An Appeal to Public-Spirited Trolls in Every Country

from Wikipedia -

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,^[3]extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response^[4] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

We have just seen incoherently angry Arab mobs attack consulates and other Western institutions because of something they saw on the internet.  That makes them the mother lode of trollable newbies.  Unlike Danish newspapers, the internet is limitless in what and how much can be presented and, if one likes, presented anonymously.  The opportunities for trolling are limited only by the imaginations of the trolls.  Usually the most a troll can hope for is to provoke flame wars.  Here is an opportunity to provoke real wars.

What are a troll's motives?  Why do it?  Generally it is a smarmy destructiveness and manipulativeness coupled with a sense of superiority at having fooled and manipulated other people who didn't see that one's trolling remarks weren't sincere. 

Imagine the sense of superiority of getting literally tens of thousands of fools to go crazy in the streets because of what you made.  Anyone who has some computer skills and software can go platinum viral whenever they want.  It is not a pipe dream - it is available to do right now.  And it is the right thing to do.

The Muhammad (pbuh) trolling heretofore has been done accidentally and therefore without any real thought put into it.  The Danish newspapers cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) were on newsprint in a newspaper and were openly and completely traceable to their source.  The recent video by Nedoula Nedoula (pbuh) was similarly clueless.  It used real actors in a live action video.  The actors were recognizable people who were neither willing nor able to conceal the source of  the video, plus the thing cost thousands of dollars to produce.  Even less thought went into 'The Satanic Verses' .  It had the author's name and his publisher's name and address right on the book.   Stupid.

The way to do this is with animation.  The folks storming the consulates were not the intellectual elite even of their dungheap countries, so cartoons are the way to communicate with them.  One can create all sorts of characters and situations not available in live action, plus it is dead cheap compared to Nedoula Nedoula's hokey live action short which included paid actors, sets, costumes, cameras, and lighting.  Not necessary.  If one is rolling in cash one can buy Adobe Flash Pro for $700, less for students or teachers, or Anime Pro for $150, or, if one is planning on fucking up the world on a shoestring,, there is Anime Debut for $30.  Here one has both frugality and anonymity shrink-wrapped into the same box.

But why should an aspiring troll want to go to the trouble to piss off a bazillion Muslims and set off riots all over the Middle East?  The obvious answer is 'Because one can'.  But there is a deeper reason as well.  It needs to be done.  So long as the provocations are hard and expensive to do, they will necessarily be few.  If the illiterate and highly religious Muslim underclass come out to riot only every few years or even every few months, they will have the time and energy to do it.  

Even a few dozen trolls in several countries would soon inundate the net with videos featuring the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) or other subjects of Muslim sensitivity.  Soon, very soon, even the most pious and excitable of Muslims wouldn't be able to respond to all of them.  It would soon come to pass that the fellahin would come out to loot and burn for only the most ingeniously offensive videos.  The underclass of the entire Arab world would become the jury on "The Internet's Got Talent", "So You Think You Can Troll", and if one screwed up the anonymity, "Survivor".

Consider what happens among Christians and Jews when they see blasphemies against their religions, like Mapplethorpe's 'Piss Christ', a crucifix immersed in urine, a number of years ago.  There was an effort to get his grant from the National Foundation for the Humanities, or whatever it was, withdrawn.  There were loud public complaints against even that, on the ground that it was censorship.  But there is a vast distance between refusing to pay for 'Piss Christ', and personally murdering Mapplethorpe, which is exactly what would have happened had it been 'Piss Mohammed' (piss be upon him) instead.  The vast majority of Christians who read about and saw pictures of 'Piss Christ' shrugged, muttered something about Mapplethorpe being an asshole, and left it at that.  

Trolls can help Muslims achieve that same sort of weary tolerance that we in the West have long since come to accept.  The whole point of trolling is to locate someone's emotional buttons and to push them.  Here the Arabs have advertised in the headlines of every newspaper the location of their buttons and how to push them.  The Arab Street is paved with trolling gold.  Only when the button has been pushed hundreds of times will the Arab Street get over going beserk every time they see something they don''t like.  It should be the mission of every troll to produce one or several videos offensive to Muslims.  Trolls from countries not conventionally identified as the Great Satan or the Little Satan in languages other than English can be especially valuable here.

