Category Archives: View

View 757 Tuesday, January 08, 2013

I have been working on getting the California Reader into print, and also on fiction, so I have been a bit slow with commentary here, and also I have let the mail pile up. I’ll try to do some of the mail tonight. As usual it’s all very interesting: this site gets some of the best mail on the Internet. Alas, sometimes the sender has to be anonymous even to the point of my not being able to quote directly, but mostly it’s good arguments. Not all in agreement with me, which is fine.

For many years I have paid dues to AFTRA. I don’t do much in the way of paid radio or television commentary or performances, but once in a while I do and AFTRA collects for me. Overall I think I am ahead in that I get paid for some guest appearances that otherwise would be gratis; I suppose I have missed some opportunities too. For the most part I haven’t paid much attention; AFTRA hasn’t been as activist as some Hollywood unions. Last year AFTRA merged with the Screen Actors Guild, and I got a union card that says ONE UNION SAG-AFTRA.

Now I have a card that lets me vote in the Oscars, and I have been getting DVD’s of Oscar nominated films. They have dire warnings against sharing them or letting them out of my custody, with the implication that the FBI will put twenty agents on the case if I do. I’m sort of against piracy to begin with so that’s no burden.

I have a moral problem here. I will not have time to watch all the movies that ought to be considered for the Oscars; is it fair to vote for ones I like when there are others that might be a lot better? Of course I will vote. I don’t read all the science fiction novels written each year, or even all those nominated, but I vote when I think there’s a work worthy of SFWA’s Nebula, and I’ll employ the same criterion here.

One of the movies we got was ARGO, and we watched it the other night. The opening propaganda about Mossadegh and the Shah is standard hogwash. I suspect that if Iran could have a fair election now, the Pahlavi dynasty would probably be returned to power; the Shah’s government was certainly authoritarian but it was also a great deal more tolerant than what replaced it. But if you ignore the introductory political massaging, it’s a good movie, and not all that far from the way things actually went down. They manage to build tension well even though everyone watching has to know that eventually they’ll get away with it. If you like caper movies you’ll probably like this one.

I’ve spent the day working on the California Sixth Grade Reader – this is the reader that was standard in California public schools when California arguably had the best public school system in the world – which I will put up with commentary shortly. I’m adding a few items to it: in those days California built it’s textbooks largely out of public domain, and some important works that would have been in it if they hadn’t been expensive can be included now. Also, there are some poems that readers would have encountered in fourth and fifth grades in those days, and some of them should be in here as part of preparation for works that are included.

It’s not all that much work, but it is a bit time absorbing. I’ve let this slide for years, and that’s not fair. Given the state of our public schools we need some decent reading materials out there. There’s a lot of Western Civilization that ought not be lost, but which is fading from our collective consciousness. This is one book that will help connect the next generation to those that came before. At some point the education system collapse can’t continue – if something can’t go on forever it will stop – but recovering from the rot that our public education system has become will not be easy.

It won’t be all that easy. In 1914 when this reader was standard in California, something like half the people of this country were involved in agriculture, farming, food processing, food distribution, and other occupations related to food production and distribution. Now that’s a much smaller number because the productivity of our agriculture and food processing system has so greatly increased.

People then moved from agriculture into manufacturing; but manufacturing productivity grows yearly – Moore’s Law directly affects electronics and computers, but that affects productivity of everything else – and fewer and fewer people are needed to do that.

Western Civilization once inspired people. Something needs to do that for the future. Perhaps that will be something new, but it seems important that we don’t throw away all our cultural heritage while we try to figure out what it is.

And it’s dinner time.

View 757 Monday, January 07, 2013

When I first heard the name Brennan as nominee for head of the CIA my failing memory brought up the image of L. Paul Brennan, the proconsul who disbanded the Iraqi Army and brought about the end of order in Iraq after the American conquest there. Fortunately it was my failing memory: John Brennan is a different Brennan entirely.

I doubt anyone else is as absent minded as I am, but just in case…

If the purpose of the President is to disengage from the Middle East, Mr. Chuck Hegel is probably the right one to do it. This appointment to Secretary of Defense has a number of implications. Logically it would mean we will concentrate on developing domestic energy supplies – real ones, not windmills and ground based solar panels – but logic is not always the best predictor of US policy.

(Regarding windmills and solar panels: they can be useful and effective for particular uses. But the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine at night, and you can’t use unpredictable energy sources for baseline power generation. 0

I am hearing that the President has told the Speaker that we no longer have a spending problem: the problem in spending was caused by health care mismanagement and ObamaCare will fix that. We still have a revenue problem; we need more taxes on wealthy income. We can use that money to reduce the deficit. There isn’t a spending problem, but there is a revenue problem.

