusions cannot be reviewed, only the methodology of the analysis ex-post the data set.

So while the science is increasingly being called into question, Greenpeace pulls publicity stunts.

That's ok, that's about all that they are good for anyway.

The Banality of Victory...

Think about this: what is more banal than a dentist? The guy takes care of people's teeth, tut-tuts them when they haven't flossed, straightens crooked teeth and does the occasional root canal when something goes bad. If he's in Germany, he might pull it instead, and dentists' techniques vary in many ways little. There are some new-fangled developments, like laser drills, better ways of dealing with problems, but ultimately being a dentist is a very banal job, helping his fellow and occasionally making a very decent living while doing so. I've known a few dentists, and not all make tons of money.

So why pay attention when a dentists writes an op-ed? Is it about some aspect of health care or health insurance?

Only indirectly.

This is an op-ed by a dentist (hat tip: Michael J. Totten).

It's one of the best I've seen on the fundamental topics of the Iraq war, written by an Iraqi dentist. He cuts to the core of the problem: wanting the US out means nothing less than abandoning Iraqis to whoever kills off his rivals first.

This is the greatest failure of the anti-war left, the Democratic Party and those whose BDS is so far advanced that they are willing to kill and fundamentally enslave Iraqis to ensure that Iraq turns into failure at the brink of success.

Let me quote:

The people of America need to understand this: the enemies of a stable Iraq are America's enemies, and they simply do not understand the language of civilization and reason.

They understand only power. It is with power they took over their countries and held their peoples hostage. Everything they accomplished was through absolute control over the assets of their nations through murder, torture, repression and intimidation.

Those who prefer to bury their heads in the dirt today, and withdraw from this difficult fight, will be cursed forever for abandoning their duty when they were most capable. I don't understand why someone who has all the tools for victory would refuse to fight an enemy that reminds us every day that it is evil - with all the daily beheadings, torture and violations of all humane laws and values.

With America's help - and only with its help - the decent people of Iraq can still prevail.

This is what is at stake: if the Democrats in Congress push through their solution to Iraq, then they are condemning the decent people of Iraq to a return to exactly "politics as usual."

And what the Democrats don't understand is that politics as usual - a "stable" Middle East that is about as stable as the Yellowstone caldera and just as potentially deadly - is one of the leading reasons why Al-Quaeda has been so successful. Sure, bin Laden and his cohort hate the Great Satan and the Little Satan, but their goal is to re-establish a caliphate, of muslims united. Their reason?

Because the existing states in the Middle East are almost invariably severely corrupt and repressive, and the existing states in the Middle East are a fundamental part of the problem: the exception, as always, is Israel, with some of the Emirates coming closer. The other states in the Middle East exist to serve the politicians in power, resulting in nominal democracies like Egypt having their leaders not elected fair and square, but via dynastic succession.

Mohammed Fahil, dentist in Baghdad, has a better understanding of the stakes than the entire Democratic Party summed up together, and then some.

And I, too, do not understand why the fight against evil is so incomprehensible to the Democratic Party and the anti-war left. You can't negotiate with evil: just think of the idiot in the first Die Hard movie who thought he could finess the bad guys and had absolutely no idea of who he was dealing with and ended up dead for his stupidity.

That's who the Democrats of today remind me of.

Uncommon...

Good lord, what is the world coming to?

Here I am, about to link to the Daily Kos.

Really, I am. But to this.

I just hope that the link survives. Basically, an Israeli progressive set up shop over at Kos and has realized that he's not only not amongst friends, but that he's among those who actively hate and want Israel to be subjugated to the will of the Palestinians (as if anyone knew what that is...), where some of the vilest anti-semitism belongs to the code of conduct to be a good member.

But you gotta read the commentary as well: indicative of the insanity that has befallen the left: one commenter over on Kos said "the issue ... is so hijacked that it's hard to see what the reality is". Another one snidely asks: "What does an expression of concern morph into once a progressive learns the facts?"

Progressives' aren't into facts: they're into ideological utopias.

That way lies madness, as the past clearly shows: National Socialists, Marxists of Stalinist and Maoist persuasion, the 2-bit thugs and psychopathic murderers of the left in the Third World.

