Cap-and-Trade and Religion: a Summary

LE PRESIDENT OBAMA VA-T’IL SAUVER LA PLANETE DU RECHAUFFEMENT GLOBAL?

The House of Representatives passed  a cap-and-trade bill on 6/26/09.

It flew largely under the radar because a former great, handsome black boy singer who had almost succeeded into turning himself into a white woman died. We are a frivolous nation, except the liberals who go through life being “appalled.”

Everybody who is not confused about cap-and-trade must be confused about life in general. Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand what’s going on; it means that you are intelligent and you have a life.

The bill is over a thousand pages.

How many Representatives have read it, do you think? (Go ahead, name a number in your head.)

Here is a summary of what I understand. I have more questions than answers.

Every company in all polluting industries – that’s probably all industries – will be assigned a quantity of pollution it will be allowed, or a quota. Those companies that don’t use their quota can sell it. They can sell to others their right to pollute.

Who is going to decide who gets what quota?

Is it going to create yet another federal bureaucracy? If the answer is “yes,” is it going a new bureaucracy forever.

Is it going to increase federal spending, the federal deficit, the national debt?

Note: The national debt is the total amount the Federal Government and only it, have borrowed from individuals – you and me – but also from various government, including the Chinese government, and also from foreign individuals. We pay interest on the national debt every day through our taxes. It’s tempting for the federal government to print money to pay off some of the debt. When a government does this, it creates inflation. It means we all become poorer, including the poorest among us.

Will the attribution of pollution quotas make the federal government even bigger in relation to states and local government? I ask because that’s contrary to our constitution. Read it, if you have not, or if you last did in high-school. Again, against that background, you will be astonished by what’s going on.

Will the attribution of pollution quotas and buying and selling them create more opportunities for corruption among public officials? What do you think?

The intent of the bill is to lower the amount of carbon dioxide released in the air. There are two main sources: coal burning and petroleum products. The first are used mostly in manufacturing and in power generation. Petroleum products release carbon dioxide mostly (not entirely) when used in automobiles.

The intent of the bill is to force producers and transporters to adopt technologies that lessen their emission of carbon dioxides. This costs money except if you move your polluting production to other countries, as happens every time you tighten emission standards.

Is the Democratic administration promoting the export of American jobs, of manufacturing jobs, specifically. What did candidate Obama promise in this respect, only a year ago?

Everyone in America consumes merchandise and services that occasion the release of carbon dioxide.. There is no exception. Hence, whatever the cost will be of reducing their release will constitute a tax on everybody. You will all have to pay. It will be a regressive tax, as are most consumption taxes. The tax will take a larger percentage of the poor’s livelihood than of the rich, unlike the federal income tax, for example.

No heartless, selfish Republican would dare impose such a regressive tax.

The President wants to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released mostly, he tells, us to stop or to slow down global warming. Hydrocarbons that produce carbon dioxide are only one category of polluters that contribute to global warming. That’s according to those who think there is global warming (more on this below). Water vapors are another contributor. If you boil enough water to make noodles, you contribute to global warming. Yes, I know, that would be negligible but think large-scale boiling.

Some scientists with good credentials have also named cattle burps and farts. I am not making this up. I don’t have the imagination for anything so delicious.

The President also mentioned a desire to wean the country from foreign oil, specifically. Thomas Friedman, a responsible liberal journalist at the New York Times, had a persuasive article on this recently. (about 5/26/09). I could be persuaded that it’s a bad idea to obtain much energy at all from bad neighborhoods abroad. We are supporting tin-pot dictator Chavez of Venezuela, the Islamo-fascist dictatorship in Iran, and almost certainly, some of the terrorism directed against us, by using foreign oil.

The US has large reserves of domestic coal. The first obvious solution is to substitute coal for oil whenever possible (that’s often, at the cost of some re-tooling).

The second obvious solution is to multiply our domestic production of nuclear energy by ten. Why are the objections to this idea not even discussed? What are we afraid of? Are we more stupid than the Japanese or the French? How many Japanese or French people have died from the production and use of nuclear energy in all its forms, directly and indirectly, in the past thirty years? This is worth looking into because hatred of the nuclear energy industry runs so deep that you can be sure it’s been watched closely.

Look it up; you will be astounded.

The President argues that moving toward clean energy, that is non-coal, non-petroleum, will create many new jobs. It might be true. It’s an attractive idea. That’s also irrelevant. The only thing we care about is net job creation. That means jobs created by the new policy minus jobs destroyed by the same policy. Right now, there is no reason in the world to believe that any form of cap-and-trade will lead to positive net job creation. President Obama is just making it up because he wants to believe it.

Another country preceded us in that path, Spain. Why not mention it? Why not ask the Spaniards? Why not commission a study of Spanish job creation owed to new energy industries? The most expensive study would be one hundred million times cheaper than what the President wants to undertake without study.

This was a real question, real questions? Why doesn’t President Obama want to convince the citizenry through rational arguments backed by facts? What’s there to lose?

President Obama is really doing all this, in large part in an attempt to combat global warming. Energy independence has little to do with it. Note that importing more petroleum products is one way to reduce carbon emissions domestically. If Pres. Bush had proposed something like that, the parano wing of the Democratic party would have said he was in bed with the Saudi King. (Again!)

If there were no global warming, his grand project to saddle us with economic burdens for generations to come might just look criminal. I am not referring to his intent. I am pretty sure he believes in it. His heart is pure. I am talking about the likely results of his plans. If there were no global warming, what the President is trying to do would still not qualify as Murder One but as manslaughter, mass manslaughter to be exact. I am not suggesting a conspiracy, just the usual awful natural consequences of very bad ideas.

Here is what I believe right now about global warming:

There is no long-term trend of rising global temperatures resulting from human activities and that will cause a lot of damage soon.

I am not affirming that the whole idea of global warming is a hoax. It’s not a hoax. It’s part fraud and part religion. Or, am I saying the same thing? Isn’t it the case that fraud often accompanies the launching of new religions?

What fraud? It’s easy to find on the Internet the fraudulent history of the so-called, “hockey stick” diagram of dramatically rising temperature. Look it up. Summary: Temperatures were as high, in fact, in 900 as they were in 1900. The fake diagram put out to dramatize the idea of recent, man-made global warming simply forget to show the 900 temperatures.

Why do proponents of the idea that there is human-caused global warming with terrible consequences have to lie? If you have a valid cause, you don’t lie; you shout out the truth.

Here is another fraud, perpetrated by Al Gore, the guy who lives in a huge mansion and who could not even win his own state when he ran for President:

Al Gore’s phony pictures show polar bears drowning because of warming polar water. It makes little kids cry, as it should if it were true. Some polar bears may be drowning off ice floes, for whatever reason, including possibly, a temporary warming of the polar area. Yet, there are more polar bears today than have ever been counted. If know this is hard to believe because lies often repeated sound like the truth. Don’t take my word for it; look up the data provided by organizations devoted to the protection of polar bears.

Speaking of Al Gore, do you know who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize? Again, it’s easy to find the Nobel Committees website. Look it up; you will be surprised.

How about the religious aspect of global warming belief? I believe it’s the most important by far.

Secular humanists like me have made Christianity spiritually irrelevant. Many can’t live with the results of their actions. They are yearning for something greater than themselves. What better cause than the defense of Mother Nature, who was in fact savagely assaulted until about fifty years ago?

Militant environmentalism has all the trappings of a Christian heresy, up to and including the persecution of dissenters and an Apocalypse scenario. Pres. Obama wants to be the Second Coming of the Messiah.

If you are an independent-minded person, if you wish to make up your mind for yourself on this important topic, there are three levels of information-seeking I can think of for you. One is an anecdote; the second is a couple of books to read; the third is studiously following a somewhat technical blog by a climate scientist.

Here is the anecdote that will keep you awake at night if you believe man-made, destructive global warming is real and unprecedented in its magnitude.

We know what the Scandinavian settlers in Greenland ate. We know because we have their middens, their garbage piles. They ate pork and beef in large quantities. Pigs will eat anything, it’s true. Cattle require grass or hay. Hay is simply dried grass. For at least two hundred years, between about 1100 and about 1300, the Norse settlers of Greenland were able to grow enough grass to feed cows and eat them.

You could not do this now in Greenland because it’s too cold.

Unavoidable conclusion: Centuries before the Industrial Revolution, long before there was any conceivable human release of green house gases, Greenland was warmer than it is now. This fact alone is not incompatible with the idea that recent human industrial activity and automobiles are responsible for a new and different kind of temperature rise. I realize this.

Or is it? What do you think? Why are militant environmentalists not talking at all about this? What are they hiding? Are they just shy?

Religion dislikes contradiction even on small matters.

Note: The information about the Norse middens comes from Jared Diamond. He is a serious intellectual but also an environmental activist who does not seem to like his own findings.

Second the book, or books: Read Bjorn Lomborg. He is an environmental activist but also a statistician by trade. Many of the actions of his fellow environmentalists appall him because they are based on false information. Courageously, he tries to set them straight periodically. Read The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool it.

Third, if you are up to it, you can follow this blog wattsupwiththat.com .It’s by a critic who meticulously examines and reports on the very same measurements that global warming activists use to alarm you through an uncritical press. Anthony Watts, the blogger, is a former television meteorologist who brags tiresomely about his own green home. His blog was voted the best science blog by several hundreds of thousands websurfers last year (not a systematic election but most of us couldn’t get that number of votes for anything we do, anyway, anyhow).Watts is not fun but I always manage to understand what he claims, without any training in climate science. He keeps me updated. Give it a short, uncommitted try.

Why would the President push this new religion and impose its results on us though legislation such as cap-and-trade?

The reason is often the same as with many other government expansions. First, again, I don’t think is a cynical conspirator. He believes in what he is saying, or in most of it. He is trying to do what’s right. He thinks he knows what’s right for you even if it hurts you. Probably, he underestimates optimistically the amount of hurt he will inflict.

