More May Be Better

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“More may be better” was the title of an article published back in 1981 by the redoubtable political scientist Kenneth Waltz. Going against the prevailing wisdom, Waltz argued that nuclear proliferation might not be all bad. Nuclear weapons, he wrote, had prevented the US and the USSR from going to war against each other; as, by all historical logic since the days of Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC, they should have done. Instead they circled each other like dogs, occasionally barking and baring their teeth but never actually biting. Such was the fear the weapons inspired that other nuclear countries would probably follow suit. To quote Winston Churchill, peace might be the sturdy child of terror.

Since then over thirty years have passed. Though Waltz himself died in 2013, his light goes marching on. At the time he published his article there were just five nuclear countries (the US, the USSR, Britain, France, and China). Plus one, Israel, which had the bomb but put anybody who dared say so in jail. Since then three (India, Pakistan, and North Korea) have been added, raising the total to nine. Yet on no occasion did any of these states fight a major war against any other major, read nuclear, power.South_African_nuclear_bomb_casings

And how about Iran? First, note that no country has taken nearly as long as Iran did to develop its nuclear program. Started during the 1970s under the Shah, suspended during the 1980s as the Iranians were fighting Saddam Hussein (who had invaded Iran), and renewed in the early 1990s, that program has still not borne fruit. This suggests that, when the Iranians say, as they repeatedly have, that they do not want to build a bomb they are sincere, at least up to a point. All they want is the infrastructure that will enable them to build it quickly should the need arise. That is a desire they have in common with quite some other countries such as Sweden, Japan, and Australia.

Second, the real purpose of the Iranian program, and any eventual bomb that may result from it, is to deter a possible attack by the U.S. Look at the record; one never knows what America’s next president is going to do. There is a distinct possibility that another Clinton, who attacked Serbia, and another Bush, who attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, will occupy the White House from 2016. Thus caution is advised. The Mullahs have no desire to share the fate of Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Khadafy. The latter’s fate in particular gives reason for thought. In 2002-3, coming under Western pressure, Khadafy gave up his nuclear program. As his reward, no sooner did the West see an opportunity in 2011 than it stabbed him in the back, waged war on him, overthrew him, and had him killed. Leaving Libya in a mess from which it may never recover.

Third, Israel is in no danger. Alone among all the countries of the Middle East, Israel has what it takes to deter Iran and, if absolutely necessary, wage a nuclear war against it. What such a war might look like was described in some detail a few years ago by Anthony Cordesman, an American political scientist and former member of the National Security Council. His conclusion? The difference in size notwithstanding, the outcome would be to wipe Iran, but not Israel, off the map.

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Netanyahu has Iran in his head and effectively used it to win the elections. Yet truth to say, no Iranian leader has ever directly threatened Israel. To be sure, neither Iran’s presidents nor the Mullahs like the Zionist Entity. They do not stand to attention when Hatikvah is played. They have even had the chutzpah—how dare they?—to deny the Holocaust. Yet all they have said is that, if Israel attacked them, they would respond in kind. Also that “rotten” Israel would end up by collapsing under its own weight. All this serves to divert attention away from their real purpose. That purpose, as I just said, is to deter the U.S. And to draw as much support in the Moslem world as verbal attacks on Israel always do.

Finally, morality. Are the Iranians really as bad as some people, especially Netanyahu who would like to fight Teheran to the last drop of Western blood, always claim? If so, why did Iran sign the non-proliferation treaty whereas Israel did not? During the three and a half decades since the fall of the Shah the U.S has waged war first against (or in) Grenada; then Panama; then Iraq; then Serbia (in Bosnia); then Serbia again (in Kosovo); then Afghanistan; then Iraq again; then Libya. In many of these worthy undertakings it was supported by its allies which, like jackals, joined in the feast.

The Iranians are not angels—far from it. They have meddled in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, as they still do. They have also assisted terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. But everything is relative. They have not waged large-scale warfare against any other country. Let alone bombed it or invaded it.

And that, in the final analysis, is all that matters.

Just Published! Equality: The Impossible Quest

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Martin van Creveld, Equality: The Impossible Quest, Castalia House, 2015.

Reviewed by Vox Day.

81h5u+UVSQL._SL1500_All over the Western world gaps between rich and poor are widening—or the headlines say. Nobody has done more to spread this view than the French economic historian Thomas Piketty whose best-selling volume, Capital in the Twentieth Century, not only documents the process but represents one long call for reducing the gaps so as to create a more equal society. But what is equality? Who invented the idea, when, where, and why? How did it develop, grow, mature, and interact with other ideas? How was it implemented, and at what cost? Are we getting closer to it? What is the promise? What is the threat?

There is equality before God and equality here on earth. There is natural equality and the kind of equality that society creates. Some people, incidentally, want to extend equality to animals and plants as well. There is equality of body and there is equality of mind. There is economic equality and there is equality before the law. There is civic equality and there is political equality and there is equality of opportunity and there is equality in front of death. There is equality among individuals and there is equality among groups, nations, and races. In Aldous Huxley’s celebrated book, Brave New World, this truth is held to be self-evident that men (and women, though Huxley does not say so) are equal in respect to their bodies’ physico-chemical makeup but in no other way. The list goes on and on.