You'd think that people would learn from history. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the COMECON countries, the vulgar capitalization of the Chinese Communists, the collapse into corruption and kleptocracy in the Third World of "progressive regimes" should have ensured that the Left becomes synonomous with failure and stupidity.

Instead, we have not found out how to keep it in its coffin. Too many misguided fools, too many frozen mindsets, too many that cannot face the abject failure of the past and continue to see it as the future.

It's dead, boys, it's pining for the fjords. It's a ex-parrot.

Hattip: LGF

Move On...

Yep, I'm back. Sortofkindof.

One of the dangers for any democracy are special interest groups who invariably cloak their special interests in the mantle of general political will, based on polls and questionnaires that can be manipulated and twisted to serve their own purposes.

Add to this the goals of some of the NGOs and special interest groups - of wielding political power vastly in excess of their constituency, which tends to be rich liberals with guilt complexes - that are, at the end of the day, fundamentally undemocratic, because they do not reflect the actual needs and political desires of the populace, but rather create the need and political desires within a populace that doesn't know that it is being misled.

Normally the usual political savvy and distrust of politicians for lobbyists, who always demand a quid pro quo that may cost the politician too much if such is revealed, will keep such groups at arms' length from the politicians, who rightfully are skeptical about what these groups claim and deliver.

Right now, though, we have an interesting situation. We all know that MoveOn.org has developed from a small grass-roots anti-Clinton-impeachment web site into a political organization that is seeking to exert massive influence over the politics of the Democratic Party.

Fundamentally, MoveOn has become an electronic precinct machine, building on the fundamental political mode of the Democratic Party, which is the establishment of their political machinery to "capture" voting groups.

The danger here is that the Democratic Party has become the party of opportunists: Pelosi is an excellent example of this, a politician whose only principles are following polls and rewarding those who basically financed her election success, as well as those who paid for the political success of the Democratic Party in the last election.

What does this look like?

Look here: The last several sentences state the intent clearly.

MoveOn is now apparently interested in one thing and one thing only: that the US withdraw from Iraq, regardless of what that means. They are clearly gearing up to make this goal also the goal of the Democratic Party.

So who is MoveOn? That is both easy and hard to say: it is a political activism clearing house, with more than 3 mn members. That sounds impressive, and it largely is: but it is also only 1% of the US population. They call themselves "Democracy in action": they are, however, a fiercely partisan group, clearly far-left for the US. They consider it to be a great success when hundreds of thousands of people sign their petitions, such as proclaiming that Fox News is not a "neutral" source of information.

They are, right now, the premier organized leftist interest group in the US. Nothing less than that.

So let's go back to their goal: Withdrawal from Iraq.

How are they going to achieve this?

Read the NYT article and it is clear: not by argument, but rather by politically finessing the story and pressuring lawmakers to toe their party line.

I went to the MoveOn web site to see what I could find: you can sign petitions, you can read about their success stories, you can sign up.

But what you can't find is their real arguments. There are no discussion groups, no forums, nothing but a pure political organization.

Fine: I understand that they had problems with forums in the past, that they turned anti-semitic and abusive to those criticizing their position.

What I don't like about MoveOn is that they are first and foremost activists. Activism - of going out and flogging your message - is part and parcel of the democratic process, but this is activism gone wild: there is no there, there.


What they also forget is that the United States is not first and foremost a democracy, but rather a republic with democratic legitimation of the political process. Pure democracy - such as, say, Switzerland with its constant plebescite voting - is beholden to those who can mobilize the greatest number to go out and vote on individual issues, usually without any sort of quorum necessary to legitimize the decision process (i.e. the voting process does not require a minimum turnout to legitimize the popular vote). The danger here - which the founding fathers clearly saw, as documented in the Federalist papers - is pure populism, i.e. the winding up of emotional responses to achieve political gains, be it to go to war (Spanish-American War), be it to outlaw alcohol (prohibition), be it to demonize your political opponent (Bush '43).

And it is this latter that is disturbing: to repeat, there is no there, there, at MoveOn: it is rapidly becoming a precinct machine, turning out the loyal faithful who will do what the political machine demands it to do. This has been the fundamental mode of operation of the Democratic Party for most of this century: the political machines, for instance, of Daley in Chicago were formidable and continue to exist today.