Certainly, he underestimates the effects any slowdown in American production will have on Third World babies. (President Obama’s half-brother really lives in a small hut in Kenya. News is he is writing a book, not the President, his little brother.)

Second, the struggle against imagined global warming is the new form of the same collectivist dream that has plagued humanity from its beginning. At its core is the belief that something has to be more important than the individual. Religion used to be it. Then, it was socialism in all its forms, including the particularly brutal form called communism.

Make no mistake, the importance that American political philosophy and the mainstream thought in other western nations give to the individual is not the rule historically. It’s a rare historical exception. It has not been established for long and then, only in small parts of the world. It’s fragile.

Incidentally, have you heard of the powerful environmental movement blossoming right now in Muslim countries? OK, there isn’t any. I am just messing with your mind! In Muslim countries, most people hold on to their old religious beliefs. There is no need there for a replacement collectivist solution.

Now that all forms of socialism have been discredited everywhere except among small numbers in semi-literate countries, a replacement solution is emerging: Save the Planet. President Obama is not the Devil; he is trying to be its current High Priest, if can’t make Messiah.

Rational people everywhere must resist this new and ruinous obscurantism. They shouldn’t do this by listening to people like me but by informing themselves of the facts. I proposed above three pragmatic ways to do this above. If you find some falsehoods, draw your own conclusions about the probable magnitude of this religious fraud. Why would you lie, or ignore contradictory information (same thing) if yours were the right story?

Again, I am not proposing ordinary people should make up their own mind on an array of complex scientific findings. Instead, you can just figure out whether partisans of global warming are lying to you or otherwise misrepresenting facts. Then, ask yourselves why. This is an exercise in basic rationalism. You would do it if you were buying a bicycle.

Rational people include religious believers, of course. Most Christian currents and all of Islam enjoin the faithful to use actively the reasoning power that God gave them, by the way.

I hope the Senate will destroy or eviscerate the House Bill. I am not sure it will.

In case you are wondering: I am in favor of conservation of resources. I think this society wastes too much. This is the conservative position. My wife and I raised two children without a clothes dryer. We have not owned one for thirty years. I wonder how many Greens can say the same, even in sunny California. I am going to start asking. It will be fun.

Soon on this blog: “No Blood for Oil!”

Shiite Islamo-Fascism; Beloved in Argentina; French Health Care; Abominable Stripping; Profits Good for the Poor and, Diane Sawyer is a Dope.

WARNING: THERE IS A BAD ARABIC TRANSLATION OF SOME OF MY POSTINGS FLOATING AROUND ON THE INTERNET. I DID NOT COMMISSION IT; I DID NOT AUTHORIZE IT; I DID NOT APPROVE IT. I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT I SAY IN ENGLISH, IN FRENCH AND, RARELY, IN SPANISH ONLY.

I HAVE NOT WAY OF KNOWING WHAT A STUPID TRANSLATION SOFTWARE MAY REPRESENT AS COMING FOR ME. IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION OR A COMMENT, POST IT ON ONE OF MY BLOGS IN ENGLISH, FRENCH OR SPANISH.

Shiite Islamo-fascism, the end. One more time, I hate to be right. Ahmad the Camel won for the time being. Again, he did not have to unleash his shock troops of Revolutionary Guards. He arrested dozens of university professors who had talked to Musavi. This will probably work: Prison is a good place to explain to people what you can do to them, and to their families, if they don’t stay down.

What did anyone expect? The Islamic Republic of Iran has been a hard fascist country from day one or two. Religious fanaticism makes it morally impervious to the damage it does to its flock.

I saw a heart-breaking BBC documentary on Iranian trans-sexuals. It turns out many are forced to submit to horrendous surgical mutilation for fear of being imprisoned as homosexuals. It turns out trans-sexualism is legal but homosexuality merits death under Shiite version of Islamic law. As I remarked earlier, we are dealing here with people who have no notion of the Enlightenment. They are not worse than my ancestors in the 17the Century. They are not better either.

There is no reason to treat the Iranian theocratic fascists as our moral equals. My great-great- great- grandfather, who enjoyed seeing thieves’ bones broken on the public square with an iron bar, was not my equal. I am completely sure I would not like that kind of show. (I could make an exception for repeat child molesters though.)

Don’t act surprised when murderous beasts act according to their nature. Don’t encourage silly young people to waste their lives. Make geopolitical plans according to their beastliness, not as if they were somewhat outrageous but still-loved cousins. The Iranian government will attempt to nuke Israel if it has half a chance and if Israel remains passive.

The only bright light is that Musavi acted more firmly than anyone expected. If they don’t kill him, he might yet emerge as a more rational leader of Iranian fascism. With all this, I don’t lose track of the fact that the cafés of small towns in Iran are probably full of old guys to whom I would enjoy losing at dominoes.

Adolescent crush. Everyone in the Republican party breathes a sigh of relief at the same time as he is appalled because of the Governor of South Carolina. He disappeared for a week from his job; didn’t tell anyone where he was. When he came back, he confessed tearfully that he was in Argentina getting some contraband nookie. Or, maybe, he did not even get any. Either way, it’s another sex scandal. That’s not the worst of it though. (More below.) At least, it seems that a woman is involved, not a young boy. Plus, it probably did not happen in a restroom, as far as anyone knows.

The worst of it is that, it seems to me, neither much lust nor arrogance may have been involved. He ran away impulsively, like a teen-age boy with a crush. He did not bother to cover his tracks like real men do. (Whenever an American politician gets caught with his zipper stuck half- way down, I feel the former Frenchman in me rearing his wise but cynical head.) The Governor sacrificed the elective responsibilities for which he fought and that the voters gave him for an illusion of puppy love. If he spent a single dollar of public money in the venture, he is gone.

It could have been worse. He might have gotten caught in flagrante of immaturity during a Republican presidential campaign or primary, as a high-level candidate. Even the astonishingly vicious Palin-haters on both sides would have to agree that Sarah is a better human being, and more trustworthy, in every conceivable way.

With all this, no, my little Europeans, the Governor is not one tenth as bad as Pres. Clinton. You never did understand what the big deal was, did you? Clinton lied in a sworn testimony thereby denying justice to an ordinary woman. If I did that when giving testimony, I would rightly fear being sent to jail. I have been present when powerful people did not feel they had to tell the truth in judicial proceedings. But that’s another story.

Health care and health. After the free television commercial, the once-proud ABC television network gave the President two nights ago, I am forced to address my fellow conservatives on health care. Here is food for thought. This is a repeat. I talked about this at length in a previous posting. Pay attention:

The French spend about half as much for health care as we do. Despite all the horror stories we keep hearing from our side, they don’t seem to pay any price in terms of actual health. (Remember, the ultimate product is not health care, even less health insurance, it’s health.) The current life expectancy of French men is about two and a half years longer than that of American men. I know, I know their superior life expectancy could be in spite of inferior health care. What do you really think? (If I hit a tree with my car and I am drunk, alcohol is not necessarily responsible but….)

And no, French life is not less stressful than American life. This has to be a subjective judgment, of course, but I think it’s more stressful where most French people actually live. That would be in big cities, rather than in an plane tree-shaded smartly renovated old farm house in Provence. For one thing parking is so bad, it might just as well be illegal in those same big cities.

And, no, it’s not all that red wine. Most French men drink little and French women even less. If wine could gain us an extra two-plus years of good life, the American medical establishment would quickly write us Pinot Noir prescriptions.

Fellow conservatives: There is something wrong with our health system although it’s not what Obamamamma tells us. We never offered a solution. We missed that big boat. We are going to pay for it, and our children, every which way.

Stripping girls not for fun. The Supreme Court defended individual rights for once. School officials strip-searched a teen-age girl suspected of carrying Bufferin. (That’s just like aspirin.) The Court said that was unconstitutional. Good start but not good enough for me. Neither would a civil suit. The school officials involved should be fired with loss of benefits. A little jail time would be fine with me also. There are shop-lifters of yogurt in jail right now. Let Mr Principal take their place and reflect on our constitutional tradition. Six months would be about right.

Media stars lazy and ignorant. I keep telling you our journalists are lazy. I am beginning to think some of our biggest media stars are also uneducated and a little dumb. During the ABC-presidential show on health care before a supine press, television star Diane Sawyer crammed a question down an insurance executive’s throat. President Obama was the one who was supposed to be interviewed, but, let’s pass on this. Sawyer’s question was full of commentaries, not a straight question. The commentaries were hyper-loaded with evident contempt for “profits” and the profit-making of insurance companies.

Ms. Sawyer is not smart enough or observant enough to have noticed that in social systems were profit is considered legitimate, the poor are much richer than are the poor where profit is looked down upon.

Let me say this again for those of you with a degree in Environmental Science from University of California at Santa Cruz:

Where profit is blessed, even the poor are rich. The reverse is also true.

If I sense demand, I will explain why that is in a forthcoming “Facts Matter” essay.

Update on 6/29/09.

Great little column in today’s Wall Street Journal by Dorothy Rabinowitz. She tells us concisely what Governor Sanford of South Carolina should have said and not said about his Argentinean tryst. Like all real men with a brain, in this time and place (the place is California), I am a male chauvinist pig. It means that  I believe that women should absolutely receive equal pay for equal work but not for “equivalent” work. My sexism does not prevent me from considering Dorothy Rabinowitz my intellectual master and my style master. I wonder if Ms Rabinowitz would prefer I called her my intellectual “mistress.” She is a lady with a sense of humor so, she would probably like it.

Repression Works

The demonstrations in Tehran are petering out without having ever really spread to other cities. Two reasons. First, people have to sleep, in the end. The most active activists, the ones who spent the most time in the street the first few days, are the first to become exhausted. Second reason, our lazy media and well-meaning young people have ignored from day one: Repression usually works.