There is a great deal to write about today, and I’ll get to it, but it’s time for a walk.

PROOF of Senility.  The luckless proconsul who disbanded the Iraqi Army was L Paul Bremer, not Brenner, as I should have seen when I looked it up with Google – I did, I did, I really did –  ah well. The horrible part of this is that while I could not think of any reason why he would do so, I couldn’t reject out of hand that the President might appoint Bremer to be CIA Director. Horrible.  I seem to run toward absent mindedness lately, but I can still get some work done.

It was a very good walk. Sable is lively and you wouldn’t know there is anything wrong. She limps a bit, but she was eager to go on further rather than turn back home; which is good for all of us. We’ve been cutting our walks short.

I am working on the introduction and commentaries on the California Sixth Grade Reader. This has been a project that took a great deal longer than I intended, but we are in the final stages. The book is public domain; I will put up the eBook edition for a low price. At one time this was perhaps the best Sixth Grade Reader in the United States; we’ll get to that in the introduction. Thanks to Rick Hellewell and John Vogt for getting it to the point where I can finish it, and particularly to Rick for bugging me to get it done. It’s an important thing to be published. It is infinitely better than any middle school reader in general use now that I am aware of. Perhaps there are some better in circulation among some communities but I don’t know of a public school reader that’s better. For that matter I don’t know of many that are competent or even acceptable. The next step would be to add some modern stories to the collection – after all this was published in 1914 – but any sixth grader will be better off for having read this before tackling ‘modern’ stories written for 7^th grade and above.

And I had better get back to work on it.

View 756 Friday, January 04, 2013

One reason for not doing breaking news is that unless you have original sources you have no idea of what is really happening. You can’t rely on journalism, or at least not on what you can find with standard on-line search engines.

Yesterday the news was full of reproaches for the Republicans for not voting in the Senate-passed bill for the relief of the victims of Hurricane Sandy. My local Fox News station had a live interview with Republican Representative Peter King denouncing the House Republicans for putting off the vote. Governor Christie was even more vehement. The Republicans were being petty and vindictive, they did not like the Northeastern states, and that’s why they were doing this to the victims of the hurricane. Usually conservative talk show hosts joined in the chorus. There were no serious reasons for not supporting the bill already passed by the Senate. It had to be pure meanness.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal informs us that the $60 Billion Relief Bill which the Republicans refused to vote on contained considerable pork:

Look at some of what was in the $60 billion bill: $150 million for Alaskan fisheries; $2 million for roof repair at the Smithsonian in Washington; and about $17 billion for liberal activists under the guise of "community development" funds and so-called social service grants. Far from being must-pass legislation, this is a disgrace to the memory of the victims and could taint legitimate efforts to deal with future disasters.

California Republican Darrell Issa had it right when he told Fox News that "They had the opportunity to have a $27- to $30-billion legit relief package, packed it with pork, then dared us not to vote on it."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323374504578219733538204830.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

A $9 Billion Relief Bill was passed by the House this morning. It is a pure relief bill without funds for Alaskan fisheries (one does wonder why Alaskan fisheries were in a bill for relief of New York and New Jersey), and the various pork allocations in the original bill will have to be voted on in a separate action.

Of course it’s possible that the Senate will restore the Bill to its full $60 Billion magnificence and send it back to the House along with a media storm of contempt for the House for being prejudiced against New York and New Jersey. I will not be surprised if that happens.

We have now gone over the fiscal cliff, sort of, and not gone there, sort of. The President got a tax raise on”the rich”, as well as a 2% tax raise on everyone with a job, all without having to make any spending cuts whatever. The US continues to borrow about 40% of all the money it spends. The budget deficit continues to grow.

Note that the tax increases the President demands are on income, not on wealth. The effect of this is to prevent anyone not already rich from having any hope of becoming rich, while not changing the fortunes of those already rich. Someone must pay for entitlements: let it be those who want to become rich, not those who already are.  If you are born rich you may be able to graduate from a major university without owing tuition debts. If you are not born rich, or your parents are on wages which might be high enough to pay your tuition were it not for the income taxes but cannot do it now, you will come out into the world with a lifetime debt. Unless you are part of the hereditary aristocracy. Many colleges allow free tuition for children of tenured faculty members.

Salve Sclave.

Note that there is an addendum to the “rape fatwa” story in yesterday’s view. That is, I put in additional material after the initial publication.