But the danger here lies in the fact that precinct machine called MoveOn is not controlled by the Democratic Party: if anything, the reverse is true, and that is disturbing, as there is no transparency there. Where there is no transparency, there is no control: where there is no control, misuse and abuse are pre-programmed.

Me, I'm in favor of repealing any and all laws that govern political activism, but with one caveat: full transparency. Full disclosure of where the money comes from, what it is used for, and what happens with any sort of surplus.

You see, I don't trust them: the anti-war movement is full of neo-stalinists with shady finances and even more problematic links between those who would damage the US and those whose ideologies reject the role that the US has been forced to fill, that of the global policeman.

Back...

Sorry. Just had my gall bladder out and I'm not up to speed yet.

But here's two lovely links to keep you amused:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1509715597174925771&hl=en

and

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2807602702866411553&hl=en

More to come.

Surprise, surprise, surprise...

Every once in a while - a very long while - there does appear something in the German media that makes you wonder.

Read this.

Now, this is so untypical for a piece of German journalism that you wonder if somebody kidnapped his kids and made him write this.

But it's not. While there are huge numbers of left-wing idiots (sorry, I repeat myself) in journalism that couldn't distinguish between propaganda and reality if it came and bit them, there are plenty of "real" Germans, those who bother to exercise their brains, who know the difference.

It's a lovely piece, but I can't help wondering why it was published in Der Spiegel, which is sort of a cross between Time and Newsweek with a big chunk of vulgar marxism added in.

Guess the guy who wrote it - Claus Christian Malzahn - has a soft spot for us unlamented, backwards capitalists. Here's lookat a tyou... :-)

And thanks ...

Speaking Truth To Power...

I met now-retired Gen. Klaus Naumann back in 1984 or 1985 when I went to NATO HQ in Bruxelles with retired Gen. Bennecke, who was teaching security policy at the Albert-Ludwigs Universität zu Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. He was a Lt. Col. at that time and gave an incredibly kick-ass talk on the NATO dual-track decision that remained very controversial at that time. His competence and mastery of every aspect of that decision was very impressive, done with no notes, no preparation, zilch, and he underscored for me the fact that really successful modern officers are not the kind of idiots that your typical leftist or journalist (sorry, I repeat myself) usually thinks they are, but rather consummate professionals, the ones you want on your side and really, really worry about if they are not.

Well, he's up to his old tricks, and he does it so well...

It's up here, unfortunately in German only, but here's my quick-and-dirty translation of the relevant part:

Ex-NATO-General accuses German politicians of ignorance

Ex-General Naumann has blown a gasket: in terms of the loud criticism of the planned US-rocket shield, the former NATO commander points out that leading German politicians have absolutely no idea of what they are talking about. Their statements show "an almost unbelievable ignorance".

In the debate, most facts are left unmentioned. In Deutschland-Funk (a radio station - JO) he pointed out that most of the facts point not to a threat against the Russians, but rather the opposite. The US is planning to put in only 10 rockets, says Naumann. Given the more than 1000 Russian atom rockets with multiple warheads, their use against Russia is completely senseless. The warnings of leading politicians about a new arms race documents their complete ignorance.

In addition, so Neumann, the US missiles are to be stationed in eastern Europe. This means that in an attack they couldn't even reach any Russian missiles fired at the US, since these rockets would be fired over the North Pole and not over Europe. If Russia claims that the rocket shield in Poland and the Czech Republic is threatening their security, then this must be classified as an unashamed manipulation of the public.

He also emphasized that the US has been talking with Russia about their plans to move in these missiles. These discussions were part of bilateral talks with the Russians before Putin's talk at the Munich Security Conference. That's why it is amazing that the German Foreign Secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), immediately after Putin's speech, called for the necessity of at least talking to the Russians, criticized the former German general.

The rest of the article is about the French response and doesn't go into more detail.


Suffice to say: Naumann is absolutely correct. Absolutely. If you add to these facts the fact that the whole missiles-in-Poland plan was offered to NATO to be a part of about 8 years ago and rejected by them then, well...sort of puts it all in perspective, don't it?

