Jonah Goldberg on public sector unions

Jonah Goldberg:

A crucial distinction has been lost in the debate over Walker’s proposals: Government unions are not the same thing as private-sector unions.Traditional, private-sector unions were born out of an often-bloody adversarial relationship between labor and management. It’s been said that during World War I, U.S. soldiers had better odds of surviving on the front lines than miners did in West Virginia coal mines. Mine disasters were frequent; hazardous conditions were the norm. In 1907, the Monongah mine explosion claimed the lives of 362 West Virginia miners. Day-to-day life often resembled serfdom, with management controlling vast swaths of the miners’ lives. Before unionization and many New Deal–era reforms, Washington had little power to reform conditions by legislation.

Government unions have no such narrative on their side. […] Government workers were making good salaries in 1962 when President Kennedy lifted, by executive order (so much for democracy), the federal ban on government unions. Civil-service regulations and similar laws had guaranteed good working conditions for generations.

The argument for public unionization wasn’t moral, economic, or intellectual. It was rankly political.

Traditional organized labor, the backbone of the Democratic party, was beginning to lose ground. As Daniel DiSalvo wrote in “The Trouble with Public Sector Unions,” in the fall issue of National Affairs, JFK saw how in states such as New York and Wisconsin, where public unions were already in place, local liberal pols benefited politically and financially. He took the idea national.

The plan worked perfectly — too perfectly. Public-union membership skyrocketed, and government-union support for the party of government skyrocketed with it. From 1989 to 2004, AFSCME — the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees — gave nearly $40 million to candidates in federal elections, with 98.5 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Why would local government unions give so much in federal elections? Because government workers have an inherent interest in boosting the amount of federal tax dollars their local governments get. Put simply, people in the government business support the party of government. Which is why, as the Manhattan Institute’s Steven Malanga has been chronicling for years, public unions are the country’s foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government.

And this gets to the real insidiousness of government unions. Wisconsin labor officials fairly note that they’ve acceded to many of their governor’s specific demands — that workers contribute to their pensions and health-care costs, for example. But they don’t want to lose the right to collective bargaining.

But that is exactly what they need to lose.

Private-sector unions fight with management over an equitable distribution of profits. Government unions negotiate with friendly politicians over taxpayer money, putting the public interest at odds with union interests, and, as we’ve seen in states such as California and Wisconsin, exploding the cost of government. California’s pension costs soared 2,000 percent in a decade thanks to the unions.

The labor-politician negotiations can’t be fair when the unions can put so much money into campaign spending. Victor Gotbaum, a leader in the New York City chapter of AFSCME, summed up the problem in 1975 when he boasted, “We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.”

This is why FDR believed that “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” and why even George Meany, the first head of the AFL-CIO, held that it was “impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

As it turns out, it’s not impossible; it’s just terribly unwise. It creates a dysfunctional system where for some, growing government becomes its own reward. You can find evidence of this dysfunction everywhere. The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner notes that federal education spending has risen by 188 percent in real terms since 1970, but we’ve seen no significant improvement in test scores.The unions and the protesters in Wisconsin see Walker’s reforms as a potential death knell for government unions. My response? If only.

Read the whole thing. Pournelle’s Iron Law in action again.

UPDATE: the indispensible Michael Barone: Public Unions Force Taxpayers To Fund Democrats.

Everyone has priorities. During the past week Barack Obama has found no time to condemn the attacks that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has launched on the Libyan people.

But he did find time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s public employee unions. Walker was staging “an assault on unions,” he said, and added that “public employee unions make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens.”

Enormous contributions, yes — to the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign. Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle.

Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

Zombie: “Death Channels”

My honorable blog ancestor has been unseen for the past month, which normally is the harbinger of some big cyber-expose. This time around, it was personal business — namely, an experience as “Advance Health Care Directive” executor for a close relative. (S)he writes about the experience in great detail here, in a post entitled “Death Channels”.

Whichever side of the end-of-life-care debate you are on, this article is mind-blowing (and reads like a novella). Read it all, and pass the link to everybody you know.

