NATO: Evolving, Fragmenting, or Fading Away?

Recent events involving NATO reveal an international treaty organization that is adrift from its original moorings, aimlessly bobbing in the waves of geopolitical self interest. "Old Europe," led by France and Germany, is using the alliance as a fulcrum to leverage the U.S.A. away from what it sees as its own self interest. America, for its part, maintains the alliance even though its raison d'etre is no more: as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Even now, two of America's six heavy divisions are based in Europe, guarding against a Russian incursion that no one in his right mind expects to occur.

Old Europe, finding itself increasingly irrelevant, is desperately seeking to affect the outcome of Bush's latest moves. They have a lot invested in their propaganda that Bush is an idiot, and will do anything to prevent him from outmaneuvering them yet again. They seem to either discount the possibility that the U.S.A. will pull out of NATO, or they don't care. They must care, so maybe they are buying into their own bullshit and believe that Bush really is an idiot. And maybe Bush will continue to participate in a shell of NATO, while moving our forces to Eastern Europe, thus accomplishing a "Lily Pad" deployment, in which dispersal of forces and mobility counts for more than a heavy concentration of forces. Incredibly, France and Germany are seemingly more concerned with relevance and importance in the debate... almost as if these nations have an ego problem, and would rather be respected and given lip service than be safe.

The future might very well be a place where Turkey and Bulgaria are more important to NATO than France and Germany. And perhaps rightly so. I am reminded of the old saw about the vaunted French military: How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? Nobody knows, it's never been tried.

Dien Bien Phu Redux

About 50 years ago, on November 20, 1953, France committed itself to a grand and risky venture, designed to halt its slide into geopolitical irrelevance. I submit that, a half century later, France is doing the same thing today.

In Dien Bien Phu, the idea was that France, because of its inherent greatness, could occupy a piece of land that was militarily defenseless, and achieve victory over numerically superior forces. The area that they occupied was lowland, without any natural cover, surrounded by mountains. They made no attempt to take the high ground, but gambled that America would change its policy and come to their rescue at the last minute. France lost then. They shall lose now.

Their gamble today is to place both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in jeopardy. Their calculus must be that, rather than sacrifice these two venerable organizations, the Americans will come to their aid. Rather than learning the lesson that history provides, they are raising the stakes. This time it is not merely a 16,000 strong garrison that France is putting in harm's way. She is betting the very vitality of two organizations that have held key positions for the maintenance of postwar world peace, such as it is. If France is afraid of unilateralism, why is she is giving America such a stark choice, and so little room for compromise.

France is in effect saying that, either the U.S.A. change course immediately on the matter of Iraq, and fall into line, accepting the leadership of France and Germany, or face world diplomatic Armageddon. She is threatening to bring NATO down, and make the U.N. irrelevant. I say, it's about time. Neither organization has supported American interests for a long time. This is not only my view, it is the view of many, if not most, conservatives in America today. It would be political suicide for Bush to abandon his political base by caving in to these craven political moves by the two losers of WWII. (Note to nitpickers: Before you email me, note that I call France a WWII loser is because they were defeated and occupied. I have not forgotten that they were on the winning side at the end.) It is time for Bush to ride high in the saddle. It is inevitable that these two dinosaurs and their two champions fade from the scene. Bush should take de Gaulle's advice: Anticipate the inevitable, and take credit for it.

What Else Is NATO For?

Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when, 53 years ago, the devastated countries of Europe and their American ally formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The entire point of the exercise was to have been that, when a single member state came under threat from another nation, the entire organization, which fields its own army, would respond to prevent war, or at least prevent the more devastating sequalae of defeat in war. A threat on one member state is considered a threat against all. It was hoped at the time of formation that the existence of such a treaty would prevent war. It was designed, as these things always are, to prevent the previous war, WWII. Had NATO existed in 1939, the theory went, WWII would never have happened.

Fast forward to the present day. A member state, Turkey, has invoked the emergency clause of the treaty. It forsees trouble on its border with Iraq, and wants the deployment of forces to protect that border. France and Belgium, both of which were overrun and devasted in the opening act of the raison d'etre for NATO, have vetoed this request. Germany, the aggressor in 1939, vetoed the emergency action plan as well.

As if it weren't bad enough that France and Germany are doing their best to make the U.N. irrelevant, now they are trying to do the same for NATO, by acting the role of renegade nations. While most of the Punditocracy have been downplaying the significance of these actions, I beg to disagree. In their lust for a return to relevance and power on the world stage, France and Germany are gambling with the lives of untold numbers of innocents. This is blackmail of the largest scale I have seen in my lifetime. Their bet is that America will see the threat to the U.N. and NATO as too great, and will therefore bend to the will of the renegades. There are those who believe that Bush will cave in to this blackmail. Others are thrilled that these two grand incompetent organizations shall be destroyed. The rest of us can only watch and wait. Remember the Hindu proverb: When the Elephants fight, the ants get crushed.