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Equality: The Impossible Quest considers all these problems and then some. It begins by considering our primate relatives as well as various historical societies that never heard of equality. Next, it traces the development of the idea and its implementation in various societies throughout history. This include ancient Greek equality as realized in Athens and Sparta, monastic equality in both East and West, social revolts aimed at establishing equality, utopian equality, liberal equality of the American and French Revolutionary varieties, socialist, communist and kibbutz equalities, Nazi equality, the equality of women and minorities, and biological equality through medical and genetic science. The last chapter deals with the greatest equalizer of all, death.

This survey of the history of equality demonstrates that the vast majority of human societies have not only survived, but thrived without equality. And it appears that despite its popular appeal, if carried too far, equality will present a threat to justice, liberty, and even truth. More problematic still is the observable fact that the various versions of equality tend to be contradictory. For every form of equality achieved, another must often be sacrificed. That is why the attempt to establish it on a lasting basis has, in every previous instance, proven ephemeral.

Equality, especially absolute equality of the form Plato, Rousseau, and their modern successors are seeking, is a dream. When one takes into account the costs it involves, the contradictions to which it inevitably leads, and the tremendous quantities of blood that have been shed in its name, it is hard to conclude that the dream of equality is a beautiful one.

Martin van Creveld’s history of equality is an intellectual tour de force that is more education than polemic. Throughout the book, the author’s natural sympathies toward the basic concept of equality are readily apparent, but his scholastic rigor and integrity are too strong to be influenced by them. Which is why, in the end, the reader finds himself more than ready to respect, and more importantly, to accept, van Creveld’s reluctant conclusion. However desirable it may appear to us, however much it may appeal to us, we have little choice but to understand that Man’s quest for equality is an impossible one that is doomed to failure by virtue of its own inherent contradictions.

The New World Disorder

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“A new world order” is in the making, said U.S President George Bush Sr. as the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union, its limbs broken, was lying prostrate. “The end of history” has come, proclaimed famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama. At the core of World War II, Fukuyama explained, stood a titanic struggle between three ideologies: liberal democracy, fascism, and communism. By 1945 fascism had been destroyed. Fifty-something years later, communism too had failed and would not rise again.clash_civilizations(1)

But that, Fukuyama continued, was only the beginning. As more and more countries became industrialized and developed a strong middle class, Hollywood and McDonald’s would spread the happy tidings. They would do away with all kinds of cultural relics, globalize the world, and make it safe for liberal democracy. Better still: since everybody knew that democracies never, ever fight each other, war itself would gradually disappear. The new world order, Fukuyama wrote, might be a trifle boring. But that seemed a small price to pay for the blessings of peace and, hopefully ever-spreading prosperity as well.

A quarter of a century later, most of our dreams have been shattered. True, fascism and communism in their classical forms have not made a serious comeback. But autocracy, which is almost as bad, continues to govern large parts of the earth’s population. Some autocratically-governed countries, such as Belarus and North Korea, have done badly. One, Russia, is currently fighting what may be seen either as a war of expansion or as a desperate struggle to assert itself and avoid disintegration. And at least one, China, has done spectacularly well.

As a Chinese friend told me, this is the first period in Chinese history when almost everybody has enough to eat. In a country as large, and over long periods as poor as China used to be, that is no mean achievement. And as a Nigerian student told me: When the Chinese come marching into a “developing” country they do not waste their time preaching democracy and human rights as Westerners always do. Instead they bring dollars, lots and lots of them. Nor are they shy of paying bribes where they think doing so will grease the wheels. The outcome is that, in quite some places, Chinese autocracy, far from being denounced for its lack of democracy and freedom, is praised as a model to follow.

Another widespread belief which did not come true was that wealth, generated by new technologies and better, read less coercive, methods of organization, would keep spreading. It is not that the world has become poorer. Rather what has happened is that the distribution of wealth has changed. As the French economist Thomas Picketty in his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has shown, not since the early years of the twentieth century has the gap between rich and poor been as large as it is at present.

The world has not become less diverse. In 1993, just four years after “The End of History,” the late Professor Samuel Huntington came out with The Clash of Civilizations. In it he argued that Fukuyama had been wrong. What rules the world is not ideology but identity. Shaped by “history, language, culture, tradition, and, most important, religion,” different identities make themselves manifest in the form of “different views on the relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy.” “These differences,” Huntington concluded, “are the product of centuries. They will not soon disappear.”

Over the last quarter century struggles over just such identities have become the leading cause of armed conflict. Pace Fukuyama and many others, notably the American psychology professor Steve Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2014), the world has not become more peaceful. To the contrary: it has witnessed any number of ferocious armed conflicts in places as far apart as the former Yugoslavia, parts of Africa and Asia, the Middle East, and, most recently, the Ukraine. In all these wars far more civilians than combatants were killed. The total number of victims, men, women and children, runs into the millions.

So bad have some of these conflicts been that some of the states in which they were waged, far from advancing towards prosperity and liberal democracy, have simply collapsed. That includes Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Several others, such as Chad, Nigeria, and Pakistan have been left almost equally government-less and may turn belly up at any moment. Supposing immigration, and the problems it creates, is allowed to continue unchecked, even Western Europe may not be immune forever.

