Lebanon, the new Israel

The destruction of Lebanon, even in areas sympathetic to Hezbollah, is very depressing.

One thing I think a lot people are missing is the fact that any time anyone in the middle east starts to show success under free markets, something always happens to bring them down. I have a theory that the whole Palestine/Israel conflict is really about the irritation that Israel causes by being so successful at providing for their citizens without oil. Let's face it. After Israelis, Palestinians are the most despised people in the Middle East. If Israel disappeared tomorrow, hardly anyone would pay the Palestinians notice. Totalitarian states keep the conflict going because they do not like the example that a free Israel provides.

This is why Lebanon is the center of a new conflict. Lebanon has always been much more advanced than other states. They have a rich history and a very progressive culture. Recently, Lebanon had made strides to return to this greatness. I read a story not long ago about how Lebanon was the "place to go" in the Middle East for Arabs. Allowed to go on much longer, Syrians and Iranians might one day ask themselves why not us? Why can't Damascus be like Beirut? Why can't Iranian schools be like Lebanese schools? And it's painfully obvious when the Lebanese do it without all the natural resources of the other states.

No star will ever be allowed to shine as long as totalitarian leaders are a majority in the Middle East. They simply will not allow their populations to ever think that the average Arab's trouble is due to anything other than "Jews".

Supply and Demand in the Terrorist World

It takes two sides to set a "price", one who will not sell for less and one who will not buy for more. The response by Israel was so predictable that it is incredible that the Lebanese would even pretend to be shocked. For the history of conflict in the middle east, Israel has always had to exact a heavier toll than is taken on them. Being smaller, they cannot afford to exchange equal blows. The level of retaliation is thus measured not proportionate to the initial attack but in terms of what price Israel must extract to keep such events from happening in the future. The ugly truth is that Hezbollah knew that Israel would respond like this. The Lebanese should ask themselves what purpose Hezbollah serves to them. What is the best way to preserve their own interest? To get Israel to not retaliate so hard or to get Hezbollah to stop?
If someone pokes a beehive and then runs away allowing the bees to sting children, who is to blame? Should we talk about how the bees' response was disproportionate to having their hive being poked? Or should we punish the person who knew what would have happened.
Israel kills 500 people for every 1 of theirs because that is the price Terrorists have set. By attacking a check point, kidnapping Israelis, Hezbollah has basically said that all that is worth thousands of Lebanese casualties. Israel will now attempt to raise that price so that it will be too expensive. My worry is that for Hezbollah, led by Iran and Syria, that the destruction of the entire state of Lebanon would not bother them in the least bit. For one, Lebanon's success shows how pathetic and backward their own countries are. In essence, this event serves many purposes for Iran and Syria, not least of all is distracting the attention of their population to how free states can provide better for their populations than totalitarian regimes.

PlayStation 2 Politics

From the Washington Post's Glen Kessler comes an armchair assessment of "missed opportunity" with Iran. His position is that back in 2003 the Iranians were in a frightened panic over our lightning take over of Iraq and were ready to deal on a whole host of issues, such as nuclear ambitions, ceasing sponsorship of terrorism, cooperation in Iraq and accepting Israel. Bush's team ignored the proposal containing the plea for talks thinking that the mad mullahs were on their last legs. Fast forward to 2006 and the situation has done a 180: the US is looking vulnerable and Iran's star is ascendant, bouyed by oil profits. With hindsight and not wisdom being 20/20, a whole lot of pundits who have an infinite optimism in a Iran's ability to suddenly change 25 years of behavior now say we missed an opportunity.

Chamberlain was urged and ultimately heeded a call to negotiate with Hitler prior to WWII. It actually did harm by allaying productive fear amoung Europe's power centers. You cannot expect a leopard to change his spots any more than you can hope that the scorpion, once on your back, will not sting you.

Regardless of what may have happened in the past, international politics is always driven by the present and the ambitions of the leaders in power. History is replete with examples of countries turning their backs on treaties once the situation which drove them to compromise has changed. This is especially true of regimes like Iran, that is, dictatorships bent on causing trouble. To think that Iran would not have cheated on any deal is tantamount to being completely ignorant of Iran cheating on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran may well have been ready to deal back in 2003 though it is sure that they were not serious about a complete change. However, with the mullahs in power, their ultimate goal is not peace but promoting their radical version of Islam along with its concomitant desire for regional domination. Once the oil revenue started rolling in, no deal advantageous to the US would have held water.

