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October 2019

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY

By on October 14th, 2019

When I was an immigrant youth this is what we sang on Columbus Day:

IN 1492

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.

He sailed by night; he sailed by day;
He used the stars to find his way.

A compass also helped him know
How to find the way to go.

Ninety sailors were on board;
Some men worked while others snored.

Then the workers went to sleep;
And others watched the ocean deep.

Day after day they looked for land;
They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand.

October 12 their dream came true,
You never saw a happier crew!

“Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried;
His heart was filled with joyful pride.

But “India” the land was not;
It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.

The Arakawa natives were very nice;
They gave the sailors food and spice.

Columbus sailed on to find some gold
To bring back home, as he’d been told.

He made the trip again and again,
Trading gold to bring to Spain.

The first American? No, not quite.
But Columbus was brave, and he was bright.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Let Us Not Engender the Abuse of Meaning Peter Smith

By on October 14th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/let

In his essay Politics and the English Language George Orwell wrote:

A man may take a drink because he feels himself to be failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

On Fox News the other day Tucker Carlson interviewed Ralph Abraham, a Republican Louisiana gubernatorial candidate who happens to be a medical doctor experienced in delivering baby girls and boys. Both madly agreed that there are only two genders; thus, all unbeknown, falling into a linguistic quagmire. Taking a lead from Orwell, this is me writing to Carlson:

You interviewed a doctor today running for a state governorship. Both you and the doctor referred to gender not to sex. Language is important in moulding culture. There are two sexes, male and female. Using the term gender — a modern affectation transposed from the field of grammar, where it is used in some languages to describe the masculine or feminine forms of nouns and pronouns — muddies the water.

I have seen outlandish claims about there being tens upon tens of different genders. It is self-evidently ridiculous to claim that there are tens upon tens of different sexes. Language has allowed outlandish claims to be made and you and many other conservatives (or more generally, if you like, people of common sense) have fallen into the trap.

Sex is the right word as a noun to cover the two categories of people, according to their reproductive function. Stick to that and you expose the foolishness before it gets to first base.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Climate’s “Extinction Rebellion” and the Child Stalking Horse by Andrew Ash

By on October 14th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14940/climate-extinction-rebellion

Their “cause”, right or wrong, seems to be what matters. Even as they are cheered along by doting parents, political agitators and junk science, the sad fact remains that solar flares — apparently the leading cause of climate change — do not award monetary research grants.

While it is undoubtedly better not to choke the world with plastic, the Israelis and others have fortunately invented several varieties of fibre as strong as plastic but as soluble as an orange peel — and reportedly often safely edible.

Rather than shedding some light on a difficult, and complex problem, the climate protestors seem merely to be fuelling the increasingly divisive world in which we live. As the former chief of staff of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted this summer, the Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing”.

What they seem to want to change it into, however, is socialism: governmental control of the economy, including the means of production and distribution. Historically, socialism has only led to lowered standards of living and rationing for everyone, to cut costs. Here in the UK, in the National Health Service, qualified people apparently do not want to work hard for less. Everyone ends up poorer and with services that are wanting… What is needed is growth: better education and the creation of more jobs… rather than attacking the “rich” [read: middle class] and blaming them for inequalities.

When the closest one has ever got to an occupation is by occupying other another person’s place of work, the right to preach morality appears a dubious one.

Just when you thought it was safe to travel into London again without getting caught up in the mayhem of yet another protest, climate change activists have organised a whole two weeks of it, which kicked off on October 7.

“Extinction Rebellion UK” appears to be a rag-tag collective of millennial and post-middle-aged eco-warriors, with three attributes in common — conservation, the love of the sound of their own voices, and having not enough to do with their time.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Terrible Does Turkey Have to Get? by Burak Bekdil

By on October 14th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15007/how-terrible-does-turkey-have-to-get

So where is this “economic devastation” against Turkey? Or does that make two promises that the U.S. has not kept?

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been threatening to flood Europe with more refugees. “We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” he promised on October 10.

Meanwhile, obscenely, Erdoğan has been invited to the White House for November 13.

The real crime was for the US to betray the Kurds — savory or not — by making promises it did not keep… and leaving the world to wonder which Middle East ally the US will double-cross next. Take a guess?

Turkey’s military offensive into the overwhelmingly Kurdish northeastern Syria is sending messages on many wavelengths. One consequence is beyond dispute: Turkey is adding further chaos, bloodshed and tears to a region already in turmoil. The U.S. had apparently “assur[ed] Kurdish protection from Turkey.” Trump spoke of “economic devastion” if Kurdish forces were attacked. “As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!),” Trump tweeted on October 7. [Microsoft may thoughtfully have censored this tweet for you. Ed.]

So where is this “economic devastation” against Turkey? Or does that make two promises that the U.S. has not kept?