The widespread incidence of war, and the even more widespread incidence of preparation for it, explains why military spending did not enter a slow, steady decline as many people during the early 1990s expected to happen. According to figures provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “spending in 2012 was… higher in real terms than the peak near the end of the cold war.” In fact it was only in Europe that spending went down at all. By contrast, Russia, North Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia have all seen sharp increases. So, between 2001 and the “end” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, did the U.S.A development that will bring the trend to an end does not appear anywhere in sight.

Briefly, the world is in a mess. But is the mess really worse than it used to be? Worse, for example, than it was between 1914 and 1945? Worse than it was throughout the Cold War, when each Superpower had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons ready for immediate delivery and a nuclear holocaust sometimes seemed to be just around the corner? Worse than it was in 1945-75 when the various Wars in Indochina, the War in Algeria, and civil war in Nigeria, to list but a few, killed millions? Worse than it was in 1958-76, when first the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution killed an estimated 45 million Chinese? Worse than in the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq used poison gas against one another? Worse than in the 1990s, when the civil wars in Angola, Mozambique and Sri Lanka were still raging?

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Whenever the mess was particularly great many people thought the world was coming to an end. But it did not. To deny the widespread existence of war, death, horror and hunger would be both foolish and counterproductive. And of course we should do everything in our power to prevent them as far as we can. Yet on the edge of many raging conflicts, often even in the eye of the storm, plenty of decency, generosity, altruism, and, last not least, love have always sprouted. Certainly no less so than in any previous age.

By one story I read long ago, people once asked Mao Tze Dong whether, following a nuclear war, there would still be a world left. To this he is supposed to have answered as follows:

The sun will keep rising

Trees will keep growing

And women

will keep having children.

 

On “Sexual Harassment”

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As I am writing these words Israel is rocked by a “sexual harassment scandal” that looks as if it will force half the country’s senior police officers to resign. And they are not the only ones; I personally know at least six or seven fellow professors, all men needless to say, who have been charged with, and punished for, the same offense. The problem is anything but unique to Israel. It is something all “developed” countries have in common. That is why I want to discuss it here.

Sexual-Harassment-Retaliation-Lawsuit-Settled-540x280That, too, is why I want to put it on record: I live with a woman who used to be my student. Thirty-two years ago, during the first hour of a course I gave, I asked what, in retrospect, may have been a silly question. Looking me straight in the face was a woman I had never met, though later it turned out that she had seen me many years before. Without a moment’s hesitation she gave back as good as she got. As she turned my words into a joke the class roared with laughter. I blushed—the only time, she says, she saw me doing so. One thing led to another and today we have as happy a marriage as both of us could wish for.

For as long as homo sapiens sapiens—I am not so sure we are in fact, sapiens, or else presumably we would never have followed our inclinations, met a partner, and have children—men have pursued women and women have pursued men. Not all societies allowed the individuals concerned, both male and female, freedom of choice in the matter. Many considered that marriage, with all the economic and political issues it often involved, was too important to leave to mere infatuation. Judging by the fact that, in today’s “advanced” countries, between thirty and fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce, perhaps not without reason.

To make sure there would be no free choice, young men and women were made to lead separate lives and carefully chaperoned. When and where freedom of choice did exist most men went after youth, beauty, and fertility, briefly anything that could make their fellow men jealous. In many cases, and if only because life with a woman who is not your intellectual equal is boring and foolish, they also wanted wits. Women wanted men who could offer protection and a comfortable life that would enable them to have children and raise them. If the men in question could also command the kind of power and authority that would make the woman’s friends jealous, so much the better.

Enter “sexual harassment.” If, by “sexual harassment,” we mean attempts by people of both sexes to link up with others of the opposite sex—here I shall ignore gay couples—then surely, in spite of all the precautions taken, it has always existed. That some of the advances have always been unwelcome is a matter of course. Had there not been room for trust and parry, charge and counter-charge, advance and retreat, briefly trial and error, how would people be able to get to know each other? And where would the joy of falling in love, perhaps the greatest there is, be?

If, however, we mean “unwelcome behavior” “the critical words,” according to one definition—that is prohibited and punishable by law then according to NGram, the Google program that allows you to check on the frequency terms are used, it only dates to the 1970s. Since then it has taken off like a rocket. And no wonder; under this definition, any- and anything can be “constructed” as sexual harassment. In the words of one American female military pilot to whom I talked some years ago: sexual harassment is whatever I decide to report to my superior.

Many of the accusations are false. Nor is it hard to see why this should be the case. Disappointed love, the desire for revenge, and the pressure feminists put on their “sisters” to “show courage” and complain can all play a role. Not to mention greed. Even as I was writing this article, somebody in Israel made the bright suggestion that “victims” with a “mental impairment” should be paid pensions.

Here I do not want to dwell on the immense number of men who have been accused, often, anonymously and often for alleged “crimes” they committed, often quite unwittingly, years, even decades, earlier. Nor on the fact that, once one is accused, one’s chances of getting out in one piece without losing everything—including, very often, one’s wife and children—are slim indeed. Instead, what I want to do is say a word about the consequences for women.