My local Fox News station seems to think that the most important story is one of a pornographic film made in about the year 2000 that features a young looking girl, still unidentified, who may or may not be under the age of 18 (which is the legal age of consent in California). Federal agents found from the video that this took place in the San Fernando Valley, and local police agents took over, along with an appeal to the public. The daughter of the older woman in the video was found. She claims that the girl, said to be 13 years old by a medical examiner from the pictures, was an 18 year old addicted public prostitute known to everyone in the neighborhood, and that her mother (also a prostitute) and the unidentified girl were hired by the man in the film. The news continues to break. Resources continue to be added to the hunt. There has been an arrest. The US Attorney for this area is preening on the air. The girl has not yet been identified, but the film was made in Encino. The Department of Justice is sparing no expense in this matter. A charge has been made against John and Jane Doe for conspiracy to make child pornography. They could get fifteen years. The US Attorney says he may even be able to get 30 years. He has an affidavit from a credentialed pediatrician who says the unidentified girl in the picture is 13 years old. An arrest was made in the middle of the night, and the investigation goes on, no expenses spared. The US Attorney preens. Stay tuned.

For those wondering, I am not in favor of kiddie porn videos, but I do not see this as the kind of crime that needs a great deal of attention from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency; it would seem to me there are far more pressing problems for the understaffed ICE than ten year old videos of a young woman ho may or may not have been victimized, but who has yet to be identified or come forward to complain about her mistreatment – and if she did come forward it’s a matter for the state of California where the crime took place. I have stories indicating that the current, on-going sex slave trade continues and there are insufficient resources to do anything about it.

There is also a search for a cartoonist who made a video sex film featuring a girl said to be 15 years old. The girl is a puppet. It is said to be important to find him, presumably for torturing electrons. Apparently that hunt is not one in which no expenses are to be spared.

We have a number of unsolved gang murders in Los Angeles. There is no word on the resources to be devoted to these matters. There are also accusations that the police have used their authority to obtain sex from undercover informants for letting them turn informant rather than being arrested and put into the system. One of the officers was said to show up at the woman’s apartment, drunk, at frequent intervals saying she had not done enough for him lately. The officers have been sent home with pay, although one is said to be in Las Vegas at the moment. The Police Union is upset that there has been an announcement that there is an investigation: the announcement is a violation of the rights of the police. After all these were drug addict prostitutes, and this has been going on for years, and you can’t believe these people, and Internal Affairs didn’t think they could be prosecuted, and…

Of course people make up stories about the police all the time, and it is important to protect the police from that sort of thing; but it is also important that flagrant abuse of authority be discouraged. Endless investigations with neither announcement nor charges don’t accomplish much.

In New York a court has ruled that a citizen who gave the finger to his wife while driving can sue the police who stopped him and arrested him on suspicion of domestic violence: the Court ruled that the gesture is an age old symbol of insult, and it isn’t illegal to make that gesture to your wife, so the police had no cause to chase him down and arrest him.

In Kansas the state is suing a male sperm donor who, apparently as a favor, donated sperm to a lesbian couple who wanted to have a baby. They have since separated and the birth mother is unable to support the child. The sperm donor father is now being sued for child support. He is, after all, the actual father of the child. This may or may not prompt some attention to the legal implications of same sex marriage. Had the lesbian couple been married, would that have transferred the obligations of fatherhood to the spouse who did not bear the child?

Isn’t following breaking news fun?

I confess that I have been depressed since the election. That is a mistake of course. The world goes on, and the principles haven’t changed.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336808/greens-attack-mariculture-robert-zubrin?pg=3

Some years ago I pointed out that there were good reasons to believe that causing plankton blooms could both reduce the CO2 atmospheric content and also increase the food supply. Apparently the Haida have discovered this and have used the technique to increase the salmon available (the tribe has traditional fishing rights). Apparently the professional greens do not like this. Think of that….

View 756 Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Salve Sclave.

The year end fiscal cliff madness has abated but hardly ended. The President has more money to spend, and not much in the way of restrictions on how to spend it.

The history of Western Civilization includes that period when Parliaments wrested the Power of the Purse from the King, and used that to temper absolute monarchy. We are witnessing another act in that drama; those who thought that it ended in 1688 or 1787 underestimated the staying power of the Old Kings. True, these kings have limited terms of office – so far. But they enjoy a great retirement. George W Bush may not have as elaborate a palace as Diocletian built for himself at Split, nor quite so large a bodyguard, but he hardly lives in discomfort. Clinton has little to complain about. And we are just moving into the new era in which the President shuts down entire cities so that he can enjoy a round of golf, while fleets of aircraft stand by at his beck and call. And when he rides in triumph he does not have to endure the whispered reminders that he is but a man.

The fiscal crisis will continue. Taxes go up. Debts go up. Spending goes up. Bunny inspectors get raises, and expansions of their authority. New regulations come forth.

Salve Sclave.

I have this:

Totally disgusting and totally Islamic.