Government cyber-astroturf project

Via Insty:

U.S. Gov‘t Software Creates ’Fake People’ to Spread Message via Social Networking. “The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage “fake people” on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues. The contract calls for the development of ‘Persona Management Software’ which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.”

Un-freaking-believable. Yet the only way some phenomena I have seen can be rationalized.

Presidents Day

Abraham Lincoln, 1863: Government of the people. by the people, for the people.

Barack Hussein 0bama, 2011: Government of the people, by the New Class, for the New Class and its adopted mascots.

Happy Presidents Day.

Democrats go un-democratic when they lose

Via Insty:

HISTORY: Flashback: Democrats go un-democratic when they lose, and then they lose some more. “The mess in Wisconsin has happened before. In 2003, faced with a new Republican majority intent on redrawing an electoral map that preserved power for Democrats that the voters no longer gave them, the Texas Democrats fled the state. And in 2009, rather than allow a vote on an election security bill that they didn’t want, the Texas Democrats brought the state legislature to a halt — killing the voter ID bill and everything on the calendar that followed it. . . . So the Democrats are trying to bring both houses of the legislature to a full halt to kill the union bill. It may work, at least temporarily, just by running out the clock. But if what has happened in Texas is any guide, it will be a pyrrhic victory. Democrats in Texas have won very little since the 2003 run to the Red River. And after they filibustered the voter ID bill in 2009, which a heavy majority of the voters supported, they suffered an unholy beating in 2010. The Republicans now have a super majority in the House, and the man who led the filibuster, state Rep. Jim Dunnam, was defeated. He didn’t lose just because of that filibuster, but having that on his record certainly didn’t help him.”

Posted at 10:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds

See also handing out fake doctor’s notes at rally. (more here). Law professor and repentant 0bama voter Ann Althouse has videoblogged up a storm: go to her blog and keep scrolling.

And a little history lesson (via Ann Althouse): the Wisconsin Gov. finds himself in the august company of that [sarc] raaaaacist christofascist teabagging reichwinger [/sarc] Franklin Delano Roosevelt!

“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”

Related: Ed Driscoll on “financial catastrophe denialists”. And the WI Deemocrats who fled to Chicago to avoid a quorum for a vote they would lose are now called “fleebaggers”. Heh.

On being a closeted conservative in academia

Insty linked to two great posts by Megan McArdle on liberal bias in academia. The first, which she got lots of vigorous reactions (and hate mail) too, points out the laughably lopsided distribution of liberals vs. conservatives in academia (we’re talking 200/1 ratios in some disciplines). The second gives a rundown of all the lame excuses proffered by apologists, which she facetiously compares to “oh, women are happier in the kitchen and blacks don’t want responsibility” rationalizations for gender and racial discrimination.

Academia is probably the quintessential New Class career path, and in my day job I get to deal with a great many academics, mostly in the hard sciences. I can testify that even in the hard sciences — where politics is rarely an issue in tenure decisions — there is very strong peer pressure. Let me quote an Email I got:

I was at [a major university in the Midwest] at the time of 0bama’s candidacy and quickly learned to keep my political opinions to myself. I was prepared to like 0bama (potentially the first black president and all) but quickly realized he was going to be at best a crooked hack politician in the Chicago mold, and at worst a radical the likes of which the USA hadn’t seen. Typically I was the only person in the room who did not think 0bama was the second coming of JC [well, he does resemble Jimmy Carter, no? — Ed.], and I lost count how many times I heard remarks to the effect that any opposition to his candidacy could only be motivated by racism. I ended up moving to a red state where at least I could open my mouth with impunity — and even here I am one of only two conservatives in my department and generally avoid the subject of politics. Note my field is [a basic science], not English literature or sociology.

I’m the sort of person who doesn’t give a rat’s backside what anybody thinks of him. Even so, it got to me at times and was a factor in deciding where to live next. I can only imagine how this would affect a person more sensitive to peer pressure — probably “adapt or leave”.