Beating some people in the street discourages others from coming back. I don’t believe the Iranian regime ever gave the order to shoot at demonstrators. The death of a young woman was the result of a a pro-government hoodlum panicking or worse. I know this is very cynical but no one really knows who shot her and the leader of the revolt has blood on his hands from way back. The regime did not have to order shooting; it was never threatened. As I write (06/24/09), the government has not even sent its own SS into the streets, the Revolutionary Guard. All it had to do was to unleash civilian thugs on motorcycles and armed with sticks. This is normal fascist practice. (See my essay, “Fascism Explained.”)

Peaceful protest works well if you are facing a British Empire bled white by four years of war and sick of ruling India anyway. Incidentally, Gandhi was not only facing a tired Empire, he was confronting a British political class with a conscience and well-rooted habits of rationality. No such things in Iran today.

Heartbreaking call from Tehran aired by CNN today. A young woman is crying out on the phone that people’s bones are being broken by the fascist militia. “You people have to help,” she screams. That’s what happens when you present yourself as the Messiah; naïve young people come to believe you are King of the World. Of course, they expect you to save them. President Obama can’t have it both ways. He can’t claim credit for the good election in Lebanon less than two weeks ago and keep neutral on the blood-letting in Iran. If you have influence, it can’t be that country-specific.

The President’s condemnation of the Iranian government’s repression in his pretend-press conference yesterday was not much, and too late even to have a moral effect. As I have said before, there was not much he could have done. Whatever he did, he could have done earlier rather than standing at the end of the line, behind the French President, the Brit. Prime Minister, and the German Chancellor.

The President persists in treating the Iranian regime as if it were an errant democratic government instead of the totalitarian, fanatical supporter of terrorism it has always been. He fails the small tests as well as the big ones.

Intelligent in-depth article about Iran in the Weekly Standard dated 6/20 and 7/6.by R. M. Gerecht. He disagrees with me on two major points. First, he argues that “Supreme Leader” Khamenei is scared. It also asserts that the struggle in Iran is about democracy. I think he is right on the later but only as far as what’s on the minds of the protesters. Musavi is not an apostle of democracy. What’s going on in Iran more like the struggle to the death between the SS and the SA in the early years of Nazism, since, inexperienced young people playing movie extras.

Gerecht agrees with me that Ahmad the Camel would probably win if a second election were held today.

The nightmare in Iran is why we, the US, have to strangle monsters in the cradle, my isolationist Libertarian friends. There is no other decent option.

I hope some attentive Muslims somewhere are making a note that once more, Muslims are beating and killing Muslims. Muslims have hurt Muslims hundreds of times more than Israel ever has. I guess that’s OK because it’s Muslims doing it. Same logic as for domestic violence: He is beating his wife and his children to a pulp but that’s nobody’s business.

Of course, the mullahs have started claiming it’s all the CIA’s fault. If wish it were true. I have trouble believing its Director my near- neighbor, nice guy Panetta has the brass to do anything of the kind.

Tomorrow, Cap and Trade is taking a giant step. If it passes, it will be the biggest, permanent regressive tax ever. * I am not saying anything because I am demoralized. See the link on my blog face Facts Matter only) to the website of a well-credentialed meteorologist who is keeping cool tab on the global warming religious extremism. (Watts Up With That?)

* A regressive tax is one that affects the poor more than it affects the rich. That’s true of most consumption taxes. Income taxes, by contrast, are all progressive in this country. They hit the rich harder than the poor.

Iran: Nightmare Not Over

Update 6/22 at the end of this posting.

I know I am going to sound like a cold-hearted SOB, below. I am not so much cold-hearted as I am cool-headed, I hope.

The events in Iran: As of 6 PM California time (Sunday morning in Iran), I am seeing neither a revolution not a bloodbath in Iran.

Hundreds of thousands of young people no doubt believe that the extremist and simple-minded Ahmed the Camel stole the election. They are protesting accordingly, with sincere, heartfelt anger. The government is responding with water cannons and tear gas. (I got my information from the National Iranian-American Council that clearly supports the protesters. NIAC.) In riot situations, bloody rumors always circulate and get amplified. Again, I know this sounds callous but, as I write, the reports are about fewer than five killed. (NPR did say ten, eight hours later, with no details given.)That’s like a slow weekend in Oakland, California. Facts matter and so do proportions.

There are several layers to my skepticism. First, water cannons and tear gas are nothing we have not seen elsewhere, many times. I remember well several consecutive nights in Paris in May 1968 when the police used those same weapons and the rioters fought back with paving stones. I may be regretting this comment only a few hours from now but, in May 1968, fewer people died in France than in May 1967 or in May 1969.

There are many rumors of regime atrocities. None is verified although some are verifiable, in principle. The movements of western reporters are restricted but Al Jazeera is there and it has no sympathy for the Iranian regime.  (I am aware of the fact that Al Jazeera is primarily an Arabic-language network. Don’t patronize me, please. It’s used to cover Iranian affairs and it has Farsi speakers on staff.) There are tens of thousands of cell phones and other kinds of advanced electronics in private hands in Tehran. The government cannot possibly jam everything. Some, many messages and pictures must get through. NIAC did post videos on its website with running commentary in English. Some speak of atrocities; the videos I have seen as of now do show only one possible atrocity.

I am obviously not arguing that the Mad Camel and the regime around and above him are not capable of committing atrocities. They have assassinated journalists; in its early days, the Islamic Republic executed political opponents by the thousands. The last American-Iranian female journalist but one who was arrested in Iran died in prison. A brave Iranian doctor – who gave his name – reported that she had been raped while in prison.

This is a typical criminal fascist regime. I just think the regime does not feel fundamentally threatened. Here is why:

The urban, mostly young people demonstrating in Tehran are the fraction of the population culturally nearly indistinguishable from their European contemporaries. They are wired; they are connected through the Internet; they know very well what life is like elsewhere. They understand what they are missing living in the prudish, corrupt, economically constipated, and archaically religious Islamic Republic. They are precisely the people you would expect to want radical change. They have an alternative model of the good society: They want to live in a kind of Italy, where mosques would take the place of churches but where religion would be as pleasant and unobtrusive as it is in Milan.

That’s probably a small fraction of the population but the most visible. The American press is too lazy to look beyond the surface. If they did, journalists would find 40% farmers, mostly small farmers, in a countryside that’s a hundred years behind. They would find a young working class without much work and without cell-phones. They would also find a large number of semi-middle class older people, the kind of people who are averse to change everywhere. All of the above are religious in a way that Americans have not been for 150 years, and Europeans for 200 years. They are religious in an exclusivist, intolerant manner. And, their form of Islam celebrates martyrdom.

If American journalists tried harder, they would also discover that many Iranians profit, even if a little, from the oil money which does trickle down. That includes a large army, an even larger security apparatus. And, finally, let’s not forget that the other army, the army of mullahs, who also have families to feed, and give careers to.

I think most of these people probably support the theocracy, even if it does not make them very happy. I suspect they voted for Ahmed the Camel, not out of enthusiasm but out of fear of the unknown.

That’s what successful fascism does: It kills the wish to be free because freedom is hard work.

The government does not want a recount because it cannot allow any group to question its infallibility. Totalitarianism requires blind belief. If you let them count, you are admitting the possibility of error in general although that one count would reveal no error in this particular case.

The next layer of my skepticism has to do with the apparent leaders. I don’t like the ones we see and I am troubled about the ones we don’t hear. The latter first: This may sound strange but I would feel better if I could hear a clamor from an assortment of Iranian leftists of all breeds. Marxists and other people of the Left are students of revolution and they are usually political opportunists. If any of them thought this was the real thing, we would have heard it. They would have spoken in support, if only to gain their place in the successor system.

I would trust leftists more than anyone else if they took sides because the current theocracy has condemned them in advance. They would be in no position to turn around and compromise. They have been remarkable because of their silence, so far.

The apparent leader of the anti-regime movement is, of course, a pure product of Shiite Islamo-fascism himself. I think I remember from the 80s, that when he was in government, Musavi has the blood of political opponents on his hands. I could not find it on-line but my memory does not play this kind of trick: I forget; I don’t make up anything. Perhaps, a reader will help me with hard facts.

I made myself read the very bad translation of Musavi’s pleading message to the Ayatollahs. Even making allowances for what is, again, a bad translation, it’s redolent of the tenth century. It comes from a learned man of the Middle Ages, someone who knows nothing of Locke, Voltaire, or Thomas Jefferson. The simple idea of separation of Church and State is thousands of miles, or two hundred years, from his mind. This guy is not my long-lost cousin. If he were an American politician, I would oppose him vigorously.

No one, not even Iranian supporters of the movement living abroad where they are fairly safe, no one says: We want an ordinary democracy, be it like Switzerland’s, or like Norway’s, or like Israel, of course.

Astute American and European observers point to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and to the destruction of Soviet Communism firmly led by two old Communists, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. They mean to say that people change and sometimes recognize the error of their early ways. The parallel is deeply flawed. When those two brave men pushed the edifice down, it was rotten to the core. Soviet Communism had almost no defenders left. Everyone in the Soviet Union knew it did not work. The KGB in particular was very well informed about reality in the West and it did not lift a finger to save its communist employer. Similarly, elsewhere in the Eastern so-called bloc, except in Poland, communism disintegrated; it fell in from within.

Islamic fascism in Iran, by contrast, has many defenders, I think, as I argued above. Some actively want to die as martyrs. There were no such people in the communist countries of Europe. Communism was only the perverted son of western civilization. Its values were not much different from those of western democracies. The communist leaders had read Voltaire. They argued they were his true grandchildren.

Pres Obama couldn’t do much more than what he did. He reminded the Iranian dictators that the world is watching and that Iran had signed the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Remember that the US did not do that much more to help the Poles conquer their freedom. We sent them printing presses and photocopy machines. Let’s send thousands of satellite phones to Iran. That’s about it. A friend of mine who knows Iran well and who keeps informed in Farsi once suggested the US should flood the country with video CDs of porn. It makes a lot of sense to me. It wouldn’t happen. This administration has no imagination, just a slim play-book.

