Monthly Archives: February 2015

Iran as understood by Obama as understood by VDH

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Here is the conclusion of an article by Victor Davis Hanson on Obama’s Iran strategy which is near enough to my own. Yet once again he won’t say what he obviously thinks, that Obama is an agent for the Iranians and hopes to see them succeed and the West lose. His entire article is as good a short summary as you will find, but this is how it ends. He is explaining how things look from Obama’s perspective:

The Middle East is not a mess, but a place in a needed stage of transition as it frees itself from Western domination and a new order slowly emerges. To the degree that we need a large military, it is preferable to envision it as an executive agency for enacting social change without the clumsy impediment of Congress, especially in terms of race, women’s issues, and gender preferences. It can do the best work for stability abroad by shrinking itself. Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder and always a relative concept that Westerners pathologically insist is absolute. As far as the world abroad goes, China is a more authentic enterprise than Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, which are the products of U.S. Cold War nation-building in our own image, not of indigenous revolutionary self-creation. U.S. Cold War culpability — in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, South America, Cuba — is a burden that must be addressed through various means. The rules of nuclear proliferation are a Western construct. Israel is an abnormality, a Western outpost of capitalism and privilege where it has never really belonged, an irritant that should be treated like any other country as much as politically possible. Latin American grass-roots socialism is not Stalinism, but rather an extension of what Obama is trying to do at home.

I think the world now seems a chaotic place only if you assume that the Obama administration wished to be like its predecessors.

It is a largely politically ignorant constituency fed by a media actively hostile to America’s traditional interests. This is the coming of a dark age.

Forty years an Australian

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But also sixty-plus years a Canadian. That is the way it is with us migrants.

Today is the fortieth anniversary of my arrival in Australia. Very few decisions are as momentous as choosing to shift countries, even from within one part of the Empire to another. But there are few decisions I have ever made that I feel as content with, yet I also feel all of the loss of the closeness of family and friends.

I was also part of the first cohort who was required to get a migrant visa, the new law having come into effect on 1 January 1975. And the one part of my interview with the chap from the embassy I have always remembered was that, my having pronounced Nullarbor wrong, he corrected me on where the accent went, and then said that there are some who think the Romans might have been here, since ‘null arbor” is Latin for no tree. A fantastic coincidence if true, although only if it actually is an Aboriginal name.

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ has a sequel!

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Like “Gone with the Wind”, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was, until now, the only book by the writer of one of the great books of the century. And now, fifty years later, there is to be a sequel.

[There has been] the surprise announcement that To Kill a Mockingbird will have its long-awaited sequel: Go Set a Watchman, about the adventures of a grown-up Scout as she returns to Maycomb, Alabama, to visit Atticus. That a novel more than 60 years in the making would finally be published was the result, Lee said in a statement delivered through her publisher, HarperCollins, of some crazy serendipity: The book’s long-lost manuscript was discovered by her lawyer, the statement says, “in a secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird.”

What, me suspicious? But I hope it’s true. The only other remarkable part in the article for me was that Harper Lee did not think of herself as Scout, but as Bo. Don’t get much time for fiction nowadays, but this one I will read.

TURNS OUT I’M NOT ALONE: And since the announcement:

Author Harper Lee’s latest novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” is the No. 1 bestselling book on Amazon Wednesday after publisher HarperCollins announced on Tuesday its July 14 release date. . . .

HarperCollins, the world’s second-largest book publisher, plans to print 2 million copies, according to The Washington Post.

Iran – what is the Obama end game?

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Michael Ledeen poses the question:

Obama entered the White House with the intention of forging an alliance with our most dangerous enemy in the Middle East. That fact has to be the baseline of any serious analysis of our government’s policies.

Which takes us straightaway to the great unanswered question: Why does the president want this alliance?

And his answer, after having watched Obama deal with this issue for six years:

I don’t know.

Well, that’s just great! But you don’t need to know why he is doing something, only that he is. Since there is no longer any doubt about what he is trying to do, my question is, why is no one trying to stop him? My answer to this is the same as his was to the question he asked above:

I don’t know.

As to why he is behaving as he is, I have do have an answer. It is because he hates America. From Thomas Sowell just the other day:

In his recent trip to India, President Obama repeated a long-standing pattern of his — denigrating the United States to foreign audiences. He said that he had been discriminated against because of his skin color in America, a country in which there is, even now, “terrible poverty.”