The Arab underclass would be better off if they stopped reacting that way.  The various Arab overclasses would be better off too.  And it goes without saying, so would everyone else.  It is the single most important thing one can do to make the world a better place.

A Longer View of the Middle East

[The Salafist flag - expect to see more of it]

There are two fundamental processes emerging in the Middle East - one is the emergence of a prolonged war between Sunnis and Shi'ites.  The other is the Muslim anti-Western reaction.

The war in Iraq has become a series of attacks by the formerly ruling Sunni minority against the Shi'ite majority.  In Syria, the war has become a sectarian struggle between the ruling Alawite minority and the Sunni majority.  Alawitism is a sect of Shi'ism.  The primary Muslim support for the Alawite regime comes from Shi'ite Iran.  The recent demonstrations in Bahrain were the Shi'ite majority protesting against the ruling Sunnis and the absolute rule of the Sunni emir.  The tensions in Lebanon are spread among the large Sunni minority and the even larger Shi'ite minority.  Both minorities are armed, the armed Sunnis are led by the Palestinians in their "refugee camps" and the Shi'ite Hezbollah militia, armed and funded by Shi'ite Iran.

The rivalry across the Persian Gulf is between the ultra-Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the great Shi'ite power, Iran.  Until the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein, Iran and Syria were the only Shi'ite governments in the world.  Now Iraq is the third.

The Shi'te part of the world is Iran, the eastern and southern parts of Iraq, and the southern shore of the Persian Gulf, Syria, and parts of Lebanon.  Except for Iran itself, everywhere there are Shi'ites there are also Sunnis.  West of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Persian Gulf, the Muslim world is Sunni.

The great Shi'ite power is Iran.  Its proxies are Syria and Hezbollah.  The two great Sunni powers are Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  Their allies are the emirates and sheikdoms on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf.  The struggles between these power blocs were until relatively recently submerged under the Ottoman rule, then British and French rule, and American influence (five of the Seven Sisters global oil companies are American).  Even afterwards, loyalties to the West or the Soviet Bloc loomed large.  Since the departure of Saddam Hussein, the chasm between Sunni and Shi'ite has grown ever larger and more contentious.

The arc of conflict runs through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and all the Gulf States including Saudi Arabia.   The Shi'ites though traditionally downtrodden ignorant impoverished masses, live over most of the world's oil reserves.  But only in Iran, and now in Iraq, do they control the oil under the ground they live on.  The various national states and the specifics of their politics merely obscure the fundamentals of the situation but do not greatly change it.

Turkey is also a great Middle Eastern power and technically Sunni, but it is relatively secular and, until recently, has been relatively aloof from the struggles among its Shi'ite and Sunni neighbors.

What is provoking the disorder throughout the Muslim world is the same problem we see in so many countries - how to deal with the West.  Almost everything we think of as modernity is seen, perhaps correctly, as both the fruits and instruments of Western cultural and economic penetration of Muslim countries.

A number of countries have gone through a similar series of stages.  The initial situation was to struggle to be rid of the British, French, and Italian colonial empires.  The British set sail for home from Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and Iraq in the 1940's and 50's.  The French bade adieu to Morocco, Tunisia, Djibouti, Lebanon and Syria about the same time.  Their departure from Algeria, which had a substantial French minority, was more traumatic and more violent.   Italy had been driven out of Libya, Ethiopia, and Somalia by the Allies during the Second World War.

For a long time, in most of these countries, independence meant little except a flag and local faces in the government instead of European ones.  Economic relations now included a local elite but were generally unchanged.  European and American companies controlled narrow specialized economies.  Whole economies were based on the export of a handful of commodities, like Egyptian cotton and dates, plus tourism, in other countries, only oil.  This neo-colonial situation, as it was called by its opponents, came under pressure with the rise of the Soviet Union's funding of revolutionary movements, particularly among military officers.  The 1960's and '70's saw the rise of leftist-nationalist military dictators across the Middle East - Nasser in Egypt, Gadaffi in Libya, Suleiman in Sudan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Hafez-al-Assad in Syria, Boumedienne in Algeria, Yasser Arafat among the Palestinians.

But each of these governments and their successor regimes got caught up in Cold War politics.  Each tried to milk both sides for as much aid and support as they could get.  In doing so they welshed on their nationalist commitments to keep foreign influence out and foreign capital out.  The classic example is the Aswan Dam, begun by the Soviets, completed by the US.  As the US and Europe slowly prevailed in the Cold War, Western economic and political penetration increased.  Western goods, Western businesses, Western clothing, production for Western markets, Western media - movies, television, music, and lately the Web and everything on it, spread out, primarily in the cities.