Here is what this country shouldn’t do. In the wake of the first Gulf War, President Bush (the first) seemed to encourage Iraq’s Shiites and its Kurds to rebel against Saddam Hussein’s rule. We did not follow through. Failed insurrections took place because of us. Mass graves were the only result. Those are on our heads.

Pres. Obama has much less stomach for a fight than did Bush the elder. Make no mistake, the mullahs will drown any real insurrection in blood, make arrest by the tens of thousands, shoot thousands.

If I am wrong and Iran does experience a velvet revolution, there will be time to extend a welcoming hand. And I will eat my hat in public (for the benefit of a charity of my choice).

I am wondering what the Israeli leadership is thinking, right now.

Update 6/22: I pay a lot of attention to what people say about themselves and their cause. I think few people can lie effectively and mass movements almost never do. So, I take literally the many images from inside Iran American media broadcast all weekend. All seem to come from movement supporters. I assume they are intended to illustrate the severity of the repression.

They still show security forces beating demonstrators with batons and throwing tear gas grenades. The death toll after one week of daily demonstrations seems to be at the level of a bad vacation weekend on the roads of France. The real repression has yet to begin. Eventually, if threatened, the mullahs will shoot bullets at crowds. More likely, the demonstrations will die down because rioting is tiring and even the young need to sleep.

Some of my skepticism is fed by the fact that most of the young women I see demonstrating against the Islamist tyranny are wearing hijab, the Muslim veil. That’s in the middle of tens of thousands of their freedom-seeking brothers. Symbols matter, what women wear is always signaling.

So far, only the late Shah’s son, the heir apparent, is asking for full, ordinary democracy.

It looks like I scooped Thomas Friedman last Saturday (this posting). He is the Middle-East expert who nevertheless writes for the NY Times. Today, he is saying pretty much the same things I said then. Too early to celebrate victory; don’t take victory for granted.

I hope he and I are dead wrong. I hope I will yet see ayatollahs hanging from the street lamps of Tehran.

I still think Pres. Obama is doing more or less the right thing. For once, he is not pretending to be the God-annointed.

For a powerful yet subtle commentary – as usual – read Fouad Ajami’s big column in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Fishing; A la peche.

THE US IS PROTECTING HAWAII, JUST IN CASE THE BUFFOON MADMAN IN NORTH KOREA TRIES TO TAKE A POTSHOT. HAVEN’ T WE BEEN THERE BEFORE, ABOUT SIXTY YEARS AGO?

WE KNOW WHERE THE MISSILES ARE. WE HAVE BETTER PICTURES OF THEM THAN I HAVE OF MY WIFE. THERE IS NO TALK ABOUT TAKING THEM OUT BEFORE THEY LAUNCH. PATHETIC! IF YOU THINK THE US POSSESSES A SUREFIRE CAPABILITY TO SHOOT THEM DOWN IN FLIGHT, YOU ARE  OVER-OPTIMISTIC. I THINK WE FAIL ABOUT HALF THE TIME.

OBAMA IS A WHIMP. NEARLY ALL LIBERALS ARE WHIMPS. IT’S PART OF THE MIX. TELL ME THAT I AM WRONG. PLEASE!

I AM GOING FISHING. FISHING IS A LOT LIKE SEX: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE GOOD AT IT TO ENJOY IT. I AM TRYING FOR THE ELUSIVE HALIBUT. IT HAS TO BE 22 INCHES LONG BEFORE YOU CAN KEEP IT.

JE  SUIS A LA PECHE AU FLETAN. DESOLE.D’AIILEURS, ON N’EST PAS SUR TERRE POUR SE DESOLER; OU PAS SEULEMENT.

EN ANGLAIS: LIBERAL=  DE GAUCHE.

Rush Limbaugh; Tropical Drinks; Iran and Rumors of War

Update on Iranian election, 6/16/09:   I have not changed my mind. Some conservatives, including John McCain, are blaming the President for not intervening more clearly in the Iranians struggle for democracy.We can’t have it both ways, folks: You may not blame Obama for playing God and then decry that he is not acting like God in an issue dear to your hearts. It’s not the US President’s business to decide who won the election. It’s clear to White House does not have an inside source on this that is not also partisan, anyway.

It was before the election that, once more, President Obama wasted an opportunity to keep his mouth shut.

I don’t think hundreds of thousands of  likable young people risking their lives at the hands of the crude Iranian Islamist regime means that they should have their way. I did not think their counterparts should have their way in this country when they demonstrated in equally large numbers against the liberation of Iraq.

Repressive, blood-thirsty, intolerant governments win elections all the time. If you wanted to be effective, you        would have to come out and say: Iranian elections are a sham from day one. Th Iranian government is illegitimate. We will do it as much harm as we can.

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I listen to Rush Limbaugh nearly every morning. His staff  keeps him well informed; he has great powers of reasoning and a gift for clarity. That’s why liberals hate him.

Limbaugh was wrong on something recently, though. He criticized the Obama administration for releasing in Bermuda four Uighurs from Guantanamo. Those are men who have been categorically cleared by the Pentagon. There was no reason to hold then except the belief that China, the country of which they are citizens, would kill them if we sent them back. Having been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time should not merit a death sentence, I believe, as a conservative.

Limbaugh also derided some pictures that show the freed Uighurs pleasantly bathing in the warm Atlantic. He said sarcastically that all they were missing were pinas coladas. You are dead wrong, Rush. That would be just fine. In fact, I can’t think of a better way to kill terrorism in the egg than tropical bathing and long drinks with little colorful umbrellas. I wish we could try it. Liberals would call it torture, no doubt. I think they would be right, in a way. Just ignore them.

Some people are puzzled about events in Iran. It’s a tyranny yet, it holds hotly disputed elections.

Here is how it works. There is a council of religious elders, ayatollahs. They are a little like Methodist bishops, except that they will execute you at a nod. They are co-opted into the council. However, it’s not easy to become an ayatollah. You have to have a following. You pretty much have to be popular during a lifetime. This fact matters. (See my recent posting on fascism.)

This council of elders has veto power over everything and it directs foreign policy. The council also decides who is allowed to run for office. It’s a narrow fraction of Iranian public opinion. Anyone who says Iran should be a secular republic, like Turkey for example, is not allowed to run.

The council also decides who really won the elections.

Within these limits, elections and platforms are real and the press is very active.

Ahmedinejad was elected, I believe. Yes, there was cheating. That would include an interruption of electronic communications between opponents by the relevant Ministry, and the mere fact that the Ministry of the Interior was in charge of counting votes. None of this would be acceptable in a normal democracy. (My info is from the WSJ, a respectable source.)

Yes, the same ministry jumped the gun and announced a lopsided victory (65%), too early on to be honest.

None of this means that Ahmedinejad did not obtain the largest number of votes. I suspect, it’s like the last presidential election in this country: ACORN cheated massively for Obama and he would have won, with or without ACORN.

Western public opinion was not prepared. We thought there would be good news, for two reasons. First since Pres. Obama had announced his divine intervention in the Iranian election, the silly press wanted to believe him, the way it believes anything he says. So, journalists predicted the opposition would win. We are silly too to listen, still.

Second, journalists were lazy, as usual. I keep telling you this. They went for the low-hanging fruits. They interviewed English-speaking young Iranians in the ritzy districts of Tehran. That’s exactly the kind of people you would expect to be fed up with the Islamist regime.

Hardly any member of the former Third Estate took the trouble to go with a good interpreter and interview in the rural areas, or even in the slums of Tehran. That’s where Ahmedinejad’s supporters live. They care nothing about freedom. He makes them gifts of potatoes. They have no idea what life in prosperous democratic countries is like. Again, he makes them gifts of potatoes. They think that’s what improving one’s life is: more potatoes.

There is no conspiracy in the mis-reporting either folks. There is a press that’s culturally in tune with the Obama crowd, his brethren. Most come from the same mold as he. And there is laziness that’s hard to believe, sometimes.

Iran is a typical case of fascism, of successful fascism.

By the way, none of the other candidates including the leading one, Mussavi, is a democrat; none demands real democracy; none demands an end to the elders’ supervision; none envisages much more freedom for women than head-scarves that allow a little bit of hair to show. Mussavi was a cold-blooded executioner in the early stage of the Islamic Republic. Ooops, nobody is perfect!

By the way also, none of the competing parties had said they would stop nuclear arming if they won. That’s not allowed. It does not depend on who is President. What might have changed is the willingness to talk to the West.

One big way I might turn out wrong: The council of elders wields so much power that it might decide that youths demonstrating in the streets is a bad idea. It might even decide to annul the election and send old Ahmed back to his dog house and tell his electors to stuff it. Democracy!

If you want to worry about something, worry about what Israel will do. The Israeli Prime Minister is facing a country demographically ten times large than his own whose re-elected president has said repeatedly that Israel has not right to exist. That country is making fast progress toward a nuclear bomb. It already has the means to deliver it.

His traditional ally, the US, has let him down publicly, in no uncertain terms.

Ask yourself : What would you do if you were responsible for the safety of seven million Israelis (including more than two million Israeli Arabs, incidentally)?

The recent speech by Netanyahu offering two states, except… was pure cover-my-ass and perhaps, cover Obama’s ass. There was no reason to believe any Palestinian leader would court instant assassination by whispering anything signifying any sliver of assent. The Israeli Prime Minister was just saying: “Don’t blame me; I tried.” That’s classical preparation for aggressive action.

Here is a scenario: Israel bombs the Iranian nuclear sites without helps. Its planes overfly Iraq. The Israeli Prime Minister dares the US military there to shoot them down. He also warns the Iranians that if there is any retaliation, his airforce will firebomb downtown Tehran. Everyone knows he has nuclear bombs in reserve.

