French Language a Hoax, It Turns out!

Since published in Liberty Unbound. Try it you might like it.

After yesterday’s Wikileaks revelations, Nicolas Sarkozy has today confirmed that the “French language” is indeed a one thousand year old hoax. The president of France revealed that what purported to be his native tongue was in fact complete gibberish, admitting the French really speak English, except in the presence of the British. This comes as Wikileaks published cables sent by French diplomats to countries such as Spain, China and Russia which were all found to be written in English.

During a speech given in received pronunciation, the French President came clean, stating that it all started off as a joke during William the Conquerer’s invasion to make the aggressors seem a bit more exotic. “What was initially a prank snowballed and after a few years we realised we’d look silly revealing the truth, so we had to keep up the façade,” said the Premier. “In the company of any Brits we would try to make convincingly “French” sounds, a mixture of guttural grunts and rapid-fire syllables.

But as soon as we were on our own we’d all heave a huge sigh of relief and revert to English. We developed a heavy reliance on hand gestures to cover up when we ran out of likely noises, and the shrug was a particular boon if inspiration dried up. In the end we became quite the raconteurs, with an impressive array of supposed vocabulary. So what began as a game for the élites, became a hobby across all levels of society, and it shocked us that the Brits were so naïve as to not see through the charade.”

Sarkozy claims Wikileaks will soon expose a number of other “languages”. “I mean, seriously guys, has anyone ever actually listened to “Arabic”? Je ne sais pas…..”

Ollie_P

Here are my (JD’s) comments about this terrible revelation first published in NewsBiscuit circa Feb20th 2011

It’s a wonder the hoax lasted so long, the deceit was so transparent and so unsophisticated. Take the alleged French word for “table,” for example. It’s simply: “table.” They did not bother to change even a single letter. Or take the supposed French word for “intelligence.” It’s just the regular word “intelligence” pronounced in an affected and effeminate way. Only once in in a while did the French even make even a small effort to appear to have their own distinctive language. So, for example, they took the English word “connoisseur” and made it “connaisseur,” turning a o into an a in the middle of the word to try and trip the unaware and the naïve. Frequently, they just add an e at the end of a normal word in a paltry attempt to appear different. This goes, for example for the longest word in the alleged French language “anticonstitutionalisme,” which shows with pathetic clarity that it’s simply pseudo-English.

To be completely fair, the engineers of the hoax of a distinctive French language managed two clever defenses that retarded significantly the unavoidable uncovering of their treachery. I refer here to “irregular verbs” and to so-called “false-friends.”

Every young American, or Englishman, or Australian, who as ever forced to learn the French “language,” first went through an obligatory period of intimidation. They were all told that they had to master “irregular words,” like this: “je vais, j’irai, j’allais, [que] j’aille.” (I go, I will go, I used to go, that I go). They were all told of the three hundred like this they must master without fail. Naturally, as you would expect, all of those young people quickly became discouraged. And, of course, their mass failure only served to re-inforce overtime the myth of a separate French language. The French themselves have never heard of such barbary. In private, they used word like you and I (“you and me”?)

The second obstacle thrown in their path, the so-called “false friends” were thrown at random into the pseudo-language by the perpetrators. Thus, “deception” means “disappointment,” “entree” means “hors-d’oeuvre,” and , the old English word “mercy,” they rob of its final y and replace it with an i and then, they tell you it means only “Thank you” in their pretend-language

Had we been more observant, we would have uncovered the deception much earlier noting the curious absence of certain essential words, in that imaginary language, French. Thus, it has no word for “fun” and, on the Internet, it uses “LOL” to mean exactly “LOL.”

We were had. Dommage!

Pres. Obama is a Wimp

The Brits and the Germans sent warships to evacuate their citizens from Libya. Later, they violated Libyan airspace by sending warplanes to pick up  oil workers  stranded in the desert. The French used military transport planes to evacuate their citizens. Our American evacuees were stuck in Tripoli harbor for two-and-a half days on a ferry too rickety to brave bad weather in the Mediterranean over the same distance as New York to Boston. America m cannot use anything even remotely military. Under our enlightened and chronically anti-American leaders, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, we have become pathetic. That’s because Barak Obama is a wimp, always has been.