Swimming against the Grain

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/27/MNG1VDF6EM1.DTL

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/agNews_050719crETHANOL.xml&catref=ag1001#continue

Though his work has been vetted by several peer-reviewed scientific journals, Patzek has had to deflect criticism from a variety of sources. David Morris, an economist and vice president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has attacked the Berkeley professor's analysis because he says it is based on farming and production practices that are rapidly becoming obsolete. "His figures (regarding energy consumed in fertilizer production) are accurate for older nitrogen fertilizer plants, but newer plants use only half the energy of those that were built 35 years ago," he said. He also cited the increasing popularity of no-till farming methods, which can reduce a corn farm's diesel usage by 75 percent....
Hosein Shapouri, an economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has also cracked down on Patzek's energy calculations. "It's true that the original ethanol plants in the 1970s went bankrupt. But Patzek doesn't consider the impact new, more efficient production technologies have had on the ethanol industry," he said. Shapouri's most recent analysis, which the USDA published in 2004, comes to the exact opposite conclusion of Patzek's: Ethanol, he said, has a positive energy balance, containing 67 percent more energy than is used to manufacture it.

Inevitably, the government doesn't like to include all energy inputs when calculating net energy. They also tend to do unreasonable projections based on mass production. If there is a market for Ethanol, it will create itself. The fact that the government has to spend millions to support it indicates a problem. We must also remind ourselves that whatever savings Ethanol presents to us now, it is based on the presence and use of oil which has a larger return on energy input. At the price oil is now, it still is the better fuel...by far.

Mass Marketed Environmentalism

In our fast food society, the public's quest for easily-consumable, superfically-tasty tidbits isn't limited to burritos and hamburgers. Everyone seems infected. It only depends on what your desires are. In fact, those who would only rarely be caught at a fast food joint are sometimes the first to gobble up the empty substance and false advertising of what I call convenience environmentalism.

The truth, like good food, does not come unless you are willing to prepare and understand the process. How many of today's environmentalists have actually studied the subject? How many try to understand the complexity of the environment and more importantly the effects of man's economy on it. Very few.

Case in point, the mad rush for Hybrid Cars. Many economists have been questioning the value of these cars but finally a bonafide "lefty" has dared to speak the irrefutable illogic of these cars. Jamie Lincoln Kitman's article succinctly debunks the value of these environmental placebos.

Isn't it obvious that a gasoline powered car will get less miles per gallon when it has to haul around a couple of hundred pounds of extra equipment, not to mention all the energy that is lost manufacturing the "hybrid" part of the car? So shouldn't someone have asked the obvious question of where the break even part happens? How much creeping traffic do you have to be in to make it work? and most importantly, are there any alternatives that are cheaper and more effective?

It's easy to do the math. The "hybrid" part of the car adds roughly $6,000 to the sticker price (we're not even including the incentives that automobile manufacturers receive nor the added maintenance cost). Assuming a bad scenario of $4/gal, 20% fuel savings (a real stretch) and a base mpg of 30 (remember we're comparing similar style cars, more on this later). Guess what. It will take 270,000 miles before your hybrid car pays off. At 12K a year, that's 22.5 years. That is, it would never cover the energy required to "create" it.

The general public, especially the self-proclaimed activists, and, therefore, politicians don't really understand that fuel consumption is only a small part of the total equation. The energy that goes into a car includes all of the energy that goes into making it. That includes the people who drive to work to make that car. Your hybrid makes no sense if while you're saving energy, you're paying someone else to waste it.

Now let's talk about an ugly fact. For the most part, hybrid cars consume more fuel than comparable pure gasoline or diesel cars. They are really only worth it for those who spend a lot of time, and I mean a LOT of time, in stop and go traffic. Once you get on the highway, you're actually wasting fuel. The better alternative to buying a roller skate with a hybrid engine is to buy a more efficient, straight gasoline roller skate. Or to car pool. Or live closer to work. Or become concerned enough about the problem to demand real answers. Don't just consume what the mass market environmentalists want you to consume.