With the expansion of Western businesses and trade came enormous opportunities for baksheesh, corruption, bribery, "commissions", and so on.  The ruling elites grew wealthy, particularly galling in countries where everyone else was grindingly poor.  But such is the depth of Islamic devotion and primitive xenophobia, that the great masses of the people of these countries objected, not to the corrupt concentration of wealth, but to the foreign connections it was based on.

The dictators were generally relatively secular and gave only lip service to religions as politicians do in Western countries too.  Only Gadaffi made a real attempt to combine military rule and Islam and with mixed success at best.  As the dictators became old and their regimes more clearly associated not with rebellion against foreign influences and modernity, but with participation in it, they lost legitimacy in the eyes of the populations.  They had lost their raison d'etre.

Which led to the Arab Spring, the widespread overthrow of these dictatorial regimes.  We in the West confused what we would have hoped for, had we lived under these regimes, for what the Arabs actually wanted, which was quite different.  We assumed that they would want democracy and freedom because that is what we would have wanted.  When we say "corrupt" we mean taking of money in shady dishonest ways. To Muslims, "corrupt" means something more like, "impure, un-Islamic, foreign/infidel connected, alien to Islam."  Revolution was in the air.

Now let us think back to the time of the Russian Revolution for a lesson in how revolutions work.  The initial revolution, in March 1917, led to just what the Western countries wanted, a parliament - the Duma, run initially by the Constitutional Democrat party, the so-called Cadets, led by Alexander Kerensky.  Within months the Cadets found themselves out-numbered and out-maneuvered by the bigger parties, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the party of most of the peasants, and the Bolshevik Party, the party of the urban workers.  The new revolutionary government was soon overwhelmed by its own more radical elements and revolution broke out within the revolution.  The Bolsheviks staged a coup against the new, not-yet-well-established Kerensky government and won the ensuing civil war.  They remained in power for 72 years.

It begins to seem like much the same thing is happening in the Arab Spring countries.  The leaders of the initial revolutions were relatively secular people wanting liberal democracy, and moderate Islamists (moderate for Islamists) like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  They staged and won elections, that led to among other things, the election of Mohammed Morsi, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, as president of Egypt.  Provisional Western-oriented governments were constituted in Libya and Tunisia.

These governments sought to normalize relations with the West.  Implicit in this normalization was the assumption that the leaders of the moderate revolutions would assume the gravy train positions until recently held by the personnel of the deposed dictatorships.  Notably the assault on our embassy in Cairo came while a delegation of CEO's and diplomats from the West were there to discuss investment opportunities with the Mohammed Morsi government.  

Instead of Russia's Socialist Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, the Arab countries have the Salafists, puritans who want to resurrect the Eighth Century Islamic society and empire of the earliest years of Islam, of the time of Muhammad and the first four Caliphs.  In terms of how modern societies and economies work, they are effectively anarchists.  While their intention is to return to the imagined purities of the founders of Islam, in order to do it they would have to reject everything Western which includes almost everything that modern life is based on.  Shari'a would become the legal and social system.  Not least, the large populations of many countries, most notably Egypt, would starve without trade with the non-Muslim countries.  Without export markets for oil, Muslim countries from Borneo to Nigeria would wither economically.   

Yet the Salafists have unlimited legitimacy among have-not Muslims, the so-called Arab street, both because of, and in spite of, their eagerness for jihadi violence.  The Salafists represent Islam unsullied by a hated modern reality in which the great powers of the world are non-Muslim.  The willingness of Morsi's government to continue the peace treaty with Israel and the $1.2 billion in annual aid that goes with it, and the killing of the 25 Salafists in Sinai after they killed 16 Egyptian policemen, Morsi's willingness to maintain outwardly friendly relations with the United States, have all painted him to many Egyptians, as just another corrupt Westernizer, another Mubarak.

The ultimate aim of the Salafists is exactly what the critics of extremist Islam have said it is - to overthrow all the Muslim governments and to re-establish the Caliphate as it was in the Eighth Century when it ruled from India to Spain.  That the re-established Caliphate would soon overcome all the non-Muslim countries and establish a global Muslim state is regarded as a millennialist certainty.