Losing the Fortune

Today on The Today Show, Ted Turner, always good for a laugh, complained about "losing the fortune," and how becoming a pauper has interfered with his charitable giving. He decried his own stupidity in not cashing in his AOL/Time Warner stock "once I had lost control of the direction of the company," as if, had it stayed under his control, the stock would never have tanked. Since the merger itself was his idea, exactly what he would have done differently is left to our imagination. It's as if this towering ego believes that all of us see him as a towering intellect, and understand that the ruminations of his mind are beyond our mortal power to divine.

He complained bitterly how he had become so poor that his "fortune is down in the hundreds of millions." Poor baby. As if that was not enough, he saw grave effects upon the human condition that his pauperization would bring, citing his plan to "Build a world where nobody's angry enough to be a terrorist." Exactly what his plan is to accomplish this feat, and exactly how the plan will now fail since he can not finance it with his own money, he leaves tantalizingly unspoken. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Maybe the citizens of the world should contribute a few billion to him so that he can get on with the important work of making sure that the anger of the terrorists is assuaged, since he is the only one qualified to do it.

Maybe it's the money that makes Ted so nutty. In other news this morning, a woman whose six dental practices netted her and her (now dead) husband "$60,000 per month" described how, when she was running her husband down "two or three times" she was in a mental state where "everything was in slow motion." How or why her judgement was impaired by going so slowly that this constitutes an excuse for murder escapes me, probably because I don't have enough money to understand the mental machinations of the rich and murderously jealous.

And for those on the left who decry President Bush's mispronounciation of the word nuclear as "nuke-u-lar," this morning I heard Robert Kennedy Jr., man of the left and decrier of wind power (but only when it spoils the view from his family mansion), was decrying "nuke-u-lar" power as well this morning. So it is not just idiots of the right who mispronounce the word, but idiots of the left can do the same. But I have one nit to pick with RFK's son: if we can't have nuclear power, and we can't have wind power, and petroleum causes global warming, how are we to keep the chill of winter out of our homes? Not to mention how we are to get to the polls to vote for members of his family next election day. I suppose we will just have to walk, or ride a bicycle.

Thank God I don't have enough money to be as foolish of any of these bozos.

A Political Budget

President Bush has submitted his budget to Congress and it is, in the words of many, a political document. Mr. Bush's brand of "compassionate conservatism" requires precipitous increases in the discretionary budget. In other words, items other than the military and previously mandated increases in entitlements are going through the roof, out of control. Actually, this is a kind way to state it. The truth is that this spending is under tight control, and it is being controlled into a steep rise. Education and Health care expenditures are being accelerated in order to enhance the administration's "compassionate" credentials, but the cost is the creation of deficits that promise to break records. The amazing thing is that the cost of the war on terrorism is not even included in this 10 figure budget... over 1.2 trillion dollars!

While we know that the choice was strictly between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore, and thus there was no choice, we can remind ourselves that this was the better of two alternatives. However, this all goes to prove my point, made many times in this space, that there is really no difference between the candidates for major office in this country. Both major parties are statist, and believe that the people are too stupid to decide how to spend our own money, and that government needs to confiscate our money and power in order to arrange things for us. The only difference in that the donkeys will tax us to get the money to pursue their agenda, and the elephants will cut taxes, and rely on the laws of economics to boost the growth rate and therefore procure for them more money from a more vibrant economy to fund their big government schemes, which, they hope, will buy them enough votes to ensure re-election.

Those of us who desire a smaller government, a less intrusive "Nanny State," and increased freedom for individual citizens, have a long way to go. Maybe only republicans or democrats can win national elections, but neither is capable of offering any change from the trends of larger and more intrusive government, and diminishing freedom across the board. It is not a matter of the lesser evil; both are equally evil. Only the gap in foreign policy differentiates the two parties. I have, and will continue to vote for the party that promises peace through strength rather than capitulation to Internationalist Ostrichism, but I have grave forbodings about what will happen to us once the terroristic Islamic enemy is vanquished. Once the war is over, unless Bush's Protestant prophesy of the end times comes true, we will be in a heap of trouble. And we will win the war, and the boomers will retire. At that point, the government, whether donkey or elephant, will be relying upon the same "lock box" that kept us laughing through the 2000 presidential campaign.

Unless a fiscally responsible third party emerges that is strong enough to contend for national electoral victory, God help us....

This is Justice?

The cruelty, unfairness, and, well, just plain meanness of our system of justice is what I choose to attack today. It may well be true that we have the best such system in the world, as some say, but I doubt it. It may well be true that humans are incapable of being fair to those we dislike, but I just can't believe that. But one thing we must all believe is that, of all the crimes which one can be convisted of when one is totally innocent, murder is surely the easiest.