In theory, the Turkish incursion will build a safe zone that is 30 kilometers (20 miles) deep and stretches more than 480 kilometers (300 miles) toward Syria’s Iraqi border -– which just so happens to be the very place where many of the Kurds in Syria live. From there, the Turkish army will push Kurdish militants south and ward off an “existential threat” to Turkey. Once cleared of the YPG forces, the main Kurdish group (the Syrian offspring of the insurgent umbrella organization PKK) Turkey says it will build homes, hospitals schools and rehabilitation centers for the two million Syrian refugees it hosts.

This happy-ending scenario may not materialize so easily.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Does Rand Paul Think America Owes Our Kurdish Allies? By John McCormack

By on October 14th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/what-does-rand-paul-think-america-owes-our-kurdish-allies/

It’s a question that the Kentucky senator and every American leader ought to answer.

In 2014, Republican senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was all over the map on what, if anything, the United States should do to stop the growing army of jihadists known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

In June 2014, after ISIS conquered Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city at the time, Paul was very skeptical of even using American air power against ISIS. Airstrikes against ISIS could turn America into “Iran’s air force,” Paul wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “America Shouldn’t Choose Sides in Iraq’s Civil War.”

As American public opinion changed, so did Paul’s policy toward U.S. involvement in the war against ISIS. As late as August 29, 2014, Paul still wasn’t sure if “ISIS is a threat to our national security.” But then Paul, who harbored presidential ambitions at the time, abruptly issued a statement saying that he would destroy ISIS militarily.

“Some pundits are surprised that I support destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) militarily. They shouldn’t be,” Paul wrote on September 4 in Time magazine. “If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS.” Many of Paul’s non-interventionist allies were baffled by his change of mind. “The sudden evaporation of Paul’s doubts reeks of political desperation,” wrote Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason.

In 2015, Paul settled on a plan to defeat ISIS by arming the Kurds and promising them a country: “I think they would fight like hell if we promised them a country.”

The Kurds did fight like hell: 11,000 died fighting ISIS. But this week, President Trump decided it was not worth keeping 100 or fewer U.S. troops in northern Syria to deter a Turkish attack on America’s Kurdish allies. Rand Paul loudly cheered him on.

On Wednesday, I noted Paul’s 2015 comments about promising the Kurds their own country on the Corner, and on Thursday Senator Paul responded with a statement emailed by his communications director. “I did and still do support a homeland for the Kurds — in Iraq — anyone who conflates the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran into one simple homogenous, easily solvable problem is either naive or disingenuous,” Paul said in the statement.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Escaping the Middle Eastern Labyrinth Christopher Roach

By on October 14th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/13/escaping-the-middle-eastern-labyrinth/

Perhaps here Trump’s background as a businessman is a benefit; while a general will be loath to admit defeat, and a politician may never allow an original thought to enter his mind, a businessman knows not to throw good money after bad.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, his repeated, almost robotic calls to “stay the course” in Iraq were the mark of a man who had run out of ideas. As casualties mounted and progress faltered, his persistence exemplified a tragic and costly sincerity.

John McCain expressed similar themes in his 2008 campaign, suggesting we could withdraw from Iraq as soon as we achieved an impossible end state and that, if necessary, we should stay 100 years to do so. The American people said no.

The McCain ethos lives on today in Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R.-Texas), a decorated Navy SEAL, whose physical courage contrasts sharply with his recitation of banal conventional wisdom. After Trump’s controversial call to withdraw from Syria, he tweeted, “removing our small and cost-effective force from Northern Syria is causing more war, not less. Our presence there was not meant to engage in endless wars, it was there to deter further warfare.” Crenshaw never learned that “war is peace” was meant to be self-evident nonsense.

Stay the Course is Not a Strategy

Persistence in the face of failure is a substitute for a real and effective strategy. Strategy involves tailoring means to ends. It requires ranking goals and allocating resources accordingly. It also involves deep thinking about what those goals should be and what costs are justified in their pursuit. And it should involve frequent, critical assessments of actions that do not achieve results.

By now, the maudlin tales of the heroic Kurds are familiar to most as propaganda. No nation goes to war because of such idealism, and the establishment’s heart strings are very finely and selectively tuned. We’re supposed to weep for the Kurds, while ignoring the weeping Yemenis. The Democrats now criticizing Trump praised Obama for leaving Iraq under less favorable circumstances and never lost a moment’s sleep over our abandonment of the South Vietnamese 45 years ago.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey’s Return to the Mideast Threatens Iran By getting Turkey more involved in the Middle East, President Trump is ensuring that the region returns to its historic geopolitics. Brandon J. Weichert

By on October 14th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/12/turkeys-return-to-the-mideast-threatens-iran/

Going back to the time of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled from present-day Turkey and presided over a dominion which stretched across much of the Middle East and parts of North Africa, the Muslim world was divided between two sides of the Islamic coin: the first was that of the majority Sunnis and the second was of the minority Shiites. At its core, the Sunni-Shia divide was over a succession crisis—neither side could agree who should succeed Muhammed, the founder of Islam. The two sides engaged in an endless conflict that still rages today.