But, as one newscaster, put it, Mubarak could and would have dealt with the revolutionary protests by simply shooting the protestors.  Having alienated the military by firing Field Marshal Tantawi a few weeks ago, Mohammed Morsi does not have that luxury.  Mohammed Morsi must either find a way to suppress the Salafists - good luck with that, or to mollify and co-opt them.  In any scheme to co-opt a powerful opponent, there is always the question of who is actually co-opting whom.

In the long run, the Salafists have an unlimitedly large potential audience and an endlessly fervent one.   On the one hand it is not clear how a bunch of irrational semi-illiterate religious fanatics can prevail against a sophisticated modern regime.  But if they can prevail, it would be at a time of transition when the regime is new and weak, not yet fully organized and entrenched.  Like now.

The Life You Save Could Be Mine...

http://www.heartrescuenow.com/

How to Help the Republicans (of Missouri)

[Fortunately this can't happen in cases of "legitimate rape"]

In case you haven't heard, Congressman Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for US Senator from Missouri,  has recently opined in response to a TV reporter's question about abortion in rape cases,

It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare.  If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

Which of course means that if a rape victim gets pregnant that is proof that it was not "a legitimate rape" and that the slut consented.  Curiously, instead of being grateful for learning about this previously unknown capacity of their bodies, women in Missouri and elsewhere were not amused. 

State and national Republican party leaders, from Romney on down, have called on Akin to withdraw from the Senate race.  Donors who have pledged money to him have withdrawn their pledges of about $5 million.  Even the Missouri Tea Party has called on him to withdraw.

Akin has withdrawn his remarks and apologized.  But apparently on the theory that if a rapist apologizes that he should still go to a jail, Missouri women aren't mollified.

Akin has refused to withdraw from the race.  He went on Sean Hannity's talk show, and was defiant and insists on running anyway in spite of  Hannity, ever the dutiful Republican stooge, insisting he shouldn't.

The sea-change is staggering.  Akin had been polling substantially ahead of incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskell and figured to roll on into the Senate so long as he didn't do anything stupid.  Which he did.

Which creates a wonderful situation.  All that now stands between the Democrats and winning the Missouri Senate seat is Todd Akin's refusal to withdraw.  If the Democrats can't win against a candidate who is an apologist for rape and who has been disowned by his own party, by the Tea Party, by Sean Hannity/Fox, and whose money has been withdrawn, they don't deserve to win.

I think we all should take this opportunity to help out.  Send an email to encourage Todd Akin to stay in the race.  Write to him and speak of not letting down the people of Missouri who voted for him.  Mention that the voters, not the media, should choose the nominee.  Assure him of your support.  Avoid all sarcasm.  Do not parody right-wing phrases like "elite liberal media".  Just say "media".  Keep a straight face.

https://forms.house.gov/akin/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm

Some people have assumed I am joking.  I am not.  If we can keep this fool in the race we can pick up a US Senate seat just like that.  Do it.  Write and encourage him to stay in the race.


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It's a gibbon, not a monkey

Time Lapse of the Earth from the International Space Station

[click four outward-pointing arrows for full screen]

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Why does Obama's foreign policy mirror the Arab League's?

[President Obama's prescription for Middle East negotiations just happens to be the same as King Abdullah's]

One indication of who the President's constituency for the policy he announced in his May 21, 2001 speech in the White House might be is that it is identical with the so-called Saudi peace plan of 2002 which was endorsed by the Arab League Summit of 2002 in Beirut and again by the Arab League Summit of 2007 in Riyadh.    [See yesterday's blog here.]

These are the "fair-minded neutral parties" who have twice invaded Israel, in 1947 and 1967, with the intention to destroy her.  The President has picked a side and it is not Israel's. 

Having adopted the Arab League's plan as his own, it is hard to describe the situation as other than that the President has sided with the Arabs against Israel.  That is a reversal of  American Middle East policy for the past 60 years, a reversal of the policy of every President since FDR.

Calling this President a radical in domestic policy is wildly, unforgiveably, wrong, but calling him a radical for reversing a long-standing pillar of American foreign policy without debate, while denying he is doing it, is radical - and devious.

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The President's Remarks of May 21, 2011 and why I am not voting for him

[a one-term President?]