Maybe I didn't phrase that clearly. It is possible for the innocent to be found guilty at trial by a jury. Of all the charges for which this true, murder is by far the one where this is most possible. This is true for several reasons, and is only true if you don't include crimes in which the accused is technically innocent of the charge at bar, but pattern evidence reveals to the jury that the accused has committed many such crimes for which he was never punished. This may be obvious, but Alan Dershowitz, in his 1982 book The Best Defense, laid out his 13 rules of the criminal justice system and they are instructive. They Are"

Rule 1- Most criminal defendants are, in fact guilty.

Rule 2 - All criminal defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges understand and believe Rule 1.

Rule 3 - It is easier to convict guilty defendants by violating the Constitution than by complying with it, and in some areas it is impossible to convict guilty defendants without violating the Constitution.

Rule 4 - Almost all police lie about whether they violated the Constitution in order to convict guilty defendants.

Rule 5 - All prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are aware of Rule 4.

Rule 6 - Many prosecutors implicitly encourage police to lie about whether they violated the Constitution in order to convict defendants.

Rule 7 - All judges are aware of Rule 6.

Rule 8 - Most trial judges pretend to believe police officers who they know are lying.

Rule 9 - All appellate judges are aware of Rule 8, yet many pretend to believe the trail judges who pretended to believe the lying police officers.

Rule 10 - Most judges disbelieve defendants about whether their Constitutional rights have been violated, even if they are telling the truth.

Rule 11 - Most judges and prosecutors would not knowingly convict a defendant who they believe to be innocent of the crime charged.

Rule 12 - Rule 11 does not apply to members of organized crime, drug dealers, career criminals or potential informers.

Rule 13 - Nobody really wants justice.

Now, I am no fan of Mr. Dershowitz's politics, especially his craven and unprincipled support of B.J.Clinton. But as an academic and appeals lawyer, he is one of the best. He helped to engineer the reversal of the conviction of at least one innocent man, Claus Von Bolow. who was convicted the first time for no better reason than that the jury thought that he "looked guilty" and was cold and apparently uninvolved emotionally with the proceedings. Dershowitz was a central figure in obtaining the reversal of the first conviction, and was on the seat with the defense when they proved beyond even a shadow of a doubt that the prosecutions entire case, which rested on some illegally obtained evidence and the wholly impossible idea that Mrs. Sunny Von Bulow was (attempted to be) killed by an injection of insulin, delivered by her unsympathetic-looking husband, natch. "Who else could have done this to Sunny" the prosecutor confidently said to the jury.

In the retrial, justice was obtained for Mr. Von Bulow, but at what price? At the first trial he was represented by Herald Price Fahringer, a great and extremely expensive defense attorney. After he lost the case, Fahringer was quoted (by the judge in an unrelated appeal):

Trial lawyer Herald Price Fahringer who represented Claus von Bulow was quoted in the San Francisco Examiner of November 28, 1983 as stating that his haughty personality hurt his cause. He said "There's no way in the world you're going to be able to get 12 jurors who can sympathize with him. Arrogance and superiority are just devastating to a jury."

Imagine that. Conviction for murder for being arrogant and superior. Juries just love to bring down the high, mighty, and haughty, when given the chance.

In the second trial, Von Bulow was represented by Thomas Puccio, a former federal prosecutor, who brilliantly blew away the case against his client. He had to, because nothing less than complete devastation of the prosecution's case would have resulted in the acquittal of such an unsympathetic character as Claus Von Bulow. But this justice came at a price that has been estimated in the eight figures. That's better than ten million dollars of Sunny Von Bulow's money for the trial, the appeal by Dershowitz (who around that time bragged that he would take no case without a minimum of one million dollars cash retainer, and then had his law school students do most of the work), and the retrial. (I watched, and remember, the entire retrial, but for an in-depth recapitulation of the case, go here.

Then, last night on Court TV, on their show The System, I saw a case in which, while the defendant might have looked guilty, the family of the victim believed otherwise and supported him, and the evidence, as reported in the story, was so flimsy as to defy belief. The defense obliterated the case against him. He was convicted anyway. As TV Guide had it:

The case of Florida medical examiner William Sybers who, 10 years after his wife Kay passed away, is charged with her death. Throughout the trial, he has the support of his and Kay's children and her family. The prosecution attempts to use forensic science to prove his complicity; his defense attorney questions whether the evidence was contaminated during the testing process.

The documentary show was less kind to the prosecution's case. But still he was convicted, based primarily upon some very speculative and untested "science". He was practically pauperized by the cost of his defense. No millions for the likes of Dershowitz or Puccio remain for him. He is, however, pursuing an appeal. Good luck to him.