History at a Glance

Even at the height of the Ottoman Empire (which led the Sunni side), the majority-Shiite state of Persia (present-day Iran) maintained a separate power base in the region. While the Ottoman Empire enjoyed mostly-cordial relations with the various rulers of Shiite Persia, there were conflicts—such as the Safavid-Ottoman wars (which lasted on-and-off from the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s). These conflicts ended in decisive Persian defeats at the hands of the Ottomans.

The Sunni Turks were often the difference in preventing the Shiite Persians from acquiring regional dominance. They can be that difference again. What’s more, short of the United States warring against a NATO ally, Turkey, there is little that Washington can do to stop Turkey’s advance.

The historical norm for the Muslim world, after all, was not one of Western rule or administration. Western dominance was a relatively new phenomenon that came about mostly because of the total collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. When the Ottoman Empire vanished from the map, to be replaced by a much smaller and weaker, more secular—though autocratic—Turkey, the British, French, Russians, and others stepped into the Middle East to fill the proverbial void (and to exploit the natural resources there).

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Strategies of Targeting Trump We are headed for a train wreck. No one knows for certain which outcome is most likely. Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 14th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/13/the-strategies-of-targeting-trump/

There is no logical Democratic explanation for impeaching Donald Trump. The various factions within the Democratic Party calling for impeachment are united only by their loathing of Donald Trump, the person, and his systematic repeal of the Obama progressive project.

After failing with the voting machine gambit, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the emoluments clause, the McCabe-Rosenstein faux-coup, the Comey memos farce, the “resistance” efforts outlined by the New York Times anonymous op-ed writer, the campaign finance violations accusations, Stormy, tax returns, whistleblowers, leakers, the Mueller 22 months charade, and now impeachment 2.0, what exactly is the point of impeaching Trump just 13 months before the election?

Here are the various rationales behind Trump’s Democratic and leftwing opponents’ latest “whistleblower” hoax. None of these scenarios are mutually exclusive.

The Primal Scream? 

There doesn’t have to be a point to impeachment. Democrats loathe Trump. That is enough. They would have impeached him on day one of his presidency before he set foot in the White House but they did not have control of the House. Now they do, so they can. Who cares whether he is convicted in the Senate? House members just want to go on record that they impeached him and put an asterisk on his presidency at worst, and at best drive his polls down to prevent his reelection.

The only hesitation after January 2018 when they took over the House was the completion of the Mueller investigation that seemed a certain road to impeachment. When that failed, it took just a few weeks to recoup, get their spirits back up, and resort to the prearranged fallback whistleblower tact. Now they are back on track.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Californians Learning That Solar Panels Don’t Work in Blackouts

By on October 14th, 2019

https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/californians-learning-that-solar-panels-dont-work-in-blackouts

Rooftop systems need batteries to operate when grid is down
Millions have lost power in outage to prevent more wildfires

Californians have embraced rooftop solar panels more than anyone in the U.S., but many are learning the hard way the systems won’t keep the lights on during blackouts.

That’s because most panels are designed to supply power to the grid — not directly to houses. During the heat of the day, solar systems can crank out more juice than a home can handle. Conversely, they don’t produce power at all at night.

So systems are tied into the grid, and the vast majority aren’t working this week as PG&E Corp. cuts power to much of Northern California to prevent wildfires.

The only way for most solar panels to work during a blackout is pairing them with batteries. That market is just starting to take off. Sunrun Inc., the largest U.S. rooftop solar company, said hundreds of its customers are making it through the blackouts with batteries.

“It’s the perfect combination for getting through these shutdowns,” Sunrun Chairman Ed Fenster said in an interview. He expects battery sales to boom in the wake of the outages.

And no, trying to run appliances off the power in a Tesla Inc. electric car won’t work, at least without special equipment.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

J. Frank Bullitt: Scientists Gone Mad

By on October 14th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/14/scientists-gone-mad/

The men and women of science are supposed to be rational, sober professionals. Yet a few hundred have decided to behave as rabble, having been overtaken by global warming hysteria.

Reuters reported Saturday that “almost 400 scientists have endorsed a civil disobedience campaign aimed at forcing governments to take rapid action to tackle climate change.” The objective is to warn the rest of us “that failure could inflict ‘incalculable human suffering.’”

To say these activist-researchers have broken “with the caution traditionally associated with academia to side with peaceful protesters courting arrest” is almost an understatement. They have chosen to align themselves with the Extinction Rebellion, an organization that’s been described as a “loopy middle-class doomsday cult.”

That description by Sky News reporter Carol Malone is overly generous. The Extinction Rebellion is a criminal enterprise made up of quite clearly disturbed people. Members have been arrested for blocking the entrance of a London airport, and claiming ownership of it for the mob, while dancing in what appears to be a restricted area behind razor wire. One particularly childish and self-indulgent “protester” climbed atop a passenger jet to make his point. Firemen had to remove him with a cherry-picker.

These “rebels” have also used a fire truck to spray fake blood, at one point losing “control of the hose, drenching a bystander and spraying several fellow activists” at the British Treasury building, “as 1,800 liters of an organic liquid containing beetroot spurted out wildly across the street,” the Guardian has reported.

Admittedly these are rather petty crimes, but they’re gateways to the harder stuff.

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