President Obama is missing a chance that does not even come to an American president once in a century. If he had any vision at all, he would  have sent several days ago a small party of Special Forces raiders to snatch Moammar Gadhafi and to throw him hogtied on the floor of the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. (I know that the US is not a member. It does not prevent us from acting as a marshal. Let the Court itself decide not to prosecute Gadhafi. ) I know the president wants to be a legalist, I know but the legal excuse for acting in a forceful manner is there: Several high-ranking Libyan defectors have gone public with the assertion that Gadhafi personally ordered the Lockerbee massacre. That’s the equivalent of a Grand Jury, as far as I am concerned. Note that the idea is not to execute him summarily but to try him. That’s what courts are for: to establish the guilt of the accused or to release them. “No harm done. Sorry to have bothered you Mr Supreme Leader, and no hard feelings, we hope. Enjoy yourself in your retirement villa on the Italian Riviera.”

If the President acted in this forceful manner force once,  just for once, for once, America would be on the side of justice and on the side of humanity in the Middle East. And for once, millions of Arabs would applaud and would feel grateful to the US. The famous “Arab street,” the thought of which used to get liberals all weak in the knees up when Pres. Bush liberated Iraq, obviously does not appreciate any more than you and I would the street massacres of ordinary citizens in defense of a failed and probably drugged-up tyrant. Even if the snatching attempt failed, it would shorten the blood-letting in Libya by causing even more military to switch sides. Gadhafi is a lot like Saddam Hussein: Not that many of his soldiers are eager to die for him. That’s why he has to import mercenaries from very poor black African countries.

As usual, I make a note of what is not happening: We don’t hear much about Venezuela’ s military dictator, Hugo Chavez, or anything at all from El Lider Máximo in Cuba, these days. I guess, they are considering.

The liberal American media continue to look silly, ignorant, unprepared, incompetent. “Who could have predicted this upheaval?” they seem to be pleading. Well, someone did. Here is is:

“Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because, in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”

That was George W. Bush in 2003.

Note: I cribbed the citation from a good piece by Elliot Abrams in 2/25/11 WSJ.

Libya

When I was young, I knew everything. Now, I know next to nothing except one thing: There are people who know the stuff I don’t know and wish I did. Once you realize this, the problems of life boil down to what expert to follow: Which car mechanic will only put a fresh coat of grease on your steering wheel; which financial adviser had two personal bankruptcies under his belt; which Parisian restaurant in California is actually owned by a Persian. Fortunately, although I know less and less, my BS detector has never been so sensitive. Which brings me to the Middle-East rebellions and revolutions.

The man-child President Obama is tongue-tied about the events. I don’t blame him that much this time. His worldview with the US as responsible for all the evils in the world did not prepare him for the actions of independent actors like the Arabs who have had it with tyranny. And it’s true that the US and other developed countries acquiesced fro thirty years and sometimes actively supported the tyrants. (I have written on this on this blog: “Obama Did Not Lose Egypt,” “Update on Egypt… ,”    ) One observation well worth reporting by way of paltry defense  I owe it to Charles Kauthammer of  Fox News): Our dictators are not as blood-thirsty  as the self-made and erstwhile “socialist” middle-Eastern dictators. Mubarak bowed out after a minimum of bloodshed and Ben Ali of Tunisia discreetely caught a late-night flight. Right now, it looks like the grotesque dictator of Libya will kill as many as necessary to try and hold on. He was never one of our boys. Of course, no one doubts that the Iranian Islamist regime would gleefully shed rivers of blood to  preserve its divine mandate over 75 million Iranians. After it has already executed people just for  protesting in the streets. One of the next ones too may well be Assad of Syria. I think there won’t be long street demonstrations there. We will wake up to the spectacle of Assad hanging from a lamp-post in Damascus.

Give me crooked rulers over totalitarians anytime. The latter remain totalitarian and they  inevitably become crooked too (or their families).