Peaceful Iranians, people I would gladly have a beer with (of the alcohol-free variety possibly because I am a sensitive SOB), some of the same people now demonstrating, are liable to die. Netanyahu probably thinks it’s better than the other way around.

Weakness does not make peace. It makes war. If the US had bombed two Japanese ports in 1940, there would never have been a Pearl Harbor. That would have saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives.

La choucroute garnie de Californie et les méfaits d’Obama.

DEAR READERS: THIS TIME, I AM TRYING FOR A POSTING IN FRENCH, AS AN EXPERIMENT. I WILL RETURN TO MY REGULAR ENGLISH BLOGGING RIGHT AWAY.

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(Note: Je suis né et j’ai été élevé à Paris. Je vis en Californie du nord depuis quarante ans. Jacques J. Delacroix)

Il y a quelques jours, j’avais le cafard. Cela m’arrive rarement. Je suis le plus souvent de bonne humeur, avec raison. Je vis dans une gracieuse ville très animée, au bord de l’ Océan Pacifique. Je passe mon temps à lire et à écrire, sauf quand je vais à la pêche sur mon joli voilier à moteur. Le tsunami de mauvaises nouvelles économiques et autres était la cause de ma mauvaise humeur, bien sur.

Pour me remettre en forme mentale, j’ai décidé de me fabriquer une choucroute garnie strasbourgeoise, hors-saison et hors-pays, évidemment. L’expérience fut une belle réussite, malgré tous les obstacles: Bonne choucroute en bocal, saucisses façon Strasbourg, jarret de porc, jambon cru, grillades de porc, et même des cuisses de canard confit. J’y ai ajouté un peu de graisse d’oie, habilement congelée après le rôti de Noêl.

D’ habitude, je mange sagement, du poisson, beaucoup de légumes, cuits et crus, des céréales complètes, un peu d’huile d’olive. L’assaut des graisses saturées de la choucroute sur mon organisme aura raccourci ma vie d’au moins une heure. Comme la préparation et la consommation de la choucroute strasbourgeoise de Californie m’auront mis de bonne humeur pendant deux jours au moins, cela en valait bien la peine. Même ma femme, originaire de l’Inde et d’ascendance végétarienne, s’est régalée.

Pour moi, la choucroute garnie est ce qu’on appelle en Anglais: “Comfort food”. Il s’agit des plats ou des friandises de la jeunesse et souvent de l’enfance, qui rendent heureux, instantanément, pour rien. Mon autre “comfort food”, comme pour de milliers de Français de ma génération, c’est les BN, les Biscuits Nantais fourrés au chocolat. Ce sont bien les mêmes BN qu’ on enfournait à la plage après s’être trop longtemps plongé dans une Manche glaciale.

Alors, pourquoi cette orgie de comfort food?

Je pense que nous assistons un désastre progressif. Ne vous faites pas d’illusions, ce n’est pas un désatre uniquement américain mais un désastre à l’échelle mondiale. N’est-il pas curieux que les Français se soient découverts un gouffre financier immobilier deux mois après les Américains? Quand les Etats-Unis éternuent, le reste du monde attrappe la grippe.

A l’automne dernier, l’Amérique s’est offert un grand orgasme libératoire. Croyant laver les très réels péchés raciaux de son histoire, elle a élu un joli pantin à la fois ambitieux et incapable. Il s’agit malheureusement d’un pantin dont personne ne tire vraiment les ficelles.

Le Président Obama n’a jamais rien accompli de sa vie. Le jour de son élection, il ne possèdait aucune expérience de la direction de quoique ce soit, ni grande entreprise, ni banque, ni épicerie de quartier, ni surtout d’état, ni même d’une minuscule municipalité. (Par contraste, Sarah Palin, candidate républicaine à la vice-présidence est, depuis plusieurs années, l’excellent gouverneur de l’état d’Alaska. )

Obama avait alors été membre de la législature de l’Etat d’Illinois pendant sept ans et au Senat féderal pendant deux ans. En tant qu’élu, dans les deux cas, il n’avait brillé en aucune manière. On brille en devenant l’auteur, ou même le co-auteur de législation importante. Ce critère est sans conteste celui qui prévaud, que le contenu de la législation en question me plaise ou non. (Ted Kennedy, que j’adore haïr, aura été à cette aune un grand Sénateura )

Auparavant. Mr Obama était Professeur de Droit, un professeur de droit qui n’a jamais rien publié, contrairement aux us et coutumes des universitaires américains. A tort ou a raison, c’est le critère de qualité qui prévaud là aussi. Obama est comme un professeur de Beaux Arts qui ne peindrait ni ne sculpterait, et qui ne commettrait même pas de collages infantiles. Contrairement a ce qui est le cas pour tous ses prédecesseurs, ses notes d’université restent sous clef. On est en droit de se demander pourquoi. (Les notes de G. W. Bush étaient mauvaises, celles de son dernier opposant, le Senateur Democrate Kerry, encore pires. )

Avant tout, le candidat Obama fut un imposteur racial. C’est une chose diffcile à expliquer a des Européens et à des francophones dont beaucoup portent au coeur un sentiment d’auto-satisfaction naïf autant que suffisant, sur le plan racial. Ce sentiment est d’ailleurs alimenté par les vieux films anti-racistes des années cinquante et soixante qui trainent encore dans les petites salles de cinéma et à la TV d’état. Je vais essayer quand même. (Auto-test: La France a aboli l’esclavage en ________?)

A peu près la moitié des Américains qui adoptent la désignation“africain-américain” au census se compose d’immigrants récents et de leurs enfants. Il s’agit donc de gens qui sont venus ici en avion de la Jamaique ou du Nigéria, ou en radeau de tonneaux à partir d’Haiti et de Cuba. Ainsi l’ancien général et Scrétaire d’Etat sous Bush, Colin Powell, est fils d’immigrants Jamaicains.

L’autre moitié est faite de descendants d’esclaves arrivés enchainés.

Tout le monde est plus ou moins d’accord sur le principe que l’Amérique est redevable à ces derniers. Ceci, en raison de la théorie que l’esclavage du passé et la ségregation raciale, également du passé, méritent compensation en eux-mêmes. C’est vrai surtout parce qu’il est possible que les conséquences sociales des privations et des mauvais traitments de jadis se répercutent longuement à travers les générations. Tout ceci en dépit du fait que l’Amérique a très largement réussi sa transformation raciale au cours des trente dernieres années. Il y a des Noirs partout et à tous les échelons de la société. Comme chacun sait, ils sont même sur-representés dans certaine professions extrêmement lucratives.

Bien sur, l’immigration (volontaire et souvent clandestine) ne serait pas si forte en provenance de l’Afrique et des Antilles si les immigrants étaient soumis à un régime de forte discrimination raciale à l’arrivée. Une telle immigration n’existait d’ailleurs guère avant les années soixante-dix, le début de la transformation en question. Ainsi, au pic de l’immigration aux Etats-Unis, entre 1892 et 1924, sont arrivés en moyenne moins de 45 000 Noirs par an, toutes provenances confondues. (“American Passage” par V. L. Cannato.)

Mon expérience personelle rejoint les constatations basées sur les simples chiffres. Les Africains que je connais ici ne rentrent pas chez eux. Quand ils y vont en visite, ils reviennent très vite, même quand cela leur fait difficulté sur le plan pratique. Et non, ils ne sont pas retenus par la misère noire (si je puis dire) dans leurs pays d’origine. Ils sont tous membres de la solide classe moyenne de leurs pays respectifs. De plus, j’ai deux enfants adultes, adoptés et basanés, l’une et l’autre. Ils n’ont jamais eu a subir aucune insulte raciale ici, aux Etats-Unis. Cela arrive en France, à chaque fois que nous y passons ne serait-ce que quelques semaines.

Obama, de mère blanche comme le blanc de poulet, abandonné dans sa petite enfance par un père africain, a réussi le tour de force de faire rassembler sur lui les vagues sentiments résiduels de culpabilité historique d’un grosse partie de l’opinion américaine. Il s’est fait cyniquement passer pour un descendant d’esclave alors qu’il est blanc sur tous les plans, sociologique, historique et personnel. Obama n’est “Noir” qu’au plan superficiel de la mélanine de sa peau. Ceci, allié au fait qu’il est beau gosse et qu’il parle bien, comme un homme de théâtre, lui a permis d’assoupir la criticalité américaine au cours de sa campaigne et jusque dans les premiers six mois de sa présidence. La grande presse, aussi bien imprimée que télevisée, par ailleurs en chute libre de circulation, lui consacre son dernier souffle d’agonisante.

Aujourd’hui. la cote de popularité du President Obama reste elevée (mais pas stratosphérique). Profitant -comme cela est légitime – de ses majorités absolues dans les deux Chambres, il a mis en oeuvre de gigantesques initiatives sur le plan économique. Il a endetté l’Amérique dans des proportions jamais vues depuis la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. Ce faisant, soit sciemment, soit par ignorance, il a ébranlé l’économie mondiale dans son ensemble. (Je penche pour la seconde explication.) Toutes ses initiatives échouent, l’une après l’autre, comme prévu. Le chômage s’étend chaque jour tandis que la valeur des part d’entreprise où les retraités ont investi leur épargne on diminué de moitié de valeur. (Pas seulement celles des retraités aisés, les fonds de pension ouvriers, et la miennes, de prof en retraite, par exemple, aussi bien.) La surinflation suivra immanquablement le gonflement gigantesque du deficit budgétaire féderal.

C’est la fin d’un certain monde vivace et plein d’invention, tant dans la sphère culturelle que sur le plan économique. Ceci, sans bénéfices tangible pour qui que se soit, et surtout pas pour les plus pauvres. (Il est difficile de taxer l’appauvrisssment général.)