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First, had the laws and rules now in force in Israel and many other countries existed thirty years ago, my student and I could never have fallen in love as we did. True, she keeps saying that, in that case, she would have gotten to me anyhow; but that is beside the point. The point is that, in most organizations, for every horny male with a good position and income there are several no less horny young females whose position and income are not as good. And who, as a result, will do almost anything to sleep with him in the hope that he will divorce his wife—if he has one—and marry them instead.

After all, marrying up has always been one method, perhaps the most important method, in which women made their way in the world. Ask Madame de Pompadour, the fishmonger’s beautiful daughter who, aged sixteen, became maitresse en chef to France’s Louis XV and retained that position until her death. Or take Wilhelmine von Lichtenau, popularly known as “the beautiful Wilhelmine.” A trumpeter’s daughter, she too was sixteen when she assumed the same position with Prussia’s Friedrich Wilhelm II. Or any number of similar cases. Today the invention of “sexual harassment” is slamming the door on that way shut.

Second, for a long time now feminists have been claiming that women are just as talented, just as able, and, above all, just as tough-minded as men. That is why they deserve equal treatment, including the right to occupy all posts society has to offer. But how to reconcile this idea with the teary-eyed complaints about “sexual harassment”? If a woman is not strong enough to say “no” to a man who is making advances at her and is “traumatized” instead, how can she expect to be promoted to, and function in, posts that involve stress, demand responsibility, and require toughness?

The answer, my dear ladies, is blowing in the wind.

Read in Chinese

Read in Chinese

On Eternal Life

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Gulliver065For those of you do not know, Ray Kurzweil is an American author, computer, scientist, and inventor. He pioneered many different devices—not that I understand what all of them actually do—and is currently director of engineering at Google. The list of awards and prizes he has received would fill an article in itself.

Another thing this obviously highly gifted, enormously dynamic man has done is bring into vogue the term “singularity.” The way I understand it, a singularity is a change so great that it will usher in a completely new world while simultaneously rendering all previous history irrelevant. As will happen when computer technologies start exceeding human intelligence many, many times over—an event, Kurzweil says, which cannot more than a few decades away.

Personally I am not even sure what intelligence means. Nor, as far as I know, does anybody else. Hardly a day passes when some psychologist does not proudly announce his or her discovery of some new kind of intelligence. Wikipedia, admittedly not the most profound source, lists the following: the capacity for logical thought; abstract thought; understanding (whatever that may mean); self-awareness; communication; emotional knowledge (what is that?); memory; planning; creativity; and problem-solving. I can think of a few others: such as musical intelligence and the ability to recognize visual patterns (which, in my case, is terribly underdeveloped). Will computers really be able to do all these things as well as, let alone much better, than we can? And what does “better” self-awareness mean?

Furthermore, I am a historian. We historians often speak of revolutions: the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and so forth. All of these were comparatively brief, cataclysmic, usually very violent, upheavals which changed the world. Or at least that was what most of us felt when they happened. As time goes on and research probes deeper, though, we always find two things. One is that the supposed revolution has roots going deep into history, sometimes decades if not more. The other is that even the greatest revolutions leave as many things unchanged as they generate new ones. As the French saying goes, plus que ça change…

Here I want to focus on just one kind of singularity/revolution Kurzweil is promising us: to wit, a victory over death that will give us eternal life. Eternal in the sense that all our experiences, feelings and thoughts will be recorded on some kind of electronic device and implanted into some kind of robots who, in this way, will become “us.” Thank you very much, Ray. The last thing I need is to “live” in such a way, presumably with hackers stealing the information and spreading it over the Net so anyone, but anyone, can become me just as I can become him or her.

Kurzweil himself hopes to live enough to see the “singularity,” which he thinks is 30-40 years away (he was born in 1948, two years later than me), with his own eyes. To do so he is taking as many as 150 pills a day. Will he succeed? I do not know. Nor, as long as I do not have to become a robot, do I care. What I do want to do is to briefly discuss two books that describe a world in which death has been not just postponed but abolished.

Proceeding in reverse chronological order, the first is Death with Interruptions by the late Portuguese Nobel-Prize winning author Jose Saramago (1922-2010). One day, the people of a certain unnamed country stop dying. The immediate outcome is great joy and celebration. However, neither the celebration nor the joy last for very long. The first outcome, obviously, is to bring about the collapse of the funeral industry. It is quickly followed by the collapse of other services such as hospitals—which get filled up—as well as the Church. That is because, the afterlife having been abolished, it is no longer needed. With the fall of the Church much of the social order, too, collapses. The country is filled to overflowing with criminals who collude with the government. Also, and more important to our purpose, with incoherent, helpless, stinking, bags of skin and bone, bringing about a government crisis.

Saramago could have added, but does not, other problems. Surely the end of death would quickly lead to overpopulation. It would block the young and prevent them from ever taking over; and force them to spend their remaining lives looking after the old. Not, I would say a very enticing prospect for our children and grandchildren. Instead, the novel ends with death feeling sympathy for one man, a terminally ill cellist. Death puts on the guise of a thirty-eight year old woman. For it/her he plays as never in his entire life. Then they go on to make love. A more beautiful description of a lovers’ tryst I have never read. And then, at the end of the novel, death, thank goodness, takes back its normal place in human affairs.