My political and, especially, my moral expert, on the Arab world is Professor Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University. CNN has the good sense to put him on frequently. Ajami said categorically that Pres. Obama should tell Khaddafi to leave. Ajami says it would do a world of good and little harm. I believe Ajami and so should the President since he seems to receive no advice. Frankly, I am not surprised that citizens of countries where 50% or 60%, or 70% of the population profess to hate America would care about American-given legitimacy. It turns out there is no other game in town, except perhaps the UK,  and Australia is too small. Finland has not volunteered and no one knows where it is anyway. The other democratic countries appear washed up and, to a large extent, they are.

My own observation: In five or six years analysts will discover that demography is the primary cause of the sudden series of explosions of discontent in the Arab world. Very large numbers of young people who think they are well educated and who are actually educated enough to inform themselves via the foreign media have understood that bureaucratic autocracies are not going to give them a future. That’s equally true whether the country is reasonably prosperous, like Bahrain and Libya, or frankly poor, like Tunisia and Aden.

Men Catchers

A lady from Ontario wanted to know how to get a French man. Here is the advice I gave her:-

There are more than three billion male human beings. Granted, some are too old, some too young, and some too far. That leaves a lot of them available. Do you ever watch Animal Planet on TV? Well, you may remember how leopards hunt. The problem is that most women put them themselves in the frame of mind of a gazelle when they should think like a leopard.
Incidentally, it’s true that French men tend to be adulterous. (French women too; that’s how it all works out.)

Language and Informational Prisons: The Case of Arabic

What language you are born into matters. It matters because it’s a means of communication and it matters even more because it’s a kind of soft prison. I regularly turn off the French language media because I become cumulatively irritated at the number of absurd statements I hear coming out of the mouths of presumably university-educated French newsmen and newswomen. There are fewer absurd affirmations in the news in this English-speaking country simply because good information is more abundant in English than it is in French.

We are used to believing that whoever is intelligent is also well informed. The reverse, we know, is not true. There are plenty of people who accumulate information and who are perfect fools. The best way I have heard it put is from an anonymous author played recently on my local radio station (KSCO Santa Cruz 1080 AM): Being aware of the fact that a tomato is a fruit is to be well-informed; to abstain from putting tomatoes in a fruit salad is to be wise!

The assumption that intelligent people are automatically well informed is so general that when we come across someone who is obviously intelligent but ill-informed we study him like an infinitely interesting creature. I have known several people like that in my life. They drove me crazy. One I know now, is smarter than I, I suspect but nearly everything he believes to be true is false. My friend has made a philosophical decision not to have any electronic media in his house. He usually carries a book. Over time, I have come to suspect that he does not read very well, that he is dyslexic (whatever that means) or something like that. In general, we don’t think enough of this rare case: The ignorant intelligent person.

What brings forth these musings is an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal of 2/17/11 by a Donal E. Kochan. (“Reading Adam Smith in Arabic.”)

Mr Kochan delivers a tidbit that places the string of revolutions across the Middle-East in a different perspective. I knew about that tidbit; I had even mentioned it in a scholarly paper but it had slipped my mind. Here it is:

Considering the early 80s, for one million Arabs, five books were translated (from any language). For Hungarians, the corresponding figure is 519, or one hundred times more. Let’s bring these numbers to a scale taking into account the absolute numbers of Hungarian speakers and of Arabic speakers. I do this to consider the informational situation of an Arab high-school graduate (from any country) in comparison to that of a Hungarian speaker. There are about 330,000,000 Arabic speakers (Wikepedia says: 360 million but it is pushing the envelope) and only ten million Hungarian speakers.

With these numbers, each Hungarian high-schooler has potentially access to three times more books of foreign origin than his Arab counterpart. I can hear your comments from here: Here they are:

We don’t know what either Hungarians or Arabs read in translation. It could be mostly romance novels on one side, either side, and mostly treaties on political economy on the other side. I understand this, but the fact is that the more different titles, the more likely it is that some are of serious works. And yes, I agree that it would only take one good study to falsify this reasoning. In the meantime, it’s the best that I have, that you have.