What outrages me is not even that these men were innocent. For all I know, both men are guilty as charged. What outrages me is that they could be convicted of murder on such faulty evidence, merely because the prosecutor succeeds in convincing the jury that the defendants look guilty, feel guilty, fairly reek of guilt, and appear to the jury as unsympathetic and uninvolved, so the jury just goes ahead and disregards the evidence and convicts them. It could happen to you. Or me. On the other hand, charismatic individuals, O.J. Simpson comes to mind, can be acquitted after mountains of evidence prove their guilt. In the Bible, convictions for murder must rely on at least two eyewitnesses to the crime. That may be too high a standard for our modern society, what with DNA testing and video tape, but the present situation, where, for example, all that is needed for conviction is a possible motive and the absence of a convincing alibi, seems way too loose, in my opinion. Recently over 100 murderers have been set free, by the application of DNA evidence that was not available at the time of trial. This shows that many convicts on death row are entirely innocent, since very few murders have any DNA evidence available for testing in the first place, due to the nature of the crime (perpetrator DNA is usually associated with murders that are preceeded by rape).

Bottom line: in our modern system of justice, WINNING has become more important to police and litigators than any search for the truth. The need or desire for retribution for the victim, which has no constitutional basis, has become paramount. Many proposals have been advanced to improve matters. For instance, Professor Glenn Reynolds has proposed one solution of juries being kept in the dark about much of the available evidence and prosecutors seeking conviction rather than truth. That's one is a little dense, but he has a more general discussion on the subject here. There are a plethora of possible solutions or improvements to the present situation out there. We can only hope that the entrenched interests move the ball forward, and make the administration of justice in this nation a little more fair, especially for those of us who don't have millions of dollars to help improve the odds for those of us who become wrongfully accused, and look like we might have committed the crime. It is up to us, the little guys, to raise our voices and demand change. I pray that the movement to change the system for the better becomes the juggernaut that it needs to become before real change is possible.

Triumph for Jackson

I just finished the ABC two hour program on Michael Jackson, and I want to congratulate him. This show is a great victory for him, in my humble opinion.

The crux of all the discussion on the Michael Jackson thing for the last ten years has been, you know, the pedophile thing. Sex. With. Children. After watching this emotionally crippled billionaire for two hours, the clear conclusion that I draw is that this freak does not have sex. Not with children. Not with women. Not even with Rosie Thumb and her four sisters. This fellow is so afraid of sex that he can not even talk about the subject without affecting horror and revulsion at the mere thought of the act of sex.

I don't know what the punditocracy will make of this show, or the documentary that underlays it. But the whole point of this zero base thinking thing that I do in this space is to cut through the bullshit that pervades our society, and try to arrive at some semblance of truth. There are three sides to any story, and here is my side of this one: The guy is terrified of sex. The idea that he could have sex with anyone, including himself, would depend upon him having thespian talents that he has never shown. He is not an actor. He is (or was) a brilliant choreographer and a great dancer. Other musical talents reside in his ouvre. But acting? That's not his bag. He couldn't even pretend to deny his facial surgery effectively. This guy could not hide his true feelings if he tried. And he did try. And what was revealed was a frightened emotional cripple who has a very unusual relationship with other humans. In other words, he is an artist. A weirdo, not a criminal.

If the rest of the world sees what I have seen in this latest revelation, the accusation that he has had sex with minors should disappear. If that happens, the way will be clear for him to make a comeback in his musical career. And if that happens, what a triumph that would be! Talk about a resurrection from the dead. This would be tantamount to a miracle. Bravo, Michael Jackson.
UPDATE: At least one person feels that MJ is capable of more activity than I do. Read the sworn Declaration on The Smoking Gun.

Liberals Against Wind Power

We all know that liberals like Ted Kennedy, RFK Jr., and Walter Cronkite are against oil and coal, not to mention nuclear, electric power production. These men side with organizations like Greenpeace against the big, bad, conservative oil companies, and take every opportunity to support so-called renewable energy. Why, then, are they against Greenpeace's latest cause celebre, a wind farm in Nantucket Sound? NIMBY!

Yes, they want renewable energy, but not in their own back yard. You see, they have paid a fortune for their palaces on Nantucket Island, and don't want their precious view marred by windmills. This looks like an April fools joke, but it is all too real. Walter Cronkite I can understand, since he is a private citizen. But the Kennedys? They are public servants, after all, and quite a bit of their demonization of the right is centered on air pollution and oil politics. But when they are asked to sacrifice something for the cause, even just a part of the view from their summer house beach, they can't show the courage of their convictions.

I can't wait to see how long it takes the media to take up this story. Hypocrisy, thy name is Kennedy.

Bug Chasers Update

The "Bug Chasers" story reported in Rolling Stone magazine and mentioned in this space about a week ago has. predictably, caused quite a brouhaha in certain circles. Of course the gays have mobilized to deny the story. They have such a bug in their bonnet that some have even taken the time to repeatedly email little old me for a retraction. After some consideration, I felt that the subject had to be revisited.

Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, and himself openly gay, and Gregory Freeman, writer of the story, both stand by the story. Other sources have attacked only the number of cases of theis bizarre behavior. No responsible source I could find refutes the fact that there are some gay men who seek out infection by the virus. Only the numbers, which were quopted as either 10,000 cases per year, or 25% of all cases, have been disputed. The larger phenomenon of gay men who don't take any precautions to avoid infection is also not disputed. In fact, one of the most popular bloggers has been outed, by gays, of course, as an HIV positive man who sought out "bareback" sex himself, and he is one of those in the forefront of denying the "Bug Chaser" story.

Once more the Emperor is seen to be without raiment. The obvious truth is that gay men participate in behavior that the rest of this society sees as bizarre, and that breaks some of our strongest taboos, every day. No doubt there are other behaviors that some gay men participate in that we would also find strange. But there is no disputing the fact that some gay men willfully pursue the virus, others fly so close to the flame that they defy the virus, others are in denial about the mere existence of the virus, and some claim that the virus itself is harmless. What amazes me is the degree to which some people are willing to go to deny these obvious truths. I have some gay friends, and most of them are willing to just mind their business in sexual matters. I am a straight man, and I don't make an issue of how, where, why, and with whom I have sex, or even if I ever indulge in the sex act at all. But there are some people who make quite an issue of their, and other's, sexuality. I say: it's a free country, and we are free to say and believe whatever we like. And to my new correspondents: don't expect any more of a "retraction" than that.

Bush Hits Home Run

The speech has been delivered, and the results are in. At least three quarters of the American people agree with the commander in chief that war is warranted to deal with the madman in Baghdad. The one quarter that is still against him now are the looney left: Kennedy and Daschle, and assorted others from the looney right: isolationists and Ostrich Anarchists. Even Hillary Clinton stands with the President.

May God have mercy on our enemies. We won't.

Public Deployments on CNN

If an enemy of the USA, or anyone with the curiosity to know about it, for that matter, wants to know about the deployments of United States forces in the Persian Gulf region, needs only to click on this link. I dunno if this gives aid and comfort to the enemy, or is calculated to have the opposite effect, but it seems to me that this is way more information than any member of the public has a need to know. While I find the info interesting, and am in favor of transparency in how our government operates, I really wonder if this is necessary.

As with much that is going on in this country since 9/11, we seem to be having many more "grin and bear it" moments lately. I guess that all good Americans must have confidence that our government is sudenly imbued with an aura of efficiency, and that everyone involved has our best interests in mind. or maybe something really wrong is going on here. Pick one....

Bug Chasers

According to the latest Rolling Stone Magazine, which hit my mailbox this morning, many Homosexual men actually seek out HIV infection. Amazingly, these men believe that the infection that is linked to Acquired Immune Deficiency Disease, or AIDS, and which used to be called GRID, or Gay Related Immune Disorder, is more of a secret club or a red badge of courage than a medical scourge. It is one thing for some to be accused of being HIV positive and seeking "bareback" sex, as a famous blogger has been accused of doing, but it must be taken in a different light when one realizes that the "recipient," or "bottom" is a more than willing partner. There is, as reported in Rolling Stone,

an intricate underground world that has sprouted, driven almost completely by the internet, in which men who want to be infected with HIV get together with those who are willing to infect them. The men who want the virus are called "bug chasers," and the men who freely give the virus to them are called "gift givers." While the rest of the world fights the AIDS epidemic and most people fear HIV infection, this subculture celebrates the virus and eroticizes it. HIV infected semen is treated like liquid gold.... The virus isn't horrible and fearsome, it is beautiful and sexy.... In this world, the men with HIV are the most desired, and the bug chasers will do anything to get the virus - to "get knocked up," to be "bred" or "initiated into the brotherhood."

Pretty amazing stuff. Aside from their assertion that the internet is a necessary part of this abberation (I guess that the editors at Rolling Stone never heard of the personal ads) the rest of the article seems to be well researched. I know that the gays have become a protected victim class and can't be criticized, but this is over the top. The cost to society is tremendous. This is not just some behavior between consenting adults. I wonder what Andy will have to say about this one?

Frog Boiling Continues...

United Nations weapons inspectors have found a dossier in a scientist's home in Baghdad that proves that Saddam Hussein has continued to pursue the creation of nuclear weapons. As the article says:

In their eagerness to get into the scientists' homes, some of the inspectors had been seen jumping over a garden wall. Once inside they found what one Western official has described as a "highly significant" batch of documents which, on closer inspection, revealed that Saddam's scientists were continuing development work on producing an Iraqi nuclear weapon. Although these documents are this weekend still being examined by IAEA experts to establish the current state of Saddam's nuclear weapons programme, the discovery could well turn out to be the "smoking gun" that officials in the Bush administration have pinned their hopes on obtaining in order to justify launching military action against Baghdad.