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The other book is even more famous. I am, of course, referring to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). One of the places Gulliver visited was Luggnagg, located southeast of Japan. Most of the inhabitants of Luggnagg are quite ordinary. There are among them, though, certain individuals known as struldbrugs. They seem normal, but in fact they are immortal. You can recognize them by the red dot on their foreheads.

Until the age of thirty or so they are like all others. At that time they begin to realize the terrible fate that is in store for them. Namely, never to be released from this life. They become dejected and morose. The more so because, as in the Greek mythological story about Eos (Dawn’s) lover Tithonus, in Luggnagg eternal life does not mean eternal youth. Their hair turns white and falls out. Their teeth drop, and their senses and minds dim.

That is why, once they reach the age of eighty, they are declared legally dead. Any offices they may hold, and any assets they may have, are taken away. They live on a pittance without honor, without profit, and, above all, without being of any use to anybody. Basically, as in Saramago’s novel, they are nothing but incoherent, helpless, stinking, bags of skin and bone.

Isn’t this, in many cases, just the way it already is today? And do we really want to have our lifespan extended even more than it already has been?

China

Read in Chinese

And Everything Else be Damned

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netanyahu-speaks-at-un-about-iranian-bomb-2Most people think that the recent fracas between Jerusalem and Washington is about Iran. They are wrong. Should Israel and Iran engage in a nuclear exchange, says U.S Middle East expert Anthony Cordesman, then it is the latter and not the former that will be wiped off the map. Nor are the mullahs unaware of that fact. That has not prevented Israel from talking about destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Both Netanyahu and his predecessors have been doing so for over a decade. Since success depends on surprise—as when it bombed the Iraqi reactor in 1981 and the Syrian one in 2007—this talk itself proves it has no serious intention of carrying out its threats. Nor is Netanyahu the man to do it. For all his frequent posturing, he does not have the guts.

The threat a nuclear Iran would pose to the United States is much smaller still. In fact it would be comparable to the one mounted by North Korea since it detonated its first device nine years ago; meaning, close to zero. Arguably, indeed, possession of the bomb would compel Tehran to become more cautious than, by most measures, it already is. Thus the bomb would contribute to stability in the Middle East, not detract from it. That, at any rate, is what, to-date, nuclear weapons have done in every single region where they have been introduced.

Amidst these questions, whether Netanyahu is or is not supported by his own security service is small potatoes. As former U.S Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, Israel does not really have a foreign policy. All it has are internal politics of which foreign policy is a third-rate extension. It is mainly internal politics that have driven Netanyahu to emphasize the Iranian “threat.” Not without success. Only yesterday a neighbor of mine, a highly-educated lawyer, told me that, much as he disliked Netanyahu, he was going to vote for him because of the threat in question.

Which reminds us that, in Israel, it is elections time. The last two elections were held in 2009 and 2013. In neither of them was there any question but that Likud would win and Netanyahu hold on to his dearly-beloved job. This time things are different. One reason for this is that, economically speaking, things are not going as well as they should. The outcome is high prices—for a couple of years now, not a day has passed without the media publishing comparisons with other countries, almost all of them unfavorable to Israel. In particular, the burden on young couples out to purchase their first flat has become all but intolerable.

The other reason is the creation of a new left-center party under the joint leadership of Yitzhak Herzog and former foreign minister Tziporah (“Tzippi”) Livni. Both Herzog and Livni have the charisma of earthworms. Many people, though, see them as preferable to Netanyahu who is regarded as glib and untrustworthy.

Netanyahu needs a boost. There is not much he can do about prices. Nor do people really believe him when he says, as he has been doing for some years, that he will do something. But he can try to strike poses in foreign relations. The murder a couple of weeks ago of four Jews in a French kosher supermarket seemed to present him with a great opportunity to do just that. What could be better than to be photographed while marching arm in arm with other heads of state, acting not merely as the Prime Minister of Israel but as the head of the Jewish people world-wide?

Unfortunately for him, it all went wrong. President Hollande of France, it turned out, did not really want him there. To be sure, he could hardly prohibit Netanyahu from coming. But he did take the opportunity to humiliate him by failing to receive him at the Elysée Palace. Worse still, when Netanyahu arrived there was no proper reception-party waiting to take him from the airport to town. Israel TV showed him standing in the rain, umbrella over his head, waiting for a bus and looking forlorn. Elections or not, that is not the kind of image a prime minister wants or needs.

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So what to do? Unlike former Prime Ministers Menahem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu cannot claim credit for any important foreign policy deed. Like his one-time mentor, former Prime-Minister Yitzhak Shamir, all he can do is try and maintain the status quo. Partly that is because he does not have the necessary authority over his own party and the Israeli right in general. Partly because, as I said, he just doesn’t have the guts. But maintaining the status quo does not yield many votes. At any rate not enough to make him feels secure.

So use your Jewish-American card. Get yourself invited to the U.S. If not to the White House, with whose occupant Netanyahu has long been at loggerheads, then to address both Houses of Congress. The procedure is somewhat unusual, but that does not bother the prime minister too much. After all, the U.S, too, is facing elections in less than two years. Consequently the pressure it can bring to bear on Israel is limited. It is even possible that, by seeming to twist President Barak Obama’s arm, Netanyahu will actually gain some points with parts of the electorate.