This is an excerpt from a longer speech by Barack Obama.  Source is the White House website, whitehouse.gov.  Emphases are of course mine.

We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state.  And the duration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness of security arrangements must be demonstrated.

These principles provide a foundation for negotiations.  Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state; Israelis should know that their basic security concerns will be met.  I’m aware that these steps alone will not resolve the conflict, because two wrenching and emotional issues will remain:  the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. 

Now, let me say this:  Recognizing that negotiations need to begin with the issues of territory and security does not mean that it will be easy to come back to the table.  In particular, the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel. 

How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist?  And in the weeks and months to come, Palestinian leaders will have to provide a credible answer to that question. 

The United States and our Quartet partners and the Arab states will need to continue every effort to get beyond the current impasse.  

[End of quote]

Note that most of what this President said were generalities but not proposals for any action.  

The concrete proposals he made for doing something were 
a) a return to the 1967 lines, 
b) phased withdrawal of Israeli forces, and 
c) that negotiations be under the aegis of the Quartet (the US, the EU, Russia and the UN) and the Arab states.

One indication of who the President's constituency for this policy might be is that it is identical with the so-called Saudi peace plan of 2002 which was endorsed by the Arab League Summit of 2002 and again by the Arab League Summit of 2007.    These are the "fair-minded neutral parties" who have twice invaded Israel, in 1947 and 1967, with the intention to destroy her.  The President has picked a side and it is not Israel's. 

Having adopted the Arab League's plan as his Middle East policy, it is hard to describe the situation as other than that the President has sided with the Arabs against Israel.  That is a reversal of the American Middle East policy for the past 65 years, a reversal of the policy of every President since FDR.

Calling this President a radical in domestic policy is wildly, unforgiveably, wrong, but calling him a radical for reversing a long-standing pillar of American foreign policy without debate, without even admitting he is doing it, is radical - and devious.

Two questions about a return to the 1967 lines - 

Why?  The Green Line, the demarcation line of the West Bank is not and never has been a border. It is merely the armistice line between the Royal Jordanian Army and Israeli forces in 1948.   The Palestinians weren't even involved.   The line was erased when Israel defeated the Arab invasion of 1967.  Why should that be the border?

More than 350,000 Israelis live in the West Bank.  How would driving them from their homes not be ethnic cleansing?  Wouldn't it be just as good a solution to drive the West Bank Palestinians out of their homes instead?  If expelling the West Bank Palestinians  would be ethnic cleansing, why wouldn't expelling West Bank Israelis also be?  Are Palestinians born with more rights than Israelis?

A “contiguous” Palestinian state - 

The two parts of Palestinian controlled territory, Gaza and the West Bank, have Israel between them.  Any corridor of land that connected them would necessarily divide Israel into two non-contiguous parts.   It would appear that this President believes that a future Palestinian state has a right to be contiguous, but Israel does not.

Presumably this is of a piece with the President’s notion that expelling Palestinians or anyone else from their homes en masse is ethnic cleansing, but expelling 350,000 Israelis from their homes somehow is not.

"Phased Withdrawal" -

Gaza - 

There has been a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces ever since the Oslo Accords in 1993.  Israel completely withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005.  Since then Gaza has been seized by Hamas, a fundamentalist Muslim group listed as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.  So far from getting peace and security in return for its withdrawal, Israel has been bombarded by tens of thousands of rockets launched from Gaza and aimed at civilians in its southern towns. 

To use this President's own language, "the effectiveness of security arrangements" has already been demonstrated and found wanting.  Gaza had been under Hamas rule for six years when the President made these remarks.  

No one living in southern Israel can see the President's policies as based on facts.  Clearly the President’s intention is political, not rational.  What is the constituency for whom the President’s remarks are intended?  It is certainly not Israel nor its friends.  

West Bank - 

There have long-since been phased Israeli withdrawals from large areas of the West Bank as well, particularly from heavily populated areas since the 1993 Oslo Accords.  This resulted in repeated suicide bombings in Israeli market places, on buses, at crowded restaurants, and even at family gatherings in which dozens of people were murdered.   

Having thus demonstrated the "effectiveness of security arrangements", the Palestinians and their friends abroad complained bitterly when Israel built a security barrier to funnel Palestinians seeking to enter Israeli-populated areas through checkpoints.   Since the completion of the security barrier, suicide bombings in Israel have almost stopped.  That is, "effectiveness of security arrangements has been demonstrated", not by cooperation with the Palestinians, but in spite of them. 