Le Président réagit à chaque mauvaise nouvelle par de nouveaux discours presque vides de sens sauf qu’ils donnent souvent lieu a de nouvelle initiatives géantes malheureuses. A chaque fois, il s’agit de vieilles recettes éculées, en faillite partout ailleurs dans le monde. L’approbation du public pour ces initiatives est à chaque fois minoritaire. Le Président s’élance chaque jour dans l’inconneu avec toute l’assurance d’un universitaire médiocre. Il ne sait pas ce qu’il ne sait pas. Ceux qui l’entourent le flattent systématiquement pour essayer de mener à bon cap leur programme socialiste d’un autre âge. Barack Obama est comme un enfant vaniteux qui aurait de mauvaises fréquentations. (Son pasteur jusqu’à il y a un an, le Révérent Wright, vient de déclarer à la presse que “les Juifs” lui empêchaient l’accès au Président.)

Rien de ceci importe à Barack Obama puisqu’il a bel et bien été élu. Nous faisons face à un Bonapartisme délirant. D’où mon pessimisme. D’où la choucroute garnie californienne à la strasbourgeoise.

Si vous avez lu jusqu’ici, vous devriez peut-être tâter de mon blog habituel, en Anglais. (Même adresse: factsmatter.wordpress.com.) Au pire, cela vous permettra surement d’améliorer le Franglais dont beaucoup d’entre vous lardent leur conversation.

Bien sur, vous pourriez rétorquer que la langue anglaise n’est historiquement qu’ une sorte de Franglais qui aurait bien réussi dans la vie.

C’est cool, non?

© Jacques Delacroix 2009

Fascism Explained

Note: Posted earlier. I think this piece needs a new airing. (I added some remarks at the end, following the President’s speech in Cairo.) Besides, I am busy trying to concoct a posting in French. Doing the accents on my keyboard is a bitch!

The aim of fascism as a political movement is to substitute for individual self-confidence based on skills and achievements uncritical trust in a leader or in an organization. Fascism as a form of government has no objective. Invariably, it ends either in misery or in a catastrophe.

The word “fascist” has been so overused – entirely by Left-leaning people, – that is has become an empty insult. I am guessing that most Americans alive today only know the term as a nasty epithet, perhaps with vague references to Italy’s Mussolini. This is too bad because fascism is a real socio-political phenomenon that took over a fair number of developed societies in the middle-part of the twentieth century. Fascism is also alive, under other names, in and out of power, in the semi-advanced but chronically stagnant societies of Latin America. I think that the fascist temptation is always, forever present in the background of modern societies, including democratic societies. (There are more discussions of contemporary fascism further down in this essay.)

I am addressing this brief description of fascism to my younger contemporaries, in the US and elsewhere, because fascism has become relevant to the current American situation. I am not trying to shout an alarm call as I would with a fast spreading forest fire, for example, just helping inform the curious and intelligent but justifiably ignorant as I always try to do on this blog. (I also do that on my radio program, every Sunday,on KSCO 1080 AM, Santa Cruz, 11AM-1PM.)

Much has been written about two aspects of the best known fascist movements and regimes. First, there have been many books about the most visible leaders of the most visible fascisms, especially about Hitler and Mussolini. These works have focused on the personalities, the families and the psychological antecedents of those leaders and, to a lesser extent, on the leaders’ inner psychology while they were in power. Second, there have been a number of notable studies of the immediate followers that is, on the large numbers of ordinary people who joined explicitly fascist organizations, such as the infamous SS in Germany. There is current resurgence of interest in the long-lived Spanish brand of fascism, under Francisco Franco. (Franco achieved his dictatorship after a bloody civil war. Yet he governed Spain peacefully for more than thirty years.)

To my knowledge, it’s difficult to find much about the more passive supporters of fascist movements, the great bulk of them. This is an important question because the foremost fascist party in history, the Nazi Party, came to power through largely constitutional means. Many ordinary Germans who were probably nice people supported it. It’s difficult to think about it because of so many movies but initially, supporters of fascism are sweet-faced and pure-hearted. It seems to me many Hitler and Mussolini supporters were hoodwinked, in part because they were too lazy to think of the consequences of their choices.

To make a long story short, the Nazis won the largest number of votes in a regular election, assumed government power and proceeded to eliminate democratic rule. Nazism was brought to power by the naivety of some and by the passivity of others. Mussolini’s Fascist Party seized power with considerable popular support. The short-lived but devastating French version of fascism, was formulated and led by a general and war hero to whom the democratically elected representatives of the Republic handed power willingly.

The less known, less flamboyant, but much longer-lasting Portuguese brand of fascism was invented by a mild-mannered professor of economics. Although he was installed after a military coup, he was for practical purposes, little opposed by Portuguese civil society for most of his rule. He led Portugal to the lowest economic rank in Europe, pretty much to Third World status. Similarly, Fascist movements came to power mostly peacefully in Hungary and in Romania in the late thirties and early forties. After WWII, General Perón of Argentina implemented a successful fascist program with the assent of the broad mass of Argentineans. He was even able to pull it off twice. He left the country in a shamble from which it has not recovered, thirty years later.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a conventional fascist state installed originally by a broad mass movement. It has limited political representation. Economically, it conforms faithfully to the historical fascist experience of initial success followed by a continuous descent into poverty. This, in spite of massive oil revenues. Its apparatus of repression includes draconian laws, summary arrests, trials without protection for the accused, capital punishment for a broad range of non-homicidal offenses, and prison murders. It looks completely familiar though the repression is done in the name of religion.

So, let me correct a common mistake: Fascism is not a political ideology imposed by force from above. It’s a mass movement. It requires both mute consent from some and a high degree of enthusiasm from others.

All fascist regimes ended in blood and disaster or in whimpering economic disgrace because they showed themselves unable to provide more than the bare necessities of life. Given the dramatic ending of the more dramatic fascist regimes, again, such as Hitler’s and Mussolini, we tend to ignore this prosaic truth: Fascism is a recipe for prolonged poverty, at best. That’s when it does not end in total economic ruination as in Germany. The end of Spanish and of Portuguese fascism were negotiated affairs conducted under Army pressures. Spain’s and Portugal’s economies began taking off immediately after the transfers of power to democratically elected government that lacked any economic experience.

Fascist economic programs never work.

In power, fascist parties invariably attempt to concentrate the levers of the national economy in a few government hands. They do so either by nationalizing outright the means of production, or by forcing employers and employees into the same state-controlled organizations. Often, they cynically call these organizations “labor unions,” or “trade unions.” This mode of organizations is technically called “corporatism.” The word does not imply that corporations have power but the reverse: The government or its agents make the main decisions for corporations. Of course, corporatism is the complete negation of capitalism which requires all-around competition. That includes the competition of owners and controllers of capital with workers. All-around competition is inherently messy. It’s the converse of a well-trained army marching in lock-step, for example. Fascists hate disorder.

Technical note: Nationalization, the government take-over of a company owned by stockholders almost never requires a majority of the shares of ownership. Under current laws, in the US, the control of 15% of the shares is usually sufficient. Frequently, it takes much less than 15% ownership for a government to dictate a corporation’s policies. That’s because the stock is usually widely dispersed, with the largest stockholders owning a very small % of the total.

Fascists concentrate economic control in the name of orderliness.

Fascist governments and fascist movements detest capitalism.

A fascist movement always preaches national unity. Fascists begin by deploring unpleasant partisanship. In the name of national unity, fascist parties seek to weaken open discussion. They use words such as “bi-partisan,” and “overcoming our differences,” repeatedly and until they appear to describe what is obviously desirable. The American practice of democratic governance by contrast is based explicitly on confrontations followed by negotiations, one issue at a time, between often-changing coalitions. When it comes to power, the fascist party abolishes competing political parties. It may do so by absorbing them or by persecuting them and murdering their members. The same fascist government often practices both forms of elimination. Thus, the powerful German Communist Party pre-1933, ended up partly in Nazi concentration camps, partly in the Nazi SS guard.

Fascist politics require the elimination of competing voices.

Fascist movements are often headed by providential leader, one who presents himself a a savior from a grave crisis, real or imagined ( real or imagined, and sometimes made up). The best known fascist leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Perón, have also been charismatic. This is not absolutely necessary, providential is enough. Salazar of Portugal, a rotund, short man, was as lacking in charisma as anyone. Franco was downright sinister, even to many of his followers. Yet, personal charisma certainly helps a fascist leader achieve power. It helps his credulous followers suspend their sense of criticality.

Fascist success requires the unchecked veneration of leadership.

Fascist movement are usually not content to suppress dissent. They demand the sincere submission of individual wills to the benefit of a greater collective good. That’s because only inner submissions guarantees a long, unchallenged rule. The fascist movement imposes this demand first on movement followers and then, on all citizens.

Fascism places the collective (real or not) much ahead of the individual.

The muzzling of the press, serves both to eliminate the voicing of dissent and to achieve the submission of individual wills. A society with no press though is not the most desirable goal of a fascist government. Fascism seeks to whip up mass enthusiasm. So, the best situation is one where the press speaks in a unified voice in support of the fascist party, or of its leader. What is true of the press narrowly defined, is true of other mass media as well. Thus, Hitler, actively encouraged the development of a German cinema entirely to its devotion. So did the French fascist regime between 1940 and 1944 (with active German Nazi help, by the way.) Enthusiasm helps ordinary people bear burdens and it helps them suppress their pangs of conscience when they witness immoral actions.

Fascism requires the uncritical enthusiasm of many to achieve power, and more so to keep it because of the progressive impoverishment it causes, and also to gain toleration for its bad actions.

In some important historical cases, there is not much muzzling to be done because much the bulk of the mainstream media is already supporting the providential leader, before he comes to power. That was the case in Germany in and, to a lesser extent in Italy. Mussolini himself was a journalist, presumably with ability to manipulate the press rather than suppress it. Having the movie industry endorsing unconditionally a fascist leader would prove invaluable in a contemporary society because of the superior ability of movies to engage the whole person’s emotions along with intellect. Also, it’s likely today that many more people watch movies than read newspapers. This is especially true of the young.