And so it goes. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry will huff and puff. Presumably more so behind closed doors than in public. They may even threaten to “reconsider” America’s relationship with Israel. As, for example, Gerald Ford and Kissinger did in 1975 when Rabin did not agree to a proposed interim agreement with Egypt. However, real change will only happen, if it does, after the next American elections.

By that time Netanyahu will be safely back in the saddle, or so he hopes. And everything else be damned.

China

Read in Chinese

More Bull—-

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“Surely it is obvious enough, if one looks at the whole world, that it is becoming daily better cultivated and more fully peopled than anciently… What most frequently meets our view and occasions complaint is our teeming population: our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance.”

Energy-Crisis1

Is this Al Gore’s acceptance speech of yet another award for saving the world? Wrong guess. Is this some other “environ” trying to make us feel guilty for existing? Wrong again. It is Quintus Septimius Florens Tertulianus, AKA Tertullian. He was a Christian author who flourished at the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius around 160 A.D. As best we can estimate, the number of humans on earth probably stood at about 200 million. That is approximately 4 percent of today’s figure. Paolo Malanima, a historian who specializes in ancient Roman technology, estimates that per capita consumption of energy was probably 15-20 percent of what it is now. Assuming the figures are more or less correct, the reader is invited to calculate by how much the total use of energy has increased since then.

Fast forward to 1880. At that time Britain was still the world’s largest manufacturing country, though the U.S and Germany were catching up. But how long could the mineral energy sources that had fueled the industrial revolution since the eighteenth century last? Enter William Thomson, AKA Lord Kelvin, one of the nineteenth century greatest scientists. No mere academic, he had a hand in almost every major technological enterprise from the laying of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable down. Today he is remembered above all for formulating the first and second laws of thermodynamics. From his post at Glasgow he sounded a warning. “The subterranean coal-stores of the world,” he said, were “becoming exhausted.” As a result, the day was approaching when “little of [them] is left.” The answer, he thought, lay in windmills.

Since then, probably not a generation has passed when assorted experts did not claim that the resources of “spaceship earth”—as one author called it—were being depleted at a rapid pace and that, unless things changed, disaster was inevitable. Here I shall focus on the most-talked about single resource, i.e. oil. My guide in doing so is Daniel Yergin’s The Quest, an 820-page tome on the search for energy that got under way in earnest around 1880 and has lasted to the present day.

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The name John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937) remains familiar to millions the world over as one of the richest people who ever lived. Not so that of his one-time partner John Dustin Archbold (1848-1916). In 1885, alarmed by a geologist’s warning that the flow of oil in Pennsylvania was but a “temporary and vanishing phenomenon,” he sold his Standard Oil shares at a discount. Not that he was ruined. He still remained a director of the company and sufficiently rich to donate $ 6,000,000 to the University of Syracuse. But it was not the same.

Lord (George Nathaniel) Curzon (1859-1925) was a highly successful British statesman who served first as viceroy of India and then as foreign secretary. In the latter capacity he drew the border between Poland and the Soviet Union named after him. Reflecting the common wisdom of the time, at the end of World War I he declared that “the Allied cause [had] floated to victory upon a wave of oil.” In fact it had been oil which, while only available to the Central Powers in very limited quantities, propelled Allied navies, armies, and air forces all over the world. As so often, dependence led to fear. “There seem[s] to be,” said President Wilson at almost exactly the same time, “no method by which we [can] assure ourselves of the necessary supply at home and abroad.”

A similar warning was sounded by Marion King Hubbert (1903-1989). One of the most preeminent earth-scientists of his time, in 1956 Hubbert shook the world with his idea of “peak oil.” Its subsequent career may be judged from the fact that it has almost three million hits on Google.com. Peak oil, Hubbert explained, meant that American oil production would peak between about 1965 and 1970. At that point it would start declining without anybody being able to do anything about the matter. Totally wrong. In 2012 U.S production was four times greater than Hubbert thought it could be. In his favor it must be said that he also pioneered another concept, “hydraulic fracturing,” which formed part of the title of a seminal paper he wrote in 1957. It was partly the development of this technique that has led to the decline in the price of oil over the last few years.

Since then we have gone through two more scares, one—probably the best known of all—during the 1970s and one in 2008-12. Each time prices, driven by tremendous demand as well as sheer speculation, rose to what had previously been considered unimaginable heights. Each time, as the representatives of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries) met in Vienna, the world shuddered in anticipation of their fateful decisions.

I am old enough to remember a lecture, held soon after the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The speaker, a highly-respected Israeli economist, assured his listeners that it was not all our, meaning Israel’s, fault. Even if the number of barrels being produced each day were doubled, he said, a shortage would prevail and prices would continue to go up. It took a few years, but he proved to be totally wrong. During this cycle, as during all previous and subsequent ones, a combination of new extraction technologies, conservation and substitution brought about a glut followed by a price collapse.

And—this is the real point of the story—driven by low prices, lack of investment, and growing demand, each time the price recovered.

The Lord of Battles

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jesus_is_almightyNormally quoting oneself is a bad idea. An excellent case in point is former Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin. Twice he said that “peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family, it is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth. Peace is all of these and more and more.”