Palestinian intentions to destroy Israel - 

The President aptly phrased the issue as a question.  And supplied no answer.  He left it to the Palestinians to answer.  So far the answer from Hamas has been mass rallies in Gaza in which thousands of Palestinians shouted in unison, "Death to the Jews!" 

The answer from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has been to honor and give subsidies to the families of suicide bombers who murdered Israelis.  The town square in the city of Jenin has been named for a suicide bomber who murdered six Israelis. 

Finally, our Quartet Partners - 

One of our Quartet Partners, Russia, is currently defending the wanton massacres of the Syrian population by the regime of the dictator Bashar Al-Assad.  Moscow has stubbornly cast UN veto after UN veto to defend its client regime.  How much morality and justice is to be expected from Moscow is self-evident from that fact alone.   

A second member of the Justice League Four is another figure out of a comic book, the United Nations.  The General Assembly has over the years passed literally dozens of resolutions condemning Israel for everything and anything and for nothing.  During the same period, persistent Muslim regimes' support for terrorist attacks on Israel, Spain, Britain, Australia, Russia, the United States, the Philippines, Kenya, Tanzania, Argentina, and many other countries have gone literally without remark at the UN.   

The United Nations itself maintains the UNRRA, an organization devoted to keeping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps for decades.  The UNRRA has stubbornly resisted all attempts to resettle the now fourth-generation "refugees" of a war that ended in 1948. 

The United Nations sponsored the scandalous Durban I and Durban II conferences which dropped the gossamer-thin pretense that the endless campaign against Israel is based on anything but hatred of Jews.  Their Jew-hatred became so explicit and reached such extremes that the UN official who organized the conferences was obliged to disown them.  The United States, Canada, and all the Western European countries walked out in protest.  Neither Russia nor China did. 

That is the UN and Russia.  It is not clear on what basis this President considers the Arab governments to be legitimate arbiters of peace between Israel and her enemies.  They ARE her enemies.  And that is where this President got his policies.  

Every word and every fact I have brought up here was well-known to President Obama as he delivered his remarks in the White House briefing room on May 21, 2011.  There is no reason to believe he has altered any of his positions. 

No one who loves peace or who loves justice should vote for his re-election.  I won't and you shouldn't.



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More Zionist Plots

[Egyptian fntelligence forces in action (don't tell me you're so old you know who these bozos are)]

According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal the President of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, fired his Chief of Intelligence, Murad Muwafi, today.   It seems that "Islamic militants", newspaperese for Hamas terrorists, murdered 16 Egyptian policemen in Sinai near Egypt's border with Israel while the Egyptian border police did nothing to prevent it or even to defend themselves because no one had told them the attack was coming  

The IDF, the Israel Defense Force, had warned the Egyptian intelligence ministry  well in advance that the attack was coming. Intelligence Chief Murad Muwafi decided to do nothing about the warning both because it came from Israel and because he was sure that "no Muslim would harm a fellow Muslim during Ramadan."   In spite of his title and office, apparently Muwafi was not strong on intelligence.

Which creates a lovely situation in Egypt.  President Morsi is the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood which is devoted to worsening relations with Israel as much as they can short of abrogating the Camp David peace treaty.  Abrogating the treaty would cost Egypt its annual $1.2 billion aid package from the US so Morsi's policy has been to come as close to breaching the treaty as possible short of the US government cutting off aid.

Now President Morsi is in the position of having had 16 of his policemen massacred by their fellow Muslims in spite of the best efforts of the Zionist enemy to save them.  And massacred because of the incompetence of his government.  And the particular form of the incompetence was in distrusting the Jews and trusting Muslims instead.  

And it is all public knowledge because of the internet and cellphone connectivity among the Egyptian public which is what put Morsi into power in the first place.  It is graceless to gloat over Morsi's discomfiture, but that is just the sort of schmuck I am.

I think the whole episode has to have shown President Morsi, with life and death concreteness, the value of the peace treaty with Israel.  The education of President Morsi may have come at the cost of 16 Egyptian lives, but it bodes well for the prospects of continued peace between Israel and Egypt under the new regime.