The modern German political parties - mainly the SPD, but this unfortunately holds true for the rest of them - are idiots when it comes to the military and woefully ignorant of military affairs.

This is really speaking truth to power: to point out the woeful ignorance of the facts is on a completely different basis than what the populist left means when they claim to be "speaking truth to power" while in reality they are just yammering about how lousy the government is because they're not in power.


The last really good German Defense Minister was Manfred Wörner (1982-1988) who was then the NATO General Secretary from 1988 to his untimely death from cancer in 1994. Steinmeier is a joke.

The Mind Boggles...

So.

A guy thinks the market is going to tank.

He has an asset in the market.

He puts the asset on the market.

Then he publicly announces that he thinks the market is going to tank.

And he really thinks that his asset will then be bought?

The mind boggles.

The guy? Jim Rogers, commodities "guru".

How the hell did the guy ever get a job?

Oh, I see. A buddy of George Soros, the living proof that someone who is more than willing to crash a currency in order to make a buck doesn't mean that they know diddly squat about anything besides being outright bastards.

Gaining Perspective...

Sometimes the MSM does a good job.

This article on Kofi Annan, from Perry Anderson over at The Nation, is well researched and informative, and give us a partially new perspective on a number of things.

First of all, that Kofi Annan was a creation of the Clinton White House and was rammed down the throats of the collective security council by the Clinton White House.

Note the emphasis that I lay here on the Clinton White House: Anderson, of course, refers only to the US.

Why this emphasis? Because Kofi Annan didn't play the same game with the Bush White House as he did with the Clinton White House. He did not oppose US-led UN actions in what was left of Yugoslavia; he most certainly did when the US tried to lead the UN into concerted action against the failed state of Iraq. He was more than happy to let the French block the UN Security Council in order to desperately try to avoid French corruption from coming to the light of day and scrutiny.

This fits in nicely with the position of the Clintonistas, who were - and are - more than happy to use Iraq as a political tool against the Bush administration.

And, predictably, Annan pulled the UN out of Iraq when it was clear that they were being targetted by insurgents. What else could he have done?

Well, he could have addressed the General Assembly on the reasons why the UN was attacked in Iraq and point out to them that by attacking the UN, the insurgents were attacking the very structure of international cooperation, and that the member nations of the UN must condemn the attacks and work to ensure that the UN could operate safely. Not support the US mission - that would take the speculation here into the realm of wishful thinking - but support the UN mission of bringing order to chaos.

Instead he sacrificed those who died to appease the war critics, ensuring that the conflict would be longer, bloodier and for the people of Iraq infinitely more desperate than would have been the case if the UN had grown a backbone.

Anderson's take on Annan is a good one: never strong, nor an independent actor. A bureaucrat, with a failed education. He was the creature of the Clinton White House and never one of the Bush White House: when Annan's involvement in the Oil for Food scandal became clear, it was a series of Clintonistas that rallied to his defense.

Bye Bye Chirac ...

The worst President that France ever had is finally going to disappear from the political scene.

Not a day too soon.

Why do I say the worst?

Because he was.

Most fundamentally, Chirac was responsible for the greatest foreign policy blunder of the Fifth Republic since Suez.

On September 11th, he proclaimed "We are all Americans".

He started off right: he supported UN Resolution 1368 and sent troops to Afghanistan.

But starting on 15 Oct 2001 things started to go downhill. True French solidarity lasted only slightly more than 1 month.

His reluctance to get involved is based on the fear of getting involved in the Third World. In sharp contrast to his predecessor, Mitterand, Chirac's life wasn't heavily impacted by WW2, and it shows.

On 15 Oct 2001 he acknowledged that a clash of civilizations was developing, but saw a completely, radically different solution: engagement and discussion, with the West needing to take on the responsibility for the plight of the developing world, whose production of terrorists was the result of poverty and misery in those countries.

This is, of course, a crass misunderstanding of modern terrorism, which does not have its roots in poverty and misery, but rather comes from the upper levels of Arab society and has its roots in the failure of those societies to achieve anything remotely like the economic development of the West, despite their heritage and money from oil. This failure, because Arab pride does not allow honesty, can only be the result of repression and subjugation of Arabs by the West, hence the West must be eliminated as a source of comparison in order for the failure of Arab culture not to be made so obvious. I know that this is a simplification, but this lies at the core of why modern terrorism is largely an Arab problem, with the use of Islamic fundamentalism not merely a welcome tool for this purpose, but rather one of the driving forces behind it.