The first occasion was in Oslo on 10 December 1978 when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. The second was in Washington on 26 March 1979 when he signed the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. The first time he was going through what he himself used to call one of his “Shakespearean Moments.” The second, though identical, was pure kitsch.

51sWnZN4nPLI cannot compete with Begin as an orator. Nevertheless, given what has happened in France last week, I feel justified in quoting form my best-known work, The Transformation of War (1991). Not because I like my own voice; normally I do not care to look at my published books. But because the following passage still provides the best description of what I consider the future is going to be like.

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“From the vantage point of the present, there appears every prospect that religious attitudes, beliefs, and fanaticisms will play a larger role in the motivation of armed conflict than it has, in the West at any rate, for the last 300 years. Already as these lines are being written the fastest growing religion in the world is Islam. While there are many reasons for this, perhaps it would not be so far-fetched to say that this very militancy is one factor behind its spread. By this I do not merely mean to say that Islam seeks to achieve is aims by fighting; rather, that people in many parts of the world—including downtrodden groups in the developed world—are finding Islam attractive precisely because it is prepared to fight…

If the growing militancy of one religion continues, it almost certainly will compel others to follow suit. People will be driven to defend their ideals and way of life, and their physical existence, and this they will be able to do only under the banner of some great and powerful idea. That idea may be secular by origin; however, the very fact that it is fought for will cause it to acquire religious overtones and be adhered to with something like religious fervor. Thus Muhammad’s recent revival may yet bring on that of the Christian Lord, and He will not be the Lord of love but that of battles.”

Need anything be added?

What Love Is

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What is love? Throughout the ages, as many answers have been given to this question as there are poets. Here, motivated by the fast-approaching 31st anniversary of my wife and myself, it pleases me to provide my own answer. Much of it I learnt from her. Needless to say, there are many kinds of love. Red-Rose-02However, the following discussion only refers to the one between a man and a woman. Or perhaps—I have no experience in the matter—also in same sex unions.

The kind of love I am speaking about involves one’s entire being. It has two parts, a mental and a physical. Both are equally important. When everything works as it should, they reinforce each other. The former has the power to magically transform physical spasms into a union that almost deserves the name sacred. The latter seals the former. I would, however, add that, if, after all these years, I had been forced to choose, I would go for the former. And do so, what is more, without regrets.

Love is a miracle. What attracted Julia to Romeo and Romeo to Julia? Why him? Why her? What made each of them so unique as to inspire the other to sacrifice his or her life? Shakespeare does not say. Nor do ten thousand psychologists and their even more numerous studies. Probably it is better that way. In one sense, pre-determined love is not love at all.

We do not love the other because he or she is particularly well-shaped or beautiful. To the contrary: the other becomes beautiful and well-shaped because we love her or him. Says the Bible: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.” Not just for a moment, which is something animals do as well as we do. But all the time, sharing both pain and joy.

One very peculiar thing love does is to turn the other’s faults—and who does not have them?—into virtues. One loves coming into the bathroom and see that the other has forgotten to shut the toothpaste tube. The other loves seeing the note, complete with its characteristic spelling error, left for him or her in the kitchen with instructions to do this or that. These and a thousand similar things remind each of the other. They make them smile to themselves, knowing that the feeling is mutual.

There are also some things lovers should never say or do to one another. Some depend on personality and differ from one case to the next. Others are common to everybody. Never pull rank. Never badmouth your other in front of others. Never try to make him or her jealous. If you feel that criticize you must, do it in such a way as to make your good intentions obvious (humor, but not sarcasm, helps). And so on. To be sure, being human we make mistakes. Therefore, if we say or do such things, we should apologize just as soon as we can. And make sure the error is not repeated.

Love seems to work on three different levels simultaneously. The first consists of our—at any rate my—need to have somebody to look up to who is more than I am. More intelligent (at least in some ways), better, kinder, nobler. That does not mean the other is superior in every respect. As Simone de Beauvoir once wrote, a relationship based on inferiority versus superiority is not love. All it means is that the other is better than I am in some ways and that, as a result, I value and adore her like a queen.

The second level is that of partnership. We all need somebody whom we can trust. Absolutely, unconditionally and until death us part. Somebody who will stand with us at the time, to quote the great early twentieth-century Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, when, having armed the prow, we cast off and sail ahead. Life is a voyage into the unknown, and often a pretty hazardous one at that. One which very few people can, or should, embark on without the kind of partnership I am talking about here.

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The third level is that of trying to do what one can to make the other as happy as one can. Even to the point of spoiling him or her. Not just because what one gives is really needed. That would be either duty or charity, but not love. But simply because there is joy in giving.

Each of the three elements can and often does exist apart from the others. But it is only together that they amount to true love. They are symmetrical, i.e there is no difference between men and women. They also presuppose a certain kind of equality. That does not mean that each side must have exactly the same rights and duties. Rather, it refers to the kind of love that, making the strengths of each obviate the weaknesses of the other, enables both partners to make the maximum of their lives, both separately and together.

To this rule there is one very important exception. Physically men are considerably stronger and more robust than women on the average. Also, nature seems to value women’s lives more than men’s. These facts give women some rights men do not and should not have. Men are duty-bound to defend women. There used to be a name for that: chivalry. That is a word feminists, filled with hate and envy, have dragged through the mud as they have so many other things. The reverse does not apply. A man who lays down his life for a woman is looked upon as a hero, with good reason. A man who allows a woman go lay down her life for him becomes an object of derision. Also, in my view, with very good reason.