Cleric Issues Fatwa Allowing Gang Rape of Syrian Women "http://www.radicalislam.org/news/saudi-cleric-issues-fatwa-allowing-gang-rape-syrian-women"

This is PURE Islam at its "finest". When will our head in the sand leaders realize we are fighting Satan’s Avatars on Earth in an ultimately genocidal conflict, theirs or ours. We don’t have the option of sitting out the game.

The link leads to a site with an obvious point of view, Google points to a number of other sites with much the same information. I have seen nothing to indicate that any other cleric has commented on this.

We are certainly engaged in a cultural war. Assuming moral equivalence between the Soviets and the West was a major factor in prolonging the Seventy Years war. Of course the cultural war between Islam and everyone not in the House of Islam has gone on for a lot longer than Seventy Years. Mustapha Kemal Ataturk sought to bring Turkey into the liberal secular West by forbidding Islamic rule in Turkey and enforcing toleration of non-Islamic religions. A secular state was built into the Turkish Constitution and the Army was charged with enforcing that. This is coming to an and, and Turkey is becoming more and more an Islamic state although my Jewish sources tell me that there are no problems for teen age Jewish tourists, at least in the largest cities, and Christian communities in Turkey continue to flourish.

Egypt after the fall of Hosni Mubarak has systematically eliminated the Christian communities that have existed in Alexandria and other Egyptian cities for centuries.

The West has cultural weapons of mass destruction which work on all cultures including our own. In the US it is still considered barbaric for the male members of a family to murder a female relative because she has been raped (and therefore dishonors the family), although it happens as do murders of girls who have abandoned an arranged marriage; but it’s rare enough here. Perhaps more frequent in other places in the West.

Of course it is not a cultural war if one side believes that diversity requires acceptance of everything.

This is not the first crisis of western civilization, nor the first time that much of the civilization has become libertine. Interestingly, Charles Murray finds that much of the American middle to upper class continues to practice the old virtues – monogamous marriage, hard work and ‘Protestant ethics’ work values, religious attendance and thrives; but in Murray’s words, they do not preach what they practice. They preach a form of extreme tolerance, but since more and more they live in communities isolated from the consequences of losing the culture war, they may not know just what the fruits of diversity may be.

But we remain in a culture war.

I suppose it is time to search for a new strategy for those who favor the old republic. Clearly the leadership of the nation does not.

We see the trends.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/special/oldissue.html 

I now have this:

Correction re "gang rape fatwa"

Dear Mr. Pournelle,

The story you just posted is based on a photoshopped tweet circulated by Syrian regime supporters, and picked up by a Lebanese satellite channel. On his actual Twitter account, the sheikh in question’s reaction was: "A tweet containing an evil fatwa attributed to me – and the liar was so ignorant that he exceeded the 140 character limit! I have denied it on Twitter and Facebook, yet Bashar’s channels are still spreading it!" (translated from:

https://twitter.com/MohamadAlarefe/status/285242319404421120/photo/1

). For an English-language retraction by one of the first English sources to spread it, look at http://www.alternet.org/world/exhibit-how-islamophobic-meme-can-spread-wildfire-across-internet.

The dynamics are not difficult to understand. Muhammad Al-Arifi is a vocal supporter of the Syrian armed opposition, so the Syrian government smears him (and, please note, a story like this is as much a smear in the Middle East as it would be in the US). The resulting smear happens to fit beautifully into the worldviews of groups all across the ideological spectrum – from lefty feminists in the case of AlterNet to right-wing Zionists in the case of RadicalIslam.org – so it gets published without much fact-checking. But interpreting the Syrian civil war, of all things, as part of some age-old conflict between Islam and the West is a recipe for serious misunderstandings.

Yours sincerely

Lameen Souag

Once again another reason for not covering breaking news.  On the other hand, some news is never broken although everyone in the intelligence community and for that matter the major press knows it. There is no definitive agreement on just who can issue a Fatwah. Interesting that you know all this while Snopes remains non-committal. Thank you.

It remains important fact that the cultural differences between the West and Islam are great. The West is expected to tolerate and forgive nearly any action taken in the name of Islamic honor; but the favor is not reciprocal either in the East or in the West. The culture war is important because at its heart is the most important question of politics: “Whom does the army obey?” The Great Bill of Rights and the Constitution are supposed to have settled that for England and the United States, and the various revolutions, risings, reconstitutions, new constitutions, changes of dynasties, more risings of the 19th and 20th Centuries are supposed to have settled the matter for the rest of the West. Clearly they did not.

Few men have ever given their lives for a standard of living, and most think it foolish to risk one’s life for someone else’s standard of living. Yet armies do exist and those who have soldiers who will dare all generally win against those who fight for money. But that is for another day and another essay. Meanwhile, the west continues to degrade, and Ortega y Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses looks more and more relevant.

Happy New Year.