The result of Chirac's fundamentally incorrect perception of the world led to the greatest fiasco of French foreign policy, one that will literally take decades to correct.

Almost one year exactly after the attack of 11 Sep, he basically said: "Attempting to change the regime in foreign countries means entering these countries and dealing with foreign cultures," and he felt that this was a very dangerous attitude.

He's right: changing the regimes in foreign countries is a dangerous thing, as things never turn out as you might like. But given the dangers that the failed countries of the Middle East represent, Chirac failed to provide any sort of alternative course besides "let's simply not do it".

This was born the obstructionist policy of France in dealing with the Middle East: France under Chirac actively broke with the US on dealing with the countries of the Middle East, first and foremost with Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

According to Chirac's biographer, both the political and military circles in France vastly underestimated the determination that Chirac had not to allow the US to follow its policies. Chirac decided to block the US at all costs. The threat of the veto at the UN virtually destroyed the UN as the premier place to work out the strategy of the West against the terror threats from the Middle East, as it basically came out of the blue. All observers, including the French, expected France to object and try to modify US behavior - which has been a constant in US-French relations since at least Suez - before then agreeing to US actions.

Instead, the threat of the veto suprised everyone and did the one thing that Chirac didn't really expect (but was more than willing to accept as fallout from his actions): it emboldened Saddam Hussein to resist any political solution, destroying any chance that there even could be a peaceful resolution of UN Resolution 1444. This is, I think, something that can be clearly laid at Chirac's door as the legacy of his short-sighted objections to the US policy towards Iraq in the wake of the post-11 Sep environment.

The attempt during the UN security council debates to build a counter-alliance with Russia, China, Germany and Belgium, as well as countries from Latin America and Africa was also unprecedented and correctly viewed by the US as a massive undermining of their position in trying to resolve the conflict with Iraq. Rather than show solidarity and also take responsibility for their own failures in the past (France was a major supplier to Iraq under Saddam Hussein and were active in the undermining of the sanctions), the French deliberately took the other side, perhaps not of being on the side of Saddam Hussein, but of being a belligerent neutral firmly opposed to whatever actions the US took.

This put France not in its traditional role of independent NATO partner, but put them instead in the camp that was opposed to the US exercise of power, a fundamental break with the long history and tradition of US-French relations.

Bluntly, this has been the greatest failure of any European president since Suez.

But it didn't stop there. Chirac never viewed European unity as a proponent for European unity as an end in itself, but much more as a nationalist politician seeking to create the best possible result for France, even at the cost of other European countries more dedicated to European unity than he. The abject failure of the European constitution in France, voted down by a solid majority, despite the advantages for France in a Europe unified under the draft constitution, underscored the contradictions that the people saw in Chirac: trumpeting European unity while ensuring that France was primes inter pares.

In terms of military affairs, Chirac will probably be remembered best by his call, in January 2006, for the French use of nuclear weapons if France and French interests are attacked. He did transform the French military from a draftee army to a professional, modern army, but he also ordered the testing of new nuclear warhead designs, despite world-wide protests, and elevated the Force de Frappe (the nuclear forces of France) to a much higher status than they had with the collapse of the Soviets.

Domestically, Chirac wouldn't have been President without Le Pen, whose surprisingly strong election results led to Chirac's success. Chirac has significant problems with corruption, dating from his time as the mayor of Paris, and this remains unresolved. Chirac is, fundamentally, extremely judgemental and identifies with a radical nationalist proto-socialism that he learned from his grandfather, rejecting free trade and globalism, but at the same time having no trouble whatsoever of being friendly with despots and dictators whilst showing distain for democratization and liberalization of the Third World. Chirac operates very much within the French elitist tradition and a deeply troubling cultural pessimism that shows at its core uncertainty about the universality of Western values.

The next president of France will have his or her hands full in cleaning up after Chirac. He will be remembered by history as one of the greatest catastrophes in French politics.

The Gallstone Speaks...to the Stomach of Power?