It is not enough to feel love. One must show one’s feelings. One early morning Richard Wagner had a small band assembled in front of his wife, Cosima’s, window. Waked by the music, she became the first to hear the notes of the Siegfried Idyll. How I envy him for being able to lay such a gift at her feet! Luckily we do not need to. A word of praise, a gesture of welcome. A smile, a hug, a kiss, a small present at the appropriate moment. Normally it should be done in private. However, here and there doing it when some others, friends, are present can cause no harm.

Finally, it is not true, as Freud and so many others thought and think, that time and habituation necessarily cause love to become tepid and wane away. Provided all the above elements are present, it is as likely to become stronger, deeper and more tolerant. But that does not happen on its own. It takes both goodwill and some effort.

For me, after thirty-one years, the most beautiful moments in life still remain the same. They are those in which she spontaneously breaks into song and I join her. Or the other way around.

The funny thing is, neither of us can sing very well.

On Domestic Violence

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41WcoaJq1tLFirst things first. I want to put it on record that I am not trying to defend those guilty of engaging in domestic violence. To the contrary: I want to help reduce it and, if possible, eliminate it. For domestic violence to be eradicated, though, it must first be understood. Here, drawing on several years of research on my book, The Privileged Sex, I intend to explain some of what I have learnt.

Judging by what the media, which are pushed along by feminist organizations, have to say about the matter, one might think that domestic violence is directed almost solely by men against women. Not true. The greatest living expert on the subject is Professor Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire. His fame may be measured by the fact that a google.scholar search of his name brought 47,000 hits, no less. Along with his assistants, he has spent years investigating the topic in many different countries. The pattern he discovered is remarkably uniform. In about fifty percent of all cases the violence is mutual. The remaining fifty percent are initiated almost equally by people of both sexes. Poof! Goes myth number one.

Again judging by the media, women suffer more serious injuries than men (men’s injuries, in fact, are hardly ever mentioned). Not true. According to other investigators, it is men who usually suffer the more serious injuries. The reason is that women are more likely to use weapons, whereas men hit with their fists or their feet. Poof! Goes myth number two.

6cx0fduDomestic violence directed by men against women is often said to be underreported. True or not, there is no doubt that violence directed by women against men is even more so. The reason is simple: should a man dare complain, then if he is lucky he will be laughed at. If he is not then there is a good chance that he will get himself arrested, charged, tried, convicted and punished. I personally knew one such case, and there must be many others. Furthermore, whereas a man who beats up or kills his woman is said to commit domestic violence, women who do the same are said to engage in “reverse domestic violence.” Thus the stereotype, to use an expression feminists love so much, consists of men hitting women. That in itself may very well lead to over-reporting of such cases. Poof! Goes myth number three.

Supposedly men kill their girlfriends and wives, whereas the opposite is rare. Not true, or at any rate true only up to a certain point. Depending on the country, the ratio is about three or four to one. In other words, for every three or four women killed there is a man who loses his life. However, as is the case with domestic violence as a whole, there is some reason to think that the statistics fail to present the full picture. There are two reasons for this. First, more women than men use covert means such as poison which may not be detected. Second, more women hire other people (men) to do the killing for them. Though it is almost certainly true that more men kill their spouses than women, the ratio may not be as skewed as the headlines claim. Poof! Goes Myth number four.

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Most people of both sexes who commit crimes of any kind try to cover their tracks as best they can. Not so men who kill their wives. To be sure, there are exceptions. However, most of them, instead of trying to escape, turn themselves in. Others commit suicide. They do so either on the spot, immediately after having committed the deed, or soon afterwards. No other class of criminals has displayed similar behavior. The question is, why?

Two answers present themselves. First, when a woman attacks her man and is brought to trial, she is invariably asked why she did it. That will enable her to explain how he made her life a misery and roll out all his misdeeds, real or imaginary. Often she will claim self-defense. For a man the situation is entirely different. Claiming self-defense, in most cases he will meet either ridicule or contempt. The same will happen if he lists his grievances. In many cases he, or his dead body, will be treated as if he deserved to be beaten or killed. In other words, men’s pain and blood are held to be cheap in relation to women’s. A woman who stands trial for engaging in domestic violence has a fair chance of being acquitted. A man stands hardly any.

The different views society takes of men and women who have been found guilty of domestic violence also explain the very different ways they are punished. Men who have killed are likely to suffer some of the worst penalties from death down. Women are much less likely to do the same. In quite some cases, instead of being executed or incarcerated, they will find themselves referred to psychological treatment either inside a closed institution or, less often outside its gates. That treatment having ended, she is likely to be freed. Her feminist sisters may even treat her as a heroine—as regularly happens each time some woman in a Third World country kills her husband and is threatened with execution.

All this gives much food for thought. We all agree that the objective should be to reduce domestic violence in general and killing in particular. To do so it is first of all necessary to understand why certain kill their spouses before committing suicide. The phenomenon must be investigated, its causes brought to light, and the appropriate remedies found. Or else, as sure as night follows day, the killings are going to continue and perhaps to multiply.