Your second objection is probably the cynical one that high-school students don’t read anyway. I am sure that’s true, and college students don’t do much more on the whole. Yet, both kinds of students are exposed to teachers who have read some, while in college in one case, possibly continuously on the other. In his hap-hazard manner, and across an absurdly large number of years of schooling if you think about it, Americans (and other Westerners and the Japanese, and others) acquire a smattering of history, and a smattering of legal principles. They may even capture the essences of the moral and political foundations of liberty. Most Americans may have never read Thomas Paine but they have heard of him.

It seems to me that the average Arab student is less likely to have have been taught by someone so informed. I know I should not refer to the “average Arab student” because so many things vary across countries where Arabic is the native language. They vary, in particular, in connection with the ability to read in foreign languages. In countries that were deeply colonized, such as Algeria, an instrumental knowledge of one foreign language, French, is practically universal among teachers. In countries where the foreign yoke was light or short-lived, like Egypt, it appears that many members of the middle-class, including teachers, know some English. It’s not clear that this command of English is good enough to be put to the specific use of reading. In other Arab countries that were never administered from Europe, such as Saudi Arabia, you can be almost sure that workable knowledge of any foreign language is scant among high-school teachers.

At any rate, we must consider the Arab world in general as mostly comparatively ill-informed about general ideas that are the foundations of our assumptions in developed, democratic, capitalist countries. I had a brief, recent exposure to this reality.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a strange item in a Moroccan Facebook I follow regularly for my own reasons. The item was a rumor to the effect that someone in America was printing Korans for the sole purpose of burning them. I tried to interject a more reasonable explanation, namely the growing number of American Muslims and of Islamic schools that require yearly thousands of copies of the Koran. I began my explanation with the remark that I though it was my absolute right to burn any religious scriptures including the Koran. I added that I would not do such a thing because it would be rude (“malpoli”). My purpose was to signal to the Moroccan Facebook readers that one could not count on any American civil authorities to stop the burnings of Korans if any such event did take place.

I expected a torrent or protestations and of insults, possibly some threats. Instead, my message triggered no reaction at all, A couple of days later it had disappeared from the blogosphere. In the meantime, I speculate that my freedom of religion affirmation, the assertion of my right to disrespect religion was so outside the range of the Moroccan Facebook users ‘ understanding of the world that it was literally not understood. Or else, it was treated by all as the statement of an obvious madman. If I am correct, this reaction is especially interesting because the whole conversation was taking place in French and it’s likely that all the participants were young. (I don’t see older Moroccans sitting in Internet cafés communicating with strangers in the un-stylish manner the Internet implies.) Thus, my simple statement was apparently met with incomprehension by what is probably the upper-crust of Moroccan society in terms of familiarity with democratic concepts.

So, I suspect that, to a large extent, what we are witnessing in the Middle-East is not what we are seeing. Rather, it’s something utterly unfamiliar: a democratic revolution by people, many of them intelligent, who may have only a hazy idea of what democracy entails, besides the obvious fact of elections. I am bracing myself for surprises. Yet, I remain sympathetic to the disciplined, astonishingly civilized revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt.

Incidentally, Kochna’s op-ed describes a program of translation of American and other books into Arabic implemented by the State Department through local embassies. In two words: It languishes. Too bad, that is a form of foreign aid that is peaceful and entirely in keeping with the American tradition of enlightenment. If its funding were multiplied by one thousand, its cost would still be paltry. It might even favor favor with the firebrand Libertarians who have embarked on a mission to cancel all foreign aid.

The Mysteries of Nature

There is a big stupid redwood tree in the tiny plot in front of my house. It’s stupid because it would be much better off in the forest with its brothers, less than two miles away, rather than littering the sidewalk and threatening my roof. To make matters worse, the utilities company appears to have the right to trim it any way it wants. So, my sequoia looks like an old toilet brush. The city of Santa Cruz won’t let me cut it down and it has the impudence to ask for a special high fee merely to hear my appeal.

Santa Cruz has no manufacturing. It was all run out of town in past years by the left-wing/Green political class. It’s squeezed between the usually breezy Pacific Ocean on one side and wooded mountains on the other. The wind is from the west, from the ocean, four days out of five. My stupid redwood tree right downtown is essential to maintain air purity, I am sure!