On the same day, UNMOVIC revealed that Saddam had a dozen chemical weapon warheads. While Blix and Co. were at pains to claim that the warheads were empty:

"I'm not sure what the blazes it is that inspectors and the world's diplomats expect in terms of a smoking gun," said Richard O Spertzel, a former head of the UN biological weapons inspections unit. "If it's loaded munitions, this is a waste of their time. How many filled munitions did we find in more than seven years? None."

The clock ticks on, and our frog must sense the water heating up around him.

North Korea: Now What?

The most troubling problem for the world today, indeed the greatest peril to humanity for the last half century, is the impending proliferation of nuclear weapons. The idea that irresponsible despots of the ilk of Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein might hold, make threats with, and actually use nuclear weapons must be frightening even to the cowards of the looney left who cling to inchoate mental Ostrichism rather than face the responsibility that comes with being the world's most globally involved nation. The question boils down to this: does it ever make sense to yield to blackmail?

Even philosophers have little to argue over that question. Blackmail is not a tree in the woods. Blackmailers will always pull the trigger, whatever the victim does. There is little to debate here, merely history and experience. Blackmail is like Pandora's box or toothpaste: once the threat is out, the situation is irrevocably changed. If the blackmailer is serious, only the timing of the realization of the threat is in question. If the threat is a bluff. it must be called. Like a hand of poker, the cards must be played the same, regardless of their value. Any poker player must agree that anyone who plays a weak hand differently from a strong hand will always lose.

So, what do we do about North Korea? To those who, like me, believe that there are three sides to any story, (your side, my side, and the truth) most arguments can be made more ordered and logical if the two sides are put in the light. Therefore the truth is somewhere between: "A": accepting Korea as a nuclear power and "B": having North Korea's Kim Jong Il meekly dismantle his nuclear reactors and weapon materials. While there might be sane people who believe that "A" is possible, or even desirable, "B" can only become true after a war that no sane person welcomes.

One point of view holds that we in the Western Hemisphere, and even in Europe (of which only a small slice is in the Western Hemisphere) should leave the problem for the "locals" to deal with. Leaving China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea to their own devices may seem attractive to the head-in-the-sand set, but that point of view denies the fact that Kim has delivery systems that can directly threaten us, and also has shown a willingness, even a zest, for selling these weapons to others. This scenario also forces a period of instability in Asia, with many possible outcomes. Instability between the Asian nuclear powers threatens worldwide nuclear holocaust. One can easily forsee that, even if war is avoided, what will emerge is an Asia in which there are a half dozen nuclear powers, with Japan sitting on immense plutonium resources already, and a possibly reunified Korea becoming a formidable force to be reckoned with. China and Russia will not stand for that. Or so one might think. Russia recently proposed a plan for mollifying the despot, offering economic benefits in return for a nuclear free Korea.

The path to "C", which appears to me to be the creation of some form of a non-nuclear Korea without resorting to warfare, will be very difficult to achieve. History offers no instances of appeasement leading to peaceful outcomes. And Bush's recent vacillation does not inspire confidence. Only one thing is certain: war with North Korea, especially before the crisis with Iraq is over, must be avoided, because it is unwinnable. And without clear victory, the outcome is unthinkable.

Sheryl Crow

I have given Andrew Sullivan a rough time in these pages. He went through a period where his fixation on his sexuality made his blog a little tedious. I removed him from from my blogroll at that time. He's back up there now. His piece in Salon on Sheryl Crow's meanderings against the war-to-come are right on point. Read the whole thing, but I must quote a little bit of it:

Doesn't it sometimes get a tad bit embarrassing being on the left these days? I'm not talking about legitimate left-liberal beliefs - that income inequality is wrong, that corporations are evil, that governments are better judges than individuals about what's good for the world, etc etc. I'm talking about the way in which otherwise legitimate left-wing causes tend to get embraced by, well, the intellectually challenged. I mean actors and celebrities and pop stars and others not exactly known for being the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree - almost all of whom seem to drift into the camp of the knee-jerk left. I mean people like Barbra Streisand, who doesn't know the difference between Iraq and Iran, and who at this point must have done more to discredit Hollywood liberals than an entire bookshelf of National Reviews. I mean Sean Penn, another man who just helped Bush win more support for war. I mean, well, Sheryl Crow.

Read the whole thing. And read Andrew's blog. Lucky for me, i live on the West Coast these days. I get to read him every night, just before I go to bed. With my wife.