The intelligentsia, the educated class, or a large fraction of it, invariably plays a role in the ascent or legitimation of fascist ideas. Martin Heidegger, then and later, an important German philosopher, became an active Nazi directly upon Hitler’s accession to power. In the case I know second best, that of France, foremost novelists, such as Drieu la Rochelle, and Louis Ferdinand Céline, were early and ardent supporters of fascism. Marcel Déat, a noted philosophy professor with the best academic credentials turned politician, was one of the most effective collaborators in the Nazi occupation of France. (It’s also true that many more French intellectuals supported the totalitarianism of the Left, instead. So?)

Fascism gains intellectual respectability from the endorsement of conventional luminaries and professional intellectuals.

Given their insistence on national unity, fascist movements must appear respectable to the political center, the main abode of respectability. The great American sociologist Martin Seymour Lipset famously called fascism, “the extremism of the (political) Center.” Hence, fascists cannot afford to suppress opposition openly by illegal means. Once they are in power, they change the laws so that anything they wish, including the mass murder of the mentally- ill and later, the attempted destruction of all Gypsies and all Jews within their reach, is made legal. Before they reach power however, they must appear civilized to avoid unnecessarily alarming ordinary middle-class citizens. In order to pursue both ends, fascist movement employ goons, organized extremists toughs whose actions they are able to condemn when expedient.

Fascist movement commonly employ goon associates to wreck democratic elections by putting unbearable pressure on electoral organs designed for a civil transfer of power. In a normal democracy, it often takes a small percentage of the votes cast to win an election. Thus, pressure tactics are often successful. Fascist movements sometimes sacrifice their goon wing once they are in power. Hence, Hitler liquidated his strong-arm SA guard in 1934. that is, after he had gained the chancellorship (more or less the presidency), when they had outlived their usefulness as a tool of street terror. Hitler may have had only a hundred or so SA leaders assassinated. The bulk of the SA rank and file learned to stay down. Many were incorporated into the other and rival strong-arm branch of the Nazi movement, the SS.

Fascists use extra-legal methods to gain political power, in addition to legal methods.

Fascist regimes are never conservative. They are revolutionary or radical reformists with an agenda of social justice. These words mean always and everywhere, “equalization.” There is some confusion in history books on this issue for several reasons. First, the head of Spanish fascism, General Franco had a Catholic agenda that looks culturally conservative on the surface. In fact, Franco tried to restore his own archaic version of Catholicism in a country where religious practice had gone down to near-zero levels among the men. Thus, Franco was not trying to conserve anything but to go back to a largely illusory, invented past.

An other source of confusion in that in several European countries and most dramatically, in Germany, big business circles eventually did lend their support to fascists governments. Two reasons for this. First big business leaders were then afraid of a Communism which had not yet demonstrated its incompetence as a solution to anything except the good life.

(More below on the relationship between fascism and communism.) Second, the owners and/or managers of large business enterprises are often natural collectivists. They tend to abhor real, unfettered competition and to prize workplace discipline. Fascist regimes protected them from the one and provided the other to perfection.

I believe that liberal scholars in the West have deliberately fostered the confusion, the idea that conservatism and fascism are two positions on the same axis. I don’t have the space to develop the bases of my belief here. Yet it’s a critical belief I developed during thirty years around liberal and left-wing scholars. Fascists and big business leaders love neatness above all. They detest the give-and-take and the frank competition of the market.

In summary: Fascism abhors the idea of the individual will of ordinary citizens. In this, it is the complete opposite of classical conservatism which recognizes only the individual. Fascism’s main achievement everywhere and in every epoch, is to make ordinary people poor, dependent and afraid. Fascism is not imposed by force. It wins through the support of the uncritically enthusiastic.

This is just and introduction. It’s easy to find good material to read on fascism. Or, you might just decide finally to read the great short book you pretended to have read in high school but never did get around to read first to last page: George Orwell’s “1984.”

On another posting: The relationship between historical fascism and communism. (Hint: Same damn thing!)

Addendum 6/11/09

Why are leftists and their friends so often anti-Semitic?

It was not just Hitler, Stalin also tried to deflect the problem of his country on to “the Jews.” That happened after the Nazi extermination camps had been discovered, largely by Russians soldiers.

Melanie Kirpatrick had a piece on Hugo Chavez’ persecution of Jews in Venezuela today.( “The Politics of Intimidation,” WSJ, 5/1/09). Hugo Chavez is one of the heroes of the Hollywood Left. In the same issue of the WSJ, an American Professor writes from Beirut, Lebanon about official Lebanese anti-Antisemitism. He reports that the television series, “The Nanny” is banned in Lebanon because the heroine Fran Drescher is Jewish! The real reason is that Lebanese have to appear as friends of the Palestinians (although they probably killed more Palestinians  over the years than Israelis did). The Palestinians are the other darlings of the Left. Anti-antisemitism is transitive! (Look up that word, knucklehead.)

I know, I know, most American Jews vote mostly on the Left. They espoused Obama as if he were the long-awaited Messiah. After the Cairo speech, they are not so sure. This does not tell me anything about the Left. It tells me about human folly and obduracy.

Why Blog?

Blogging is very time consuming. It’s cutting seriously into the life of leisure for which I am so obviously gifted. I am certainly not trying to achieve fame. I renounced that particular kind of folly many years ago: It’s not worth it because you are likely to fail. It’s not even worth it when you succeed according to many tabloid stories.

I can’t even say I am terribly successful in terms of effect achieved.

Only 26 people at most read my most recent ambitious posting, “Fascism Explained,” (posted 5/27/09 on Factsmatter). Writing it took me the better part of two or three half-days. Its sequel, “How about Communism?” (posted 6/1/09, also on Factsmatter) captured only a little less of my free time and it was read by the same small number of people at best.

My two biggest hits ever, “The Inauguration; the Hamas Victory.” (posted 1/20/09 on Bay Watch) and “Advice to Pres. Obama on Manhood” (posted 4/10/09. also on Bay Watch) were each read by 56 people maximum.

Why am I alienating my free time that way? Why this fairly futile effort on my part? I could be on my pretty boat on Monterey Bay catching suicidal and cognitively challenged fish. Or, I could simply be reading one of the books I have been wanting to read for weeks. I might even rub my wife’s feet instead. (She is a talented artist and a conservative who thinks Attila the Hun was kind of a girlie man. The only thing that reaches her nowadays is hard foot massaging.)

There is an answer to this multiply-worded single question above:

I feel responsible to an extent to keep the vacillating flame of the small candle of rationality burning in my neck of the woods. I define my neck of the woods not geographically but sociologically. I am thinking of the young and youngish formally educated who have been infected with pseudo-facts and who are clutching to beliefs firmly rooted in thin air. The category would include many of my former students and most of my former academic colleagues, except my contemporaries, of course.

My neck of the woods also comprises another category of young people I bump into every so often. They are curious, alert and critical but lack what little formal education college still imparts. I want to help them catch up which should not be especially difficult.

I try to address the young as defined above because I feel terribly responsible for the bad job schools and universities, and therefore I, have been doing for years. Universities gave up a long time ago insisting that right thinking must be anchored in a minimum number of facts and that critical thinking applies to everything without exception.

I don’t devote much energy to the old and middle-aged for two reasons. First, it’s boring because I already know everything they are thinking. Sometimes, I know what they are thinking before they know what they are thinking. Second, they never change their minds, on anything. Mostly it’s because they acquired their beliefs in their youth, during the same period of their lives when they were getting really good sex. Their ethical and political beliefs and their radiant recollections of great afternoon nookie get mixed. They can’t abandon the ones without feeling the memory of the others fading.

The young university-educated who received a faulty education are an especially dangerous category politically because they think they are knowledgeable. Their formal education cost them so much, in terms of money, and in terms of wasted youth, that they cannot be expected to face squarely the fact of their deep ignorance in many areas.

As a person who spent thirty or forty years in academia, depending on how you count. I feel guilty. So, I keep plugging I spite of modest results.

What I am trying to achieve, you might ask? Not much in truth, but enough to deal with my feelings of responsibility. I have a sort of intellectual demographic replacement perspective. Demographers tell us that for a population to be stable in its numbers, each heterosexual couple must have 2.3 children on average. I am trying to leave behind 2.3 rationalists with respect for facts. It would be nice if the real number turned out to be five or six, of course.

I must navigate the narrow passage between two shoals. The first shoal is the fact that the lazy and now smitten press, both print and electronic, is serving us daily huge quantities of absurdities. Many of those absurdities are by omission only. A current example: The cable networks announced on 6/8/09 that the White House proposes to create over 600,000 new jobs at an average cost of $1.2 million each. Of course, that’s not the raw announcement; I had to perform the division myself. Even Fox News did not take the trouble.

Another example: Pres. Obama did bow to the King of Saudi Arabia. Millions saw it on YouTube. The White House persists in its childish denials. Someone has to point out the childishness of the denial.

The other shoal is the combination of bizarre conspiracy theories and of raging accesses of meanness among my fellow conservatives. Some are leading a campaign against vaccination. That’s an extraordinarily bad target if you want to make the ethical point that the government has no business forcing us to do anything.

Other conservatives, otherwise completely rational people, see red when they bring up the subject of immigration. One regular caller to my radio program (see below) told me recently on the air that the State of California is spending as much as $46 million for social services for illegal immigrants. When I pointed out that this broke down to about one dollar fifty per Californian, not even the price of a cup of coffee, every year, she was both aghast and baffled. She admitted she had never looked at it that way.

Incidentally, Sergey Nikoforov – who intervenes often on this blog – and I develop a length an unusual perspective on illegal immigration in the current issue of the Independent Review (www.independent.org) Sergey and I are both patriotic immigrants, of course.

My hackneyed imagery about navigating between two shoals does not mean that I think the truth is “somewhere in the middle.” I believe it almost never is.

There is no scientific “theory” of creationism and,

government regulations create poverty. Period.