Anyway, the redwood tree has one redeeming virtue: It’s home to an abundant and varied fauna. At the apex is a large population of squirrels. They seem to be divided into two tribes, or two ethnic groups. One tribe is red with a tinge of brown, as you would expect in California. The other tribe’s coloring ranges from jet-black to kind of black. The racial strife between the two groups is incessant. At sunrise, they pursue one another across my roof. All day, they set ambushes and they chase the other guys up and down the tree and on the ground.

It’s not always clear what the squirrel warfare is all about. There seems to be plenty of living space for all (“lebensraum,” in German). Or it’s only the old guys fighting over mating rights. Or the old females just being bitchy. Or it’s the young guys that are aggressive because they seldom get any. I know however what they are not fighting about. They are not merely fighting about food as you would expect ordinary forest-dwelling squirrels to do, for example, that must tear each others’ eyes out for every tiny pine cone seed, even every little bitter-tasting acorn.

The squirrels on my redwood tree, or their redwood tree, feed exclusively on peanuts. This is true for both the gray-red and the black tribes. It’s been true for at last four years. It’s a perplexing fact but a fact nonetheless. Not only do I see them eating peanuts. I see them burying them in various parts of my backyard and I see them digging up peanuts in the winter.

At first, I though the squirrels were benefiting from a kid’s lost lunch. Then I suspected that a neighbor fed them peanuts. But, no, in the end, I would have caught him in the act. Then I guessed they had chanced on a commercial cache of peanuts. But this has been going one too long. The only possible valid explanation is hard to accept: They have access to a truck that delivers peanuts to various small stores in my area and they are fairly aware of delivery schedules.

So, there you are. I did not tell you I believed my explanation. It’s just the best I can do at the moment. Or, it’s just one of those mysteries of nature, like teats on bulls.

Valentine’s Day: Feminists’ Shame

If I did not believe he is a man-child, I would think Pres. Obama was cynical in his declaration of a couple of days ago. He stated that the Egyptian people were an “inspiration” to Americans. Inspirations to what, a military take-over of a country? Fortunately there is no chance of this here. (See why in my posting: http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/a-blueprint-for-a-communist-take-over/ )

I am basically a frivolous man so I am tired of dealing with weighty matters above my pay-grade. Today is Valentine’s Day, fortunately. So, back to reality!

I get much of my understanding of popular culture in the gym where the television is always on, often according to channel choices made by the skanks who spend half their lives there (often with good results I must say; bless their little hearts!) While I was on the elliptical today I watched an episode of some chick-series or other. I had an epiphany right there and then. (An epiphany is what St Paul experienced on his way to Damascus to sell tents. “Hot damn,” he said to himself, “Got to stop persecuting those Christians. That guy Jesus had got it right!” I hope his colleague St Peter will forgive me for this unholy comparison.)

Here is goes: Chick screen products are full of guys who endlessly send bouquets of flowers and boxes of candy to apologize for bad behavior that wasn’t really that bad. If it were really bad they would not have to apologize. Cuddling afterward would be more than enough. There is more: The guys overflow with childish emotions they express in childish ways. And the flowers and the candy are wrapped in gauzy, fabric, often pink, or of another soft color. Hello! Do the guys keep a store of such diaphanous fabric in the closet behind their suits just in case they screw up again ? How come they even know where to get it? I sure don’t. Wouldn’t know where to start. Those allegedly male cry-babies would have some explaining to do if the women were not such perfect air-heads.

Here is some useful advice, lady: If your man screws up and tries to make up with a present, that may be OK (may be). If the present is not wrapped in cellophane (no ribbon) or better, in newspapers, you may not want him back. This may be your chance to find out why “this relationship is not going anywhere.”