And as much as he hates his own country, as would be expected of any associate of Bill Ayers, he hates Israel even more. Why that is so hard to understand after the past six years I really truly don’t know.

Rate cuts and unemployment

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You would think by now that the dismal economic recovery in the United States would alert others to what doesn’t work, but seems not. So down interest rates have gone to record lows at 2.25%. No doubt the banks will be browbeaten into passing the cuts along, but hopefully not.

This is all part of the Keynesian idiocies. Try to revive an economy from the demand side. Make it easier (cheaper) for governments to fund their debt. Deepen the misallocation of resources, and distort the economy just a little more.

And like with public spending itself, it has the superficial look of doing something positive that will allow those who do not understand how an economy works – voters say, or Treasury officials – to think something useful is being done.

As for how well our economies are responding to treatment, there is this from Jim Clifton who is the Chairman and CEO at Gallup in the US. This is someone who might just perhaps know something about surveys, and this is what he says about unemployment data in the US. We have discussed this before, but for a change it is up on Drudge. It’s not the kind of thing that opposition parties make much of either, since they one day will become the government themselves. But here is Jim Clinton pointing out the well-known statistical facts:

Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.

None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks — the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news — currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment. . . .

There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find — in other words, you are severely underemployed — the government doesn’t count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

The supposed recovery in the labour market he describes as lies. They are, but if it’s the Media Party lying, you are never going to know.

Obama and Iran

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This is an extraordinarily insightful article on Obama’s strategic approach to Iran. I wouldn’t have said he had one at all, but Michael Doran has tied all the strands together in a very compelling narrative, Obama’s Secret Iran Strategy. The lead-in quote sets out what is to come:

The president has long been criticized for his lack of strategic vision. But what if a strategy, centered on Iran, has been in place from the start and consistently followed to this day?

And the opening para sets the scene:

President Barack Obama wishes the Islamic Republic of Iran every success. Its leaders, he explained in a recent interview, stand at a crossroads. They can choose to press ahead with their nuclear program, thereby continuing to flout the will of the international community and further isolate their country; or they can accept limitations on their nuclear ambitions and enter an era of harmonious relations with the rest of the world. “They have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it,” the president urged—because “if they do, there’s incredible talent and resources and sophistication . . . inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power.”

That’s the aim, to turn Iran into a regional power in the Middle East. Once you see that, quite a bit of everything else falls into place, except how did he become president in the first place. Well written too, so it is easy to read from start to end.

AND NOW THERE’S THIS: The most dangerous man ever to be president. Obama wants to leave his stamp on history as the greatest strategic genius since, I don’t know, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Report: Secret ‘Talks About Talks’ Taking Place Between U.S. and North Korea, also about nuclear weapons. What a buffoon he is, an absolute buffoon.

He’s a truther and a cheat?

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He’s a truther and has a history of cheating! Pete Carroll, that is.

The right team won, no remaining doubt.

But he was also out-coached. The thought in my mind as the game wound down was why doesn’t Boston call a timeout? It was certain Seattle was about to score. Therefore, although there was virtually no time left, you would think they would want all the time they could grab to run a play or two themselves. However:

Seattle took over at the Patriots’ five with 1:06 remaining. After Jermaine Kearse’s amazing catch, Seattle had wasted a timeout after getting the play in late. So Seattle had first-and-goal with one timeout remaining.

Marshawn Lynch bulled to the one. Most everyone in the stadium expected Beilchick to use one of his two timeouts, to preserve time for a possible last-second drive.

Belichick just stood there, watching the clock run.

What was he thinking?

Maybe this:

If he calls timeout, then Seattle has the possibility of running three plays from inside the one, with their whole playbook available to them. They could run it, and if they didn’t score, run it again, knowing they could call timeout to set up a fourth down call if they didn’t score on third down.

By letting the clock run, Belichick prompted Carroll to worry about the clock. After the game, Carroll said he wanted to “waste a play” on second down. What he seemed to be saying was, his intent was to run the ball, but he wanted his second-down play, with time running down, to be a pass play, so if the Seahawks didn’t score, an incompletion would stop the clock and leave him with two plays and one timeout remaining.

Carroll also knew that if he ran on second down, the Patriots would know he would have to throw on third down, and Carroll probably wanted to avoid being that predictable.

Belichick, thinking a few moves ahead, probably anticipated Carroll wanting to pass on second down once the clock ran down, and sent a third cornerback onto the field.