Or just buy the damned roller skate with the lawn-mower engine and don't worry that you'll have the same car as the single mom-waitress where you sometimes slum it. That's what this drive to hybrids is about. Elitism parading as concern for the environment.

The Scorpion and the Frog

The movie The Crying Game used the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog to illustrate the inevitable actions of bad people:

A scorpion asks a frog for help crossing a river. Intimidated by the scorpion's prominent stinger, the frog demurs.
``Don't be scared,'' the scorpion says. ``If something happens to you, I'll drown.'' Moved by this logic, the frog puts the scorpion on his back and wades into the river. Half way across, the scorpion stings the frog.
The dying frog croaks, ``How could you -- you know that you'll drown?''
``It's my nature,'' gasps the sinking scorpion.

Politicians are well served to heed this parable and treat with skepticism past scorpions. In that light, the recent actions of the Russians in the Palestinian/Hamas situation should not surprise anyone. Many are upset at the Russians and their duplicitous behavior in regard to Iran's nuclear ambitions but were willing to reason that they were merely supporting their economic interests. Were that the case, we might have no reason to worry. However, the Russians know very well that the money they may make off the Iranians will in no way compensate for the instability the Iranians bring to their muslim provinces. The attractive feature for the Russians is that the Iranians can present an even bigger drain on the West, especially the United States. Even while the Arabs are pushing Hamas toward peace, Russia is holding out hope for continued conflict.

The short sighted scorpion would view a regional conflict in the Middle East as a good thing. Russia has its own supply of energy. A war might give them the opportunity to revive the empire. Don't scoff. More than half of the Russians recently polled think that Stalin was a good leader and even more regret the loss of their rule over neighboring republics. Spend time in the Baltics to understand how the Russian's chaffe at the audacity of these former soviet dominions acting independently. That Stalin killed tens of millions of his own people is inconsequential to the scorpion.

And just because Communism no longer exists in Russia does not mean that the imperialistic tendencies of the Eastern Bear have vanished. Russia has a long history of imposing the empire on her neighbors long before Lenin was born. Destabilizing the West, especially Europe, was always a way of keeping their competitors weak and ripe for takeover. Moreover, Russia has shown a tendency to deal with her own scorpions for the chance of stinging in the future. Stalin's bargain with Hitler started World War II, a conflict Stalin knew would leave a vacuum of power in eastern Europe that he could walk into. A similar desire led the Russians to mobilize and help start the first World War. They've never minded conflict even to the point of their own ruin.

Is Congress More Dangerous than Dubai Ports?

I believe Thomas Sowell when he tells me that a group of people of average intelligence is better than one very smart person. I don't know if he has ever applied that to congress. Adding William F. Buckley's thoughts on random governance, I sometimes think that one person picked by lottery could do better than the "leaders" we have now.

Before I stray too much off the target, I have a solution. I'm inclined to think the problem lies with how people crave the spotlight and thus run like lemmings over every populist cliff. I propose that congressional types have to wear burqas and work in anonymity. Maybe the dutch could give us theirs after the ban.

The reaction of congress, the people and the media is pretty depressing to me. It's short-sighted and shows a recurring misunderstanding of how the world works. Where to start?

Number one, the UAE has been more supportive of our war on terror than France has. Which brings me to another point: if foreign "ownership" (which it certainly wasn't) is so dangerous, where will it stop? Should we stop foreign planes from potentially dangerous countries from entering US? If the UAE meant us harm, they could do more with Emirates Airlines, which I believe flies into 4 US cities...including New York.

Is this the same Congress that hardly blinked when the Chinese Military took over the Panama Canal? Talk about a threat to national security. Isn't this the same media that reluctantly had to cover the bribary scandal, by which the Chinese tried to influence our government to sell them more secrets, that is, other than the ones they had either stolen or already bought.