Next observation. The dancing in restaurants with lots of cut crystal glasses and the tearful chance encounters in preternaturally quiet cozy coffee shops occasionally seems to lead to real action. What action there is almost never takes place in a (night) bed. Sometimes it’s on a sofa. Sometimes it’s on a “day-bed,” an item of furniture I have never seen in a real house. The action is never crude. For one thing, the women never even take off their bras. That makes some sense. Virginia’s Secret push-up bras have made all breasts more or less equal and why take a chance with reality? The men usually have good pecs but they never, never take off their pants. I hate to point out the obvious but that’s exactly the kind of restraint you would expect from men with tiny penises.

If any 70s feminists are watching what I am watching, they must be crying with shame. Or perhaps, they are enjoying all this knowing full well that they were in bad faith back then.

Obama Did Not Lose Egypt

It looks like the Egyptian armed forces have confiscated the revolution for the time being. They told the old man Mubarak he had to be reasonable and agree to save face with a simulacrum of power devolution. So, he agreed to resign. They told the revolutionaries on Tahrir Square that they could not have their immediate but largely symbolic victory: The shameful flight of the tyrant of thirty years in the wee hours of morning. Instead, they agreed to celebrate a formal transfer of power from one military dictator to another. I hate to admit it but I am relieved by these developments.

First, the snatched symbolic victory. I can certainly empathize. The French would have been unable to believe they had really changed the system had they not beheaded hapless King Louis the Sixteenth in 1793. That they also killed the Queen Marie-Antoinette a little later shows that blood drinking is addictive. Also, the English had beheaded a king more then a century before the French, largely for the same reasons: It’s not enough to beat your adversary, you have to annihilate him. We are primates, after all.

The Egyptian revolutionaries, with the real but limited wisdom of an old people feigned to assent to the surface change and broke out the fireworks to celebrate their false victory. For the time being, an Air Force general is replaced by the Head-Torturer-In-Chief. This is not equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall as Al Jazeera reported. But Al-Jazeera is a smart news beast, I think the comparison was about the crowd’s joy, not about the political reality of the event.

I have been watching the news on the French language channel TV5. The French news anchors are as dingbaty as their American counterparts or more. Those who manage them have enough sense though to bring forth some of the numerous experts on the Middle-East who live in France, as French citizens or as exiles from their native countries. The discussion on TV5 are less stereotypical and less cliché-laden than what I hear and see on American television Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh have been clearly out of their depth, as much as their left-liberal competitors, I would say. Here is my rule of thumb: I don’t like it when I have the feeling that I know more than nearly all those who express themselves in the media. Pundits who criticize Obama’s handling of this business don’t have a plan B, I suspect. President Obama did not lose Egypt. It was never his or ours to lose.

Mostly. I follow a French professor who is a native Arabic speaker, Hasni Abidi. I do this although he expresses typical French delusions about the knowledge, power, and influence of the American secret services. It’s a French mental illness. Perhaps it does not affect anything else and, how I wish their paranoia were justified! And I follow Fouad Ajami, an American professor who is also an Arabic speaker. Ajami has been consistently somber when he appears on CNN. I think he is waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Here is what I think will happen next. It’s also what I hope will happen. And, no, I am not confusing my wishes with reality. The armed forces of Egypt, some of whose leaders are younger and more aware of the world than a 80+year-old dictator, will shepherd the country to a gradual democratization. There will be honest elections in six months, or in one year, or in two years, or in five. This will give time for the democratic forces of Egypt to organize themselves into real political parties, to collect funds, to formulate their positions and to articulate them. If elections were held tomorrow, there is a good chance the Muslim Brotherhood would dominate them just because it’s well organized. That could (could) be the beginning of a democratic conquest of power by this ultimately undemocratic group. I know, it’s the reformed Muslim Brotherhood that professes to believe in elections and in a secular state. I am skeptical. I don’t trust people who want eventually to establish the rule of Sharia to be sensitive to the importance of separating religion from governance. Come to think of it, I don’t trust most Egyptians in this respect. Come to think of it, after many years of personal association with Muslims, I don’t trust many Muslims in this connection. In my book, they are guilty until they prove themselves innocent of the confusion between church and state.