Lileks Says It Right... Again

James Lileks, the best writer in the blogosphere (1630 inbound links can't be wrong), once again puts what many of us are thinking in a way that few if any of us could manage, and he does it every day. In today's "Bleat" he comments on the propensity of otherwise talented Hollywood creative types to add their two cents to the national debate. The piece starts out as a critique of Scorcese's latest effort "The Gangs of New York," but then he adds this priceless bit:

You know what I’d like to hear, just once? ?As a New Yorker, I remember too well the death and destruction that arrived on our doorstep that day in September. As an American, I worry about regimes who possess both the means to kill innocent citizens and the devilish will to do it. As an artist, I value the freedom I have in a pluralistic, secular democracy, and I realize that these traits are not only rare and worthy of defense, but deserve to be extended to people in other nations. As a student of history, I am impressed by how our military - which has the ability to annihilate cities and nations - has spent billions to develop weapons that destroy a single building. Surely this says as much about us as our crass and extroverted culture; what other nation with our abilities would take such care? Presented with enemies who build weapons factories next to kindergartens, we invent missiles that take the former and spare the latter. This may not mean we are right, but it surely means we are are bound by a notion of decency our opposites lack. As a human being, I mourn the loss of innocent life that will surely attend any war - but I must admit, if we could have prevented 9/11 with a military action that cost a dozen innocent lives, I would have supported it with the reluctance that must attend any act of organized violence. And finally, as a filmmaker who lives in a special kind of isolation, surrounded mostly with affluent like-minded people from the arts community, I must admit that when it comes to foreign affairs and military matters I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

Absolutely priceless. I am sure that most of us would like to hear Scorsese, Penn, Baldwin, et al say something similar, just once.

Boiling the Frog

It is said that the way to boil a frog is to increase the heat slowly. If the temperature rises too fast, the frog will jump out of the pot. But, if the temperature is increased slowly, the frog will just sit there until he's the main ingredient in a froggy stew. That seems to be the case with our frog, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. We bomb his air defense radars and other targets are hit as well. Some sources have us hitting fiber optic lines and logistical sites. The Turkish army is slowly occupying Northern Iraq, a little more each day.

Turkish newspapers report that between 10,000 and 15,000 troops have been deployed along the frontier and units have crossed into northern Iraq, although the military command denies there has been a major military buildup... ?But there are more soldiers posted on the hilltops around the town and we hear of trucks full of soldiers crossing the border in the past few nights.?

Debka.com has some similar observations. Our buildup of troops continues daily, with little announcements of a few thousand troops here, a command battallion there, and about half of our Navy seems to be deploying to the region, one ship at a time.

Meanwhile, our frog plays footsie with the UN inspectors and the diplomatic community, wondering where the little whisps of steam and tiny little bubbles are coming from. You'd think that Saddam might start making plans to move in next door to Idi Amin, a fellow traveller in the Outrageous Despots club, "in an exclusive community outside Jiddah, the capital" of Saudi Arabia. But his buddy Idi needed to be overthrown first. So we wait for the water to boil.

Were Holiday Shopping Numbers Bad Or Not?

If you read the papers you might get the impression that this holiday buying season was a bust, with reports like this common:

Economy Inching Forward The holiday shopping season, while not a disaster, was one of the weakest in memory, with U.S. chain-store sales up a scant 1.5 percent from the year before, according to a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi estimate. (from sfgate.com)

But if you read the technology news, you might read something like this:

Online Holiday Spending Jumps 24 Percent - Report Online spending during the holiday season, excluding travel, rose 24 percent from a year earlier to $13.7 billion, Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings said in a joint report released on Monday.

So, which is it? Is the online economy part of the "real" economy? Are we witnessing a mere paradigm shift, where mainstream media is still picking up and reporting old fashioned, government generated statistics, while the economy is better than the raw data seems to indicate? This seems to be a classic instance of the philosophic argument of the search for the "truth." Is the truth the tale of what actually happened? Or is the truth actually merely our perception of what happened. If a tree falls in the woods, should a bear shit on it?

More basically, does anyone really know if we had a bad or a good holiday shopping season? Is the economy good or bad? These seem like simple questions to me. Yet entire forests will be destroyed to provide the paper upon which this debate will be recorded and published. Sometimes I think that much of our national discourse is a huge make-work project, and many of the pressing issues of the day might be settled easily if only I were king, or the star Chamber was really a committee that actually ruled the world. Are the rest of us in some sort of Orwellian rat race where we are forever running running running on an endless wheel and never getting anywhere, but staying busy and feeling important? Other times I feel that all I have to do is get better at predicting the movement of a few stocks, and to hell with philosophy. Is the idiot the guy who spends his time writing missives like this, or the guy who reads them? (As both a writer and a reader of blogs like this, I'm an idiot either way.)

And if we are just cattle in some giant cosmic feedlot, who buys all of the beef?

Arab Reparations for Jewish Expulsions?

Since the foundation of the State of Israel about 900,000 Jews were forcibly expelled from their homes in Arab lands. Since the 1970s about 12,000 claims have been made by Jews whose property was taken. Included in these land claims are some previously agricultural plots that today compose most of the downtown area of Tripoli, capitol of Libya. These claims have been widely seen as a counterbalance to palestinian claims that are expected to be a part of any negociated solution to the current situation.