In case you doubt that what I posted just a few minutes ago has some validity, then take a look at this post here and try and tell me that the ex-Mr. Jane Fonda isn't a useful idiot that thinks he's a revolutionary elite. Ok, progressive. Whatever.

To quote:

It is in the nature of truly mass movements that people choose the paths that seem to promise effective results, even victories. So it should surprise no one that much of the energy of the peace and justice movement flowed into presidential campaigns for Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and ultimately John Kerry (the UnBush).

As a result millions of people become engaged politically on grassroots levels, many for the first time. The peace and justice message was heard more widely than before.

and this:

There is a lesson here for progressives. Since the anti-war sentiment was a factor of public opinion during the presidential race that made Bush defer tough decisions, the movement needs to create an even greater force of opposition that will become indigestible, a kind of gallstone in the stomach of power.

and this:

The first step is to build pressure at congressional district levels to oppose any further funding or additional troops for war. If members of Congress balk at cutting off all assistance and want to propose "conditions" for further aid, it is a small step toward threatening funding. If only 75 members of Congress go on record against any further funding, that's a step in the right direction – towards the exit.

The important thing is for anti-war activists to become more grounded in the everyday political life of their districts, organizing anti-war coalitions including clergy, labor and inner city representatives to knock loudly on congressional doors and demand that the $200 billion squandered on Iraq go to infrastructure and schools at home. When trapped between imperial elites and their own insistent constituents, members of Congress will tend to side with their voters. That is how the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia were ended in 1975.

Two, we need to build a Progressive Democratic movement which will pressure the Democrats to become an anti-war opposition party. The anti-war movement has done enough for the Democratic Party this year. It is time for the Democratic leadership to end its collaboration with the Bush administration – with its endorsement of the offensive on Fallujah, the talk of "victory" and "killing the terrorists" – and now play the role of the opposition. The progressive activists of the party should refuse to contribute any more resources – volunteers, money, etc. – to candidates or incumbents who act as collaborators.

...

Three, we need to build alliances with Republican anti-war conservatives. Non-partisan anti-war groups (such as Win Without War) should reach out to conservatives who, according to the New York Times, are "ready to rumble" against Iraq. Pillars of the American right, including Paul Weyrich, Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley, are seriously questioning the quagmire created by the neoconservatives. Strategists like Grover Norquist call the war "a drag on votes" and "threatening to the Bush coalition" that cost Bush six percentage points in the election. The left cannot create a left majority, but it can foster a left-right majority that threatens the hawks in both parties.

Four, we must build solidarity with dissenting combat veterans, reservists, their families and those who suffered in 9/11. Just as wars cannot be fought without taxpayer funding, wars cannot be fought without soldiers willing to die, even for a mistake. Every person who cares about peace should start their daily e-mail messages with the current body count, including a question mark after the category "Iraqi civilians."

...

Five, we need to defeat the U.S. strategy of "Iraqization." "Clearly, it's better for us if they're in the front-line," Paul Wolfowitz explained last February. This cynical strategy is based on putting an Iraqi "face" on the U.S. occupation in order to reduce the number of American casualties, neutralize opposition in other Arab countries, and slowly legitimize the puppet regime. In truth, it means changing the color of the body count.

...

Six, we should work to dismantle the U.S. war "Coalition" by building a "Peace Coalition" by the means of the global anti-war movement. Groups with international links (such as Global Exchange or other solidarity groups) could organize conferences and exchanges aimed at uniting public opinion against any regimes with troops supporting the U.S. in Iraq. Every time an American official shows up in Europe demanding support, there should be speakers from the American anti-war movement offering a rebuttal to the official line.

...

In short: pinch the funding arteries, push the Democrats to become an opposition party, ally with anti-war Republicans, support dissenting soldiers, make "Iraqization" more difficult, and build a peace coalition against the war coalition. If the politicians are too frightened or ideologically incapable of implementing an exit strategy, the only alternative is for the people to pull the plug.

Remember, Hayden was a visiting professor at Harvard recently and is a professor at Occidental College in LA.

We have all the attributes here: a willingness to subvert everything to the gaining of political power, radicalization for the sake of radicalization, unthinking and uncritical rejection of democratically legitimized government decisions.