I understand my own intellectual dilemma: I believe democracy is the aspiration of most people everywhere (like George W. Bush and his articulate spokeswoman Condoleeza Rice). Yet, as a student of French and English history and of Communism, I mistrust popular revolutions that start in the street. It’s obvious to my mind that they they often end in worse tyrannies than what they replace. Also, they produce aggressive states that will not and cannot leave their neighbors in peace. That’s why I think the outcome I predict is not the worst possible although it will disappoint in short order the aspirations of millions of Egyptians. I said “millions,” not “all.” I still have not seen a single djellaba, the normal garment of the peasantry, on Tahrir square.

There is a domestic aspect to the media tumult of the past two weeks that I am not generous enough not to enjoy. Liberal commentators are like an old lady stuck at the end of a too-long line for the restroom, dancing from one foot to the other. On the one hand, if President Obama has anything to do with Mubarak’s departure, it shows that he, Obama, has also joined the ranks of American imperialist manipulators. On the other hand, if he had nothing to do with the event, it demonstrates again the President’s momentous, historical incompetence. I incline to the latter, of course. He never did know what he was doing. Why would this be different?

Finally, I am not too worried about Israel. It’s not callousness. It think Israel is a big boy capable of taking care of itself. Beside, even if Egypt becomes more bellicose – not at all self-evident – Israel will be facing a weakened Egypt.

Update on Egypt: the Camels Lost, American Media Asleep at the Wheel

A dozen horses and four camels were not able to destroy the revolution in Egypt. And, I know I sound cold-blooded but the mortality rate of the Egyptian revolution is to-date very low by any historical standards. When the tear-gas smoke dissipates, I predict that we will find that the Egyptian mortality rate dipped in January.

President Obama’s response has improved. He has taken the right narrow path between telling the Egyptians what to do and failing to show support for the democratic aspirations being expressed in the large Egyptian cities. His personal appeal to Mubarak to exit power as a form of expression of respect to his, Mubarak’s, legacy was smart. I will bet Mubarak is an old man who is mostly concerned about his place in Egyptian and world history and about not stepping down just to see Egypt go up in flames. Everything world leaders can do to save his face will promote the swift and orderly arrival of democracy. That’s in Egypt and and in the rest of the tyrant-ridden Middle-East because the other tyrants are watching. How they are treated when they step down has a great deal to do with their willingness to do so.

And yes, one can support the aspirations of 80 million Egyptians to a dignified life and to freedom and be concerned we the impression we, the US, make on allied heads state with respect to faithfulness and steadfastness. I am thinking of the political elite of Pakistan that is taking enormous political and personal risks to maintain an alliance with us over the heads of a nation that is overwhelmingly and primitively anti-American.

Our media continue to cover the events in Egypt and nearby countries vapidly. The ignorance and the superficiality are embarrassing. Of course, one feeds the other. Here are issues they should raise but don’t.

Can anyone spend twelve, or ten, or seven nights in a row on Tahrir Square? To ask the question is to answer it. Young healthy people can stay up in a state of high exhilaration and anxiety three, maybe four nights. Then, they become zombies, or they simply collapse. And where do they go to the bathroom? How about enough calories to sustain their high- stress activities?

The original demonstrators must go home for a night or more after three nights on the barricades. If the numbers on the Square don’t shrink much, it means that the ranks demonstrators are being replenished. Where does the replenishment come from, is worth asking. It could be people from outlying districts or from small towns. It could be members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an important organization that did not originally join the protests. American media reps on the spot might get answers to these questions if they asked. They don’t. I suspect they don’t know enough to ask.

Looking at my television screen for twelve nights in a row, I have formed the impression that the wrong kind of bearded types are more numerous than they were originally. And, yes, I know how to distinguish between Western-oriented intellectuals’ beards and Islamist beards. American reporters on the ground should be able to tell me whether my perception is founded or merely the effect of camera selectiveness. First, they would have to raise the question in their own minds. They don’t.

Fox News, followed by MSNBC, reported Friday, supposedly the “Day of Departure” for Mubarak, that the number of demonstrators had increased. No one took the trouble to state the obvious: In Muslim countries, Friday is Sunday, when most people don’t work, are available for political activity, or simply for political voyeurism.