But now it appears that some of these claims will actually be paid. The mega-insurance company AXA seems ready to consider the payment of claims to properties that were insured at the time they were taken. The factual basis of these claims not disputed, so it seems that a few families that were lucky enough to have kept their paperwork and insurance policies all these decades might finally be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.

Don't confuse these claims with the claims of Arabs who previously lived in lands that are today part if Israel. First, they left their property voluntarily, or at the urging of their own religious leaders, prior to the commencement of warfare against the nascent Jewish State. After the war concluded, with Israel the victor, these lands became, under international law, spoils of War, and therefore, they were seized legally. This is not to be confused with hostile citizens running Jews out of their homes in Arab countries, while their governments and police either did nothing or actively participated in these pogroms. And never forget that the majority of the lands that make up the State of Israel were legally purchased from their rightful owners by the early Zionists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Charlie Rangel: Another Specious Position

Now Charlie Rangel, African-American congressman from Harlem, has announced another legislative initiative that appears to be, once again, a fraudulent political position. He claims to be ready to offer legislation reinstating the draft. His stated reason? Not, as one would suppose, to fill in depleted ranks. No, he says that the presence of hundreds of thousands of draftees would make it politically impossible for G.W.Bush to wage war on Iraq. This position gets him in the news, but it has no chance of passage. A draft is only instituted, in a free society, when manpower needs for the nation's military can not be met by a volunteer force. That is not the case today. Add to that, with women in uniform today, women would need to be a part of the draft as well. Anyone who believes that will ever happen is at least a few slices short of a loaf.

We can all be proud of our all-volunteer armed forces. They constitute the finest military force ever assembled on the face of the planet. Warfare is not video games, with all of the bells and whistles prividing the strength. Warfare is waged by highly trained and motivated men and women who are willing to risk their lives to accomplish their mission. The armed forces are not a jobs program, nor a carreer-enhancing resume item, although some may use it that way. Our armed forces are the place where some of the best and brightest of our young people go to serve their country, and it helps to produce some of the finest men and women that we have. The draft is, in peacetime, nothing more than a political football with which some of the less principled of our "leaders" play a very dangerous game. A power game played with the very lives of our young men and women.

Previously, Charlie Rangel is well known for his statement that legalizing drugs would constitute genocide against the black race. as if only blacks are subject to the ravages of drug abuse. Those who think deeply about drug prohibition either favor harm reduction, or support the huge money train that prohibition brings. Most all others who are in favor of prohibition agree with the policy because, well, drugs are bad. They have never really thought about the issue, past the point where they believe that drugs are bad, therefore they should be illegal. In fainess, there are those in the drug abuse treatment industry, and some recovering addicts as well, who believe that prohibition is a useful tool for keeping recovering addicts on the right path. But I believe that those who believe this are in the minority, and most of them would favor "harm reduction" strategies anyway (like needle exchange and reducing prison sentences to treatment protocols). Those who believe that drug addicts should serve multi-decade prison sentences are all on the side of continuing prohibition for the immense economic benefits that prohibition brings.

Of course the easy availability of drugs of abuse might increase the number of drug addicts. Then again, other methods than supporting hugely profitable criminal drug purveyors might be more effective at curtailing drug abuse. We don't know, since we have never tried any other system. And since those in positions of authority gain so much power from prohibition, they avoid even the discussion of alternatives to making drug abuse a crime. Even the counting of the votes of a harm reduction initiative has been stopped (in Washington, D.C.) by dedicated prohibitionists. Recently one of America's staunchest prohibitionists, Dan Burton (R-IN), shocked many on Capitol Hill when he came very close to calling for looking at legalizing drugs when he stated in a congressional hearing that he thought that Al Capone would have been a much less dangerous character had he been deprived of the huge income that prohibition afforded him. If even Dan Burton (on his last day as committee chairman) is starting to wonder what would happen if the profit were removed from the trafficing in drugs, you know that some sort of a change is coming. But the Charlie Rangels on the world will be against harm reduction until they are no longer in a position to profit from the sequelae of the trade, or be politically hurt by supporting an unpopular position. Charlie is a pathetic creature, really, advocating the reinstatement of the draft, because he has no other idea that will get his name and face in the news. He has even announced that he will no longer even talk about the issue of drug prohibition or harm reduction.

Don't get me wrong. I like Charlie, although I haven't seen him since he was a state assemblyman in 1969. That was just before he won nomination to Congress from a wounded Adam Clayton Powell's, Jr. Back in the 1960s, everybody liked Charlie. That was part of the method he used to get nominated by the Democrat machine to the sinecure of the 15th district in Harlem. Charlie gladhanded everyone, and was quite a personable character. I'm sure that he still is. But when a man, near the end of his career, who could not be defeated in an election unless Jesus ran against him (as long as he receives the democrat nomination) supports a pathetically specious position like this one for the reinstatement of the draft, just to get attention, it is very sad. I wouldn't hope for a courageous statement of principle from Charlie, but I do wish that he would at least keep quiet.