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Harry Reid is a dirty liar

[Harry Reid caught fibbing about Giapetto's tax returns]

  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a dirty liar.  The head of the Republican National Committee, Rience Priebus, publicly called him that.   And for good reason.  Reid falsely claimed on the floor of the Senate that Mitt Romney has not paid taxes in 10 years.  Prominent Republican Senator Lindsey Graham more temperately said that Reid "was making things up" and that he had "lied" in claiming Romney had paid no taxes in 10 years.  

Since Harry Reid is a major figure in the Democratic Party this is a huge opportunity for the Republicans to embarrass the Democrats.  They can easily prove that Reid is a liar by releasing Mitt Romney's tax returns for the past 10 years.

Go ahead, Republicans, take Reid down.  Release Romney's tax returns.

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Letter to Larry

[Ceratopsians grazing in front of Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, Alberta.  They are scary but harmless, but do NOT get between a mother and her calf or she will show you what those horns are for.]

Butte to Prince Rupert and then to Newfoundland and the Maritimes is a loooooong way.  7K miles may be underestimating if you do any exploring along the way.  Speaking of provisional speculations insensibly morphing into plans, setting out to see all of Canada in a summer can very well suck you into seeing how far you can drive every day.  I guarantee you the inside of your car is nowhere near as interesting or beautiful as Canada, which, to some tastes, is the most beautiful country on the planet.

I remember driving the backroads of northern Alberta (south of the permafrost) and coming up with a hallucinatory theory that heaven is not in the sky but in certain locations on earth.  They aren't publicized and one can only find them by stumbling on them inadvertently.  If they became well-known they would be swarmed with tourists, motels, souvenir shops, gas stations, crowds, and fast food.  In short they would become hell, which is also here on earth.  Some parts of heaven on earth are protected by their elevation or remoteness or the policies of the US and Canadian national park systems.  Other parts are protected in part by their remoteness and by the fact that most people take the main roads and by the fact that most people can't see what's in front of them, or it just doesn't appeal to them.  Heaven may be an individual phenomenon.  I understand neither theology nor psychology, but like philistines everywhere, I know what I like.  

Plumas County on the east side of the Sierra crest is such a place.  So is northern Alberta.  It is big family wheat farms where the farmer, the family, and one or two farmhands work the place themselves.  Here in California agriculture is conducted by corporations controlled by much bigger corporations like Safeway and Lucky.  The fields are worked by peons so alienated from their work and their situations that they are kept literally illegal.  The difference between that and prosperous Alberta farm families working their own land is staggering.  

You have long since heard my rant about the ignored-but-obvious connection between the numbers of illegals and the US policy of penalizing the illegals rather than the employers.  Canada penalizes employers who hire illegals so there are no jobs for illegals and therefore no illegals.  There are plenty of legals, usually educated Indians, Chinese, and Pakistanis in Vancouver, just no illegals.

Among the vast expanses of wheat are a patchwork of non-arable land left as large stands of poplar and pine, dotted with ponds.  These are home to the occasional moose or bear or skunk which wanders onto the road.  The cars are few and the drivers respectful so the local tetrapods wander as they will.  The towns are small - a diner, a dying motel, in the larger ones a gas station, and a few stores run by people clearly doing it as a part-time job because they can't stand the thought of moving to Calgary.  Occasionally there is a small lumber mill or a horse farm with pintos.

If you are in a hurry to get somewhere, you will miss this.  Worse, you might see it and not get it.  Slow down and wander.  

The bad thing to avoid, (I assume you know this but just in case, I will warn you anyway) is Canada Immigration.  They are unmitigated assholes, AND they have real authority over your life.  They were, with few exceptions, the only genuinely nasty people I met in Canada.  If you tell them you want to "see Canada" or "wander" or whatever, they will shut you down and give you an impossibly short visa.  I suggest strongly that you have a printed-out itinerary and dates when you plan to be in each place.  

Google Prince Rupert so you can specify what tourist attractions you plan to see there.  Google Prince George and do the same, and so on, all the way across the country, assigning dates to each place, and including the tourist attractions on your itinerary.  It makes no difference whatever whether you actually do any of the things you said you would do or even go to the places you said you would go.  But the bastards (many of whom are thoroughly unpleasant young women) will gleefully cut you off at the knees if you don't specify all that crap for them.  Generalities will NOT work.  You must have a detailed list and dates.  Invent a cousin in Halifax.  Visiting a former professor is definitely the right thing to tell them about.