Anther important issue I would like reporters on the ground to approach. It’s about what seems to not be happening. I would just like to be sure. I did not see a single djellaba in twelve nights of watching Tahrir Square. The djellaba is the normal garb of Egyptian peasants.

What’s going on in the smaller towns of Egypt and in the countryside where most of the population lives? Special envoys in Egypt could spend their time better raising and trying to answer such simple questions than showing us over and over the same pictures of Tahrir Square voiced over with the same tired clichés.

I am watching the rudimentary coverage of the same events by the French media through TV5, the international francophone channel. The French have at least the good sense to send Arabic-speaking reporters on the scene. How clever of them!

Egyptians and Tunisians, and, it’s obvious, millions in other Arab countries, desire democracy. They don’t ad up to 100% of the population, I am sure. Many prefer stability in poverty under an authoritarian form of rule that does not much touch their daily life. The very poor can seldom afford to be revolutionaries. Others are Islamists who only like democracy as a means to an end: One vote, one time.

Here is a quiz I would give to those Arabs who sincerely desire democracy if I had a chance:

1 Do you agree that democracy means fair and honest elections?

2 Do you agree that a free press and free media in general are a condition of free and fair elections and of democracy in general?

3 Do you agree that democracy requires a fair chance of alternance in power?

4 Do you agree that a democratic majority must not seek the elimination of the democratic minority?

5 Do you agree that a democracy cannot survive long when government governs outside the law. Same question: “Is the rule of law” essential to democracy?

6 Name the country or countries in the Middle-East that satisfy to a high degree all these conditions_____________________________

PS   The Prime Minister of Iraq just announced he would not seek re-election.

Incidentally, I keep trying to give  the same test to extreme American Libertarians. They refuse to see the evidence. That’s because if they admitted that Iraq is a democracy, it would undermine their blind hatred of President Bush’s “war of choice.” I agree it was a war of choice. I think Libertarians are willing to defend their country but only on the Jersey Shore and on the beaches of San Diego. Every time, they try do explain otherwise, they confuse me. And I don’t get confused easily; I have read thousands of student papers. Often, I did not even recognize the language in which they were written!

Cold Records and Good Faith

Cold records are being beaten right and left in the Northeast and in the Upper-Midwest. This time, it seems to me that advocates of global warming panic have been silent. They have mostly refrained from asserting that the colder it is somewhere or other, the more certain it is that humans are causing the atmosphere to warm fatally. Perhaps, they are ashamed of their past performance in the area of using anecdotal evidence to shore up their pseudo-science. I wouldn’t count on it but, just in case, here is my reaction: That’s not enough. To regain your intellectual respectability, you have to declare clearly that you are sorry for the bad evidentiary practices on which you relied on in the past. Also, you have to apologize for hounding the honest scientists who called them as they saw them.

The idea that one’s intellectual respectability is something to treasure seems to be losing ground. I am not sure why because it’s the foundation of credibility: Next time I assert something, others will be likely to believe me if I have a record of never violating, or stretching the truth. If I have a record of telling fibs and fabrications, they will discount my assertions. Even worse, they might automatically believe the reverse of what I assert. (“Dr J says it’s raining, it must be sunny.”)

It seems to me that this growing indifference to truthfulness comes from interacting mostly with those of like viewpoint. The costs of scrupulous factualness need not be incurred, it seems, if almost everyone who hears me shares most of my views. Existing among potential contradictors, by contrast, is healthy. It forces you to make the extra effort to check the veracity of your impression. It induces you to refine your perceptions to minimize the chance that where you see a zebra, there is actually a horse.

Paradoxically, the vastly more numerous and easily accessed sources of information the Internet offers may be worsening the natural tendency to know little of opponents’ ideas. The Internet allows one to obtain the comfort of a mere illusion of diversity of sources of information. It makes it possible to compose a dinner of six different courses of potatoes and to call it a well-balanced meal.

PS I think I am largely innocent of this vice. That’s because I make myself listen to National Public Radio for several hours every day. I subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly. Also, I sometimes glance at the New York Times when someone leaves a copy behind at the gym. It’s tough going, frankly but it’s good for me.