Arabs are taking control of our PORTS! Has anyone actually seen the CEO of the company? He's British. As I've pointed out in other articles and since I've actually visited Dubai and regularly talk with people there, most Arabs don't actually run anything. They hire other people to do it. It's something I regularly criticize Arab culture on.

Rather than hurt us, these types of investments help us as The Wall Street Journal reiterates ad nauseum. It's a global market. It really does exist.

This was purely a reactionary move based on prejudice. I'm all for sending messages to the Arabs showing how angry we are but this was the worst move to make. It merely shows how petty we are. Dubai Ports now comes off as being the bigger player, almost as an adult decides it's better to let the child stay up late rather than continue to hear all the moaning and crying.

Why did Congress do this? Why was the movement so bipartisan? Republicans did it because they feared losing their strong position on national security. The Democrats, many who tend to engage in multi-culturalist rhetoric, cynically tried to steal that position. The Republicans rather than lead the people and explain why this was okay to the American people dropped their principles and ran for the cliff.

Bush doesn't get it

All this rush to get off of dependence on foreign oil just shows how much of our policy is molded by public opinion and how much that public opinion is drawn to overly simplistic answers to very complicated problems.

The economy, whether you like it or not, is global. It does no good to decrease your consumption of foreign oil when none of your trading partners do the same. All you do is reduce your direct intake of oil, but in reality your actual intake includes the oil that all countries you trade with take in. Oil is a freely traded commodity. If you don't use it, the oil just won't go back in the ground. Your reduced demand will lower the price which in turn will entice someone else to purchase it. Typically that someone else will use the oil to make some good that they will sell to you.

This makes the whole excercise sound like a zero sum game. It isn't. You must include in the added cost for not using the oil. Renewable energy is nothing of the sort. It's sold that way to the public because the public is ready for easily consumed, pie-in-the-sky ideas. Solar panels must be built not from grass but from many different materials. They power they give you may appear to be free but that's because you haven't included in the cost of producing the panel in the first place. In actuality, solar panels do not return the amount of energy they consume in production. If they did, you'd see solar panel factories running on solar panels.

People. There ain't nothing like oil. The yield it gives is so much higher than anything else that nothing can compete with it (let alone provide the luxury it affords). It's yields are close to 300%. At 0% you break even and eventually die. Nuclear is barely over 10 and Solar and Wind are negative. One day oil may run out and on that day, we'll have to make do with a lot less than we do now.

Our best solution is to be as energy efficient as we can and keep looking for VIABLE alternatives. Look at it this way. The faster we use up Arab oil, the faster this problem with radical Islam will be behind us.

A Culture Stuck in the Middle Ages

Sometimes when I'm talking to my left leaning friends and I mention the level of advancement among Muslim countries and the need for reformation, I get the feeling that they find this very distasteful to point out. It isn't. In this life or death struggle with a group of people who have different values than us, we have to get a firm grip on how they view the world. Some say that Muslims are angry over occupation and other transgressions. This is the world view of Juan Cole, who I regularly berate. We can't accept this as an answer. Not unless we want to step back in time. Iran once again invites us back by bringing up how they have been harmed by Jews existing in the Middle East. Here is the foreign minister talking about the Holocaust: "Our friends in Europe stress that such a crime has taken place and they have stated certain figures that were actually suffered. We have no argument about that, but what we are saying here is to put right such a horrific event, why should the Muslims pay a price?" Exactly how is someone in Tehran affected by someone in Jaifa? Simply put, they chose to imagine the harm.

At one time in the Middle Ages, Christians imagined all kinds of insults done to them because of something that was rumored to have happened to other Christians. The Crusades were popular among the rable because of this very tribal way of looking at the world. A way in which you view all situations as conflict and you figure out which side you are on depending upon who's involved. Arabs have a saying about this. My brother before my neighbor, my neighbor before ....etc.

To allow Muslim nations like Iran to view the world this way makes conflict inevitable. Solving the Palestinian crisis will only allow them to move to the next grievance. Travel in the south of Spain and you will learn that there are plenty of Muslims who want the Alhambra restored. In general, conflict will not stop until all infidels are gone.

Christianity had to reform itself and then separate itself from temporal power. Until Muslims start demanding the same, this conflict will never end.