More examples:

Clean water is good and even indispensable. Air pollution kills some people and a blue sky looks better than a yellow-smog sky. Some ocean fish stocks are probably in danger and something must be done about it, preferably on a voluntary, cooperative basis. American users are getting too much of their petroleum in bad areas of the world. And,

The science of global warming is full of holes and unexplained absences. It’s vulnerable even to simple anecdotal evidence: How could Greenland have been warmer in 1100 than it is today if our modern industrial activities and automobile use are warming anything at all? Al Gore is obviously a buffoon. It’s a mystery how anyone can afford him any credibility at all. The worst-case scenario presented by the UN’s Inter-Government Panel on Climate Change (co-winner of the stupid Nobel Peace Prize) involves a three-foot rise in the ocean over one hundred years. That is not an emergency.

Therefore: Doing nothing right now today is much preferable to every federal governmental policy being currently proposed.

The United States should do much more and could do much more than it does to support and help rational Muslims everywhere; I mean the large fraction who would like to see their grandchildren grow up. And,

Christians, Jews and atheists never deliberately firebomb mosques full of worshipers. Only people who call themselves Muslims do this. (The same people also try to murder minority Christians in their churches in their areas, another story also worth recounting.)

People who call themselves Muslims in some parts of the world also try to close girls’ schools, beat the female students when they don’t succeed, and even burn the schools down with the little girls inside.

(I got this information from National Public Radio, that nest of rabid right-wing extremists.)

Civilized people everywhere may not keep silent in the name of political correctness. Those who do are scum themselves.

Personally, I think the terrorists who burn places of worship and murder school-girls need killing. They need killing the way rabid skunks need killing. And, no, I don’t want to support them in jail, nor even in Guantanamo.

So, I keep going instead of doing more pleasant things or instead of yielding to my natural proclivity toward laziness because we need a few people to keep saying that cats are cats, that cats never bark, and that, “cats are black” is not a logical statement.

You are welcome.

Tell your friends and especially, tell those of your enemies who have balls about my blog: factsmatter.wordpress.com

You can catch my radio show on the Internet from almost anywhere.

It’s also called “Facts Matter.” It’s aired on KSCO 1080 AM, Santa Cruz. It’s every Sunday from 11AM to 1 PM.

Hussein, Khalif of Islam

President Barack Hussein Obama is campaigning again. And, why not? He has accomplished so much in less than six months that he can afford the campaign trail, again. I thought he was going for World President directly. Instead, he is trying for Khalif of Islam, religious and secular leader of all Muslims worldwide. It’s not absurd because the religious dimension of the position suits him especially well.

Dictators Chavez of Venezuela and Castro of Cuba have expressed their admiration for Pres, Obama. The former is reported to have said that Obama had by-passed him on his Left, doing more for socialism than he, Chavez was able to accomplish in several years. Astute Russian observers whose judgment I trust for obvious reasons say that no one has managed to socialize such a large part of a national economy in so short a time, I am told. (Sergey Nikoforov, if you are reading this from Moscow, please, chime in quickly. If you are not reading this, I forgive you. I know you are busy taking the prudent steps dictated by Soviet experience: planting a large vegetable garden, and possibly raising some small farm stock.)

COMMENT FROM SERGEY IN RUSSIA AT THE END OF THIS POSTING.

The fact that this happened in the economy of a developed country intrigues me. That was what Karl Marx had predicted originally, down to the notion that a fraction of the bourgeoisie would detach itself and join the proletarian revolution. He was wrong on the latter though. This is not a proletarian (workers’) revolution. It’s the case of the political apparatus taking over directly – as happened under Stalin after years of travail – and expropriating this country’s wealth. This is the dawn of a triumphant and omnipotent government bureaucracy. (See my small posting of about how government bureaucrats at the lowest level think on 6/5.) Think of Michele Obama, whose last job paid $350,000 for reasons unexplained, speaking in the name of the poor and the downtrodden while on her way to a big date in New York with her husband in my expensive jet. I still own the plane but not for long and it already makes no difference.

Personal note: I don’t comment much about the vast economic disaster surrounding us for two reasons. First, the loud lamentations it merits become tiresome quickly. I don’t want my voice to be limited to one loud wail for the next few years, at least. Second, I try to limit myself to topics I understand well, or that I think I understand well. There are three main types: 1 Those topics on which I have a good grasp as an immigrant and a person familiar with more than one more national culture; 2 Those topics that overlap with my past scholarly work; 3 Those topics that happen to ring a bell with the memory of my wide-ranging reading.

To fight the Beast, some must grab the head, some the tail, and some the big toe. I don’t mind being the big toe guy, or one of them. I wish you should do the same.

How about the President’s speech in Cairo?

As I said, I think it was a good stump speech. I would not be surprised if a well-informed Muslim told me this was the best electoral speech ever delivered to a Muslim audience.

On the whole, I think the Cairo speech did more good than harm to security. Here is why: First. the large numbers of Muslims who are illiterate (in violation of their own religious precepts) will have been flattered to be addressed at all, and to be addressed in fairly mellifluous terms at that.

Second, some Muslim intellectuals will find validation and even some encouragement in the President’s brief mention of the tyranny and injustice reigning in much of the Muslim world (but not in all of it: fellow conservatives, pay attention!) Some moderates will even take heart and speak a little more openly about the contradiction between suicide and Islamic morality.

Third, any such well-publicized speech by such a famous figure is bound to trigger some discussion inside Muslim countries. That will cause further divisions. That’s right, I want the Muslim world divided but not so much between different nation-states, as it is now, but inside, the way Western societies have been internally divided for several centuries. I don’t like Muslim unanimity because history shows that it breeds aggressiveness and fanaticism.

Aside from the grammatical mistakes and the historical confusion (that may not have been translated), the effectiveness of the President’s speech will be limited by one factor the press is too polite or too ignorant to talk about. His are the words of an abed (or abid), of a black man and therefore, a slave, or a descendant of slaves. In Arab society, such people are lent little credence. Some Arabs may not believe he is the real President of the US but instead, the Chamberlain of the real, pale-face ruler. I don’t know about non-Arab Muslims, the vast majority, of course.

So, liberals, you can relax. Barack Obama is not going to abandon the presidency to ascend to the throne of Khalif of all Muslims. There has never been a black Khalif. It’s not going to happen.

Things the President did not say because he wanted to flatter his audience or because he honestly does not know. (I would prefer the cynical option, by far.)

Palestinian Arab Muslims live mostly as refuges and under foreign control because of three wars their stupid Arab Muslim cousins started and lost.

They live as refuges in several Arab countries because those countries don’t want to grant them citizenship. Compare with the way Germany treated fellow Germans who were refuges in 1946 and again, in 1989-90.

By the way, Palestinian Arab Muslims, how did the Palestinian Arab Christians disappear from your midst? (A topic in a recent National Geographic Magazine.)

The harm Israeli Jews do to Palestinian Muslims does not begin to compare with what Muslims are doing to Muslims in Darfur. The latter is a genocide. If Israel wanted to exterminate Palestinians, it would have been done a long time ago; the Palestinian population would have shrunk much instead of thriving demographically as it is.

Peace in the Middle-East is desirable. We are all tired of that interminable conflict. I have commiseration fatigue as I write. I am sick of paying the bills for the bad behavior there. Yet, you can’t fault Israel for not negotiating right now. There is no one to negotiate with. The Palestinian Authority in the West Banks is extremely corrupt, by its own admission. (Arafat’s widow is living in luxury in Paris. Why in luxury? Why in Paris?) Its political legitimacy is dubious at best (with much benefit of doubt). The Hamas rule on the Gaza Strip is classical fascist rule. (See my posting on fascism on 5/20 on my blog Bay Watch – jacquesdelacroixliberty.wordpress.com, and on 5/27 on my new blog, factsmatter,wordpress.com.) The Hamas Charter (link on first page of this blog) achieves two things. First, it expresses admirably in its words how it was written by people who live in the mental Middle-Ages. Two, it expresses clearly that Hamas ‘ goal is to destroy Israel.

How would you like to negotiate a boundary dispute with two neighbors, one a tottering thief, the other, a guy who swear he will run you out of your house and shoots at you every day, while they are trying to cut each other’s throat?

Another part of the speech that’s missing:

“[We will] invest in on-line learning for teachers and children around the world; and create a new online network, so a teen-ager in Kansas City can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo.”

and, if any tin-pot tyrant tries to restrict or interfere with this effort on their end, there will be hell to pay!

Of course, the last is crucial.

More on Judge Sotomayor. I think no one has commented on this important point: The fact that she said several times that she believes she possesses special wisdom because she is a Latina, tells me that she probably believes it. If she does, that makes her a little stupid. Being reared in difficult circumstances does not broaden your horizons, it makes them narrow. (Been there; done it; barely escaped; thank you America!) Poverty does not make you brilliant; it makes you stupid, or it does nothing. And, prejudice makes you prejudiced more often than not. That’s why economic stagnation is so objectionable: It wastes human potential.

More on the judge. She seems to have this whiny attitude as in, “Look at me; I am a poor member of a poor oppressed minority; I have suffered all my life.” She has a big chip on her shoulder. The press, even the conservative press, is too courteous to comment on the obvious. I am not: I am kind of an A-H- because I am losing patience. Also, I am tired of holding my tongue in insincere tribute to political correctness. Here is the obvious: She is a plain-looking woman. I can tell she always was, except perhaps between sixteen and nineteen.

Society is not kind to woman who are not at least moderately attractive. (Don’t blame society, I think. Blame Mother Nature, that evil stepmother.) Somehow, you don’t hear Penelope Cruz, or Salma Hayek complain much about the discrimination they suffered as Latinas. It would be interesting to compare the levels of bitterness of ugly Latinas with those of ugly blue-eyed blondes. I know my mental answer to the question my well reflect my preference for coffee over vanilla. But, enough said about my erotic life!