I hardly need warn you, you must have NO DOPE in your car when crossing the border in either direction.  As I understand it, if they find marijuana they will detain you for several hours and then turn you back and never let you into Canada again as long as you live, which is far worse than a minor bust would be.   The search is more thorough than going into the Soviet Union used to be.  Israel puts some serious searching on your luggage too but they aren't looking for recreational drugs.  The US border patrol does a thorough search as well.  I suppose this is all since they caught some assholes trying to cross into the US from Canada for the purpose of blowing up something in New York a few years ago.

[Rita and I have an enormous bulldog named Oliver who is sleeping on the floor as I write.  As bulldogs will, he just cut an enormous fart so I have had to pause and open the windows.]

Anyway, consider going slower and covering less ground.  I don't know if you have any interest in paleontology, but even if you don't, the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, about 80 miles northeast of Calgary, is by a large margin bigger, better, and more interesting than whatever is the second best dinosaur and giant-extinct-mammal museum in the world.  Definitely worth a day of your life.

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The Roberts Decision

The Roberts Decision as it has come to be described, seems to have undone the ability of even the most distinguished legal analysts to explain even the basics of how legal decisions work.  An appellate decision contains a holding, which is law, and dicta which are not law but may be persuasive in pleading other cases, and obiter dicta, which is a distinguished form of ranting and is neither law nor particularly persuasive in pleading cases.

In this case the holding was that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional.  That's it.  That was the holding.  The dicta is that it is constitutional because it is a tax rather than a penalty and thus within Congress' power to impose taxes.  The obiter dicta is everything else.

There was a second holding limiting the power of the federal government to coerce states by withholding only partially related federal money from them as punishment for non-participation in a particular program.

The rest of what everyone has said and written about the case is not about the holding and not about the law.    Everything everyone else wrote about it, including Roberts, is just obiter dicta, conversation.

But it was a big case, both controversial and political.  So everyone in the media had to hash it over and chew on it and opine.  So much was said and much was written.  But about very little.

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Chick-Fil-A?

[The Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, an author of Proposition 8]

The homosexuals and their partisans have good reason to be wroth with Chick-Fil-A, a chain of fried chicken fastfood-eries.  The CEO of the company is a hard-core religious zealot opponent of homosexual marriage and presumably of other forms of acceptance of homosexuals as full members of society, such as holding office, serving in the military, and so on.


There have been declarations of boycott, picketing, and anathema, usually reserved for only the most defiant of political enemies.


There was a similar but more muted reaction to the Mormon Church for its sponsorship and funding of Proposition 8, in which California voters declared that only heterosexual marriages were valid.  


Considering that Chick-Fil-A is a moderate-sized fast food corporation whereas the Mormon Church is a colossus by comparison, the relative silence about the homophobia of the Church of Latter Day Saints seems odd.


Even odder is the deafening silence about the identical condemnation of homosexual marriage by the local Catholic Church.  The Bishop of Oakland, Salvatore Cordileone, was recently promoted to Archbishop of San Francisco.  


The new Archbishop of San Francisco is not just a supporter of Proposition 8, he was one of its principal authors.  He said at a recent press conference, "Marriage can only come about through the embrace of a man and a woman coming together," he said. "I don't see how that is discriminatory against anyone."


Compare the fulminations, boycott, and picketing against Chick-Fil-A with the pro forma denunciations but nothing else against the Catholic Church in San Francisco.


The nearest Chick-Fil-A restaurant is in Santa Rosa, 56 miles away.  On the other hand, more than half the population of San Francisco identify as Roman Catholic.  


Could it be that the leaders of the homosexual marriage movement are more willing to vilify homophobes with little or no power and less willing to confront those with lots of power?  It would seem so.


The national and congressional elections have shown us time and again that people involved in national politics are shameless self-serving weasels.  The near-passes given to the San Francisco Archdiocese and the Mormon Church as compared to the rabid attacks on Chick-Fil-A, tells us that local progressive politicians are no better.  


It is hard not to find the disparity of treatment in the difference between the power of the antagonists.  Chick-Fil-A is a modest-sized corporation with no stores in San Francisco.  The Roman Catholic Church has 400,000 adherents in San Francisco.  


I believe the practice of beating up someone small and weak, while avoiding someone big and powerful pretty much defines the bully and coward, no?






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