When I talked to Patriots reserve cornerback Malcolm Butler last night, he said he was on the sideline for first down. He ran in when his cornerbacks coach yelled, “Goalline 3-corners.” So the Patriots had five defensive backs on the field for a play against a powerful running back from inside the one. In other words, the Patriots anticipated a pass on second down, even though Carroll was throwing on second down because he didn’t want to face a sure-passing down on third down.

That is million dollar coaching and then some.

And then there’s the most important question of all: Why Does Tom Brady Have a Menorah?

Maybe it was a gift from Brady’s brother-in-law Kevin Youkilis, the Jewish retired Red Sox first baseman who married his sister Julie in 2012. Maybe Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who, along with his late wife Myra, is known for his Jewish philanthropy, sent it over as a housewarming present (Kraft lives around the corner, and according to Leibovich encouraged his “fifth son” to move to the neighborhood). Maybe Gisele just loves Hanukkah.

Or to quote Tom Brady himself:

“We’re not Jewish,” Brady said when I asked him about this. “But I think we’re into everything. . . . I don’t know what I believe. I think there’s a belief system, I’m just not sure what it is.”

What an anti-terrorist law should look like

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This is what every country in the Democratic West must do if we are really going to preserve our freedoms. The article is titled, Canada’s New Anti-Terror Bill Is Everything You Hoped It Wasn’t, but whoever “you” is, it isn’t me. This is exactly what I do think is needed.

Under the broad anti-terror legislation tabled Friday, Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), will be given broad new powers to investigate and “disrupt” terrorist plots. Canada’s police services will be able to go after online terrorist propaganda.

When the bill was tabled on Friday afternoon, the Prime Minister vowed to prevent attacks like the ones that hit Ottawa and Quebec in October.

The powers included in Bill C-51 come with little new oversight or transparency. The core of the provisions will allow CSIS to disrupt attacks the organization believes may occur in Canada or abroad.

The government calls them “disruption warrants,” and they will let Canada’s spies do just about anything. According to the legislation those warrants authorize the spies to “enter any place or open or obtain access to any thing,” to copy or obtain any document, “to install, maintain or remove any thing,” and, most importantly, “to do any other thing that is reasonably necessary to take those measures.”

To use the new measures, once passed by Parliament, the spies will need to apply to a judge to authorize operations to stop a terrorist attack. The legislation doesn’t offer many caveats on that power, instead enabling the spies to take whatever measures they feel are necessary, in Canada or abroad. So long as a judge agrees, it’s all fair game—even if it’s illegal.

The word install appears to be an indication that CSIS should have powers to install malware and keyloggers, which the government has already moved toward legalizing.

On top of that, the bill offers no new oversight for CSIS. Currently, it is policed by the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), which has been lambasted for being woefully inadequate and staffed by political appointees.

This legislation does not show the terrorists have won. It shows what needs to be done to make them lose. It is like dealing with paedophiles. You do not give them freedom of speech on the zero chance that they may be in the right and the rest of society in the wrong. You just make anything they say in public, or put online, illegal, and punish them as hard as you can for any breaches whatsoever. Trust me, if they had the chance to shut you up, they would, they absolutely would. We need to do this while we still can.

Mudita

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This is from an article that talks a lot about Tom Brady’s training regime. In the middle of the article, there is this:

He shares with me a word he learned in Sanskrit, “mudita.” “It’s like, fulfillment in seeing other people fulfilled,” Brady says.

The kindest word I have seen, the opposite of envy, the irritation one feels in seeing other people fulfilled. Does such a word exist in English?

We are a world of tribes

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This story caught my eye: Departing From Country’s Pacifism, Japanese Premier Vows Revenge for Killings. It’s not that I don’t feel much the same, but still, this did make me stop:

When Islamic State militants posted a video over the weekend showing the grisly killing of a Japanese journalist, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted with outrage, promising “to make the terrorists pay the price.”

Such vows of retribution may be common in the West when leaders face extremist violence, but they have been unheard of in confrontation-averse Japan — until now. The prime minister’s call for revenge after the killings of the journalist, Kenji Goto, and another hostage, Haruna Yukawa, raised eyebrows even in the military establishment, adding to a growing awareness here that the crisis could be a watershed for this long pacifist country.

ISIS has gone around murdering its way across the Middle East and elsewhere, and everyone who has died has been a human soul. But what has upset the Japanese is that in this case, it was one of their own who died, and that has made all the difference. You can sing The International all you like, and our elites can think there is a world of peace and harmony in open borders. The reality is that we seem to identify with people like ourselves and less so with those who are not.