Earlier, Insty reproduced an Email he got from a “conservative in the closet” in academia, with some reminiscences of his own added. (Thankfully, Insty works in an unusually supportive environment. He does point, whimsically, to his usefulness to the university administration as a “token” libertarian — and I am not 100% sure he is joking.) An excerpt from the Email:

I have used this comparison [with being in the closet about one’s sexual orientation] myself, it is apt, and it doesn’t just apply to students. You hide yourself in plain sight. You make comments that are carefully crafted to allow you to make small talk, and which will allow your colleagues to think you’re in agreement with them, but which nevertheless satisfy your own sense of integrity. You never lie. You just make comments and allow them to draw their own conclusions. A classic example is the way I’ll make comments about politics, saying things like “I don’t trust politicians, period.” My liberal colleagues will nod and agree. We’re all in agreement, they believe. It gets easy after a while. You make comments about Marxist ideology that are really rather neutral, such as how you see similarities between Marx’s views, and something else. You leave it unstated that in fact you think this is appalling, while they nod and smile at the continuing relevance of Marxism in today’s society. Everyone is happy. I don’t feel quite so happy when someone says something about “stupid fucking conservatives” (I’m quoting exact words here), but I just nod, and say “ugh-huh”.

I’ve just been watching the first series of Mad Men, and I’m struck by the gay guy Salvatore Romano, and how similar his behavior is to me, only I’m hiding my politics, not my sexuality. There are also the classic moments, whereby fellow believers in academia carefully try to work out if you are one of “us”. I remember one guy who heard me comment on how some architecture reminded me of something I read in The Fountainhead, which was enough to alert him. Later we went out for a drink. I remember the nervous moment (for both of us) where he finally came out and asked me, “so what are your political / economic beliefs?” I chickened out, tempered, and said, “well, perhaps more to the center than most academics” and countered, “what are yours?” Reassured, he was willing to admit to conservative leanings. Then I was willing to admit it too. Then at last we could talk about our true feelings, with it clearly and openly stated that (of course) none of this was ever, ever, ever, to go beyond our own private conversations. (I also learned to never ever, in future, mention Rand within hearing of any academics, in case I accidently revealed myself again.) In another case, the vital clue was our shared interest in science fiction, and over the weeks there followed careful probing concerning which authors we liked, until we eventually discretely revealed ourselves. Now he lends me books saying “don’t let any of your colleagues see you with this.”

When (if) I get tenure, I toy with the idea of coming out of the closet. I don’t think I will though. Perhaps my job will be more secure, but I have to live and work with these people for years to come. I prefer to work in a friendly environment. I don’t want to be the token conservative, and I don’t want to be the one who speaks at meetings while everyone else rolls their eyes and exchanges meaningful glances.

Needless to say, don’t under any circumstances use my real name if you choose to refer to my email. Thanks!

Aside from the “closet” metaphor (make sure to check out this blog, BTW), this behavior reminds me of the submarine warfare tactic known as “silent running“. Make no unnecessary sound, and run the electric engines of the sub at an RPM rate calculated to be minimally detectible by passive sonar.

Megan makes the case that a combination of discrimination, peer pressure, and self-selection is at work. I can second the latter: my guess is that most conservatives would consider “studies” fields to be wastes of time for all considered, and Erin O’Connor of Critical Mass is an example of a tenured literature professor who eventually left academia in disgust. But this should be much less of an issue in hard sciences fields (except, obviously, for environmental science and climate studies).

If I’d gotten a dollar for every time I heard somebody refer to academics as “the most self-centered people on the planet” I’d be rich now. And there is indeed a rub, if not necessarily the rub. Like any highly competitive creative field, it self-selects for egomaniacs — and perhaps to the benefit of all concerned. (To give an example outside academia: where would Apple or Microsoft be today if Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were modest, self-effacing people?) Now whenever you put a lot of people of (real or perceived) high talent together, one gets not only the backbiting everybody in academia knows (I’ve seen academic knife-fights to the death over completely apolitical scholarly disputes in physics or chemistry), but also a kind of “esprit de corps”, a feeling of group superiority over other mere mortals. At best, this gets sublimated into an admirable sense of “noblesse oblige”. At worst, one gets what Robert Nozick incisively described as (via Clive):

Intellectuals feel they are the most valuable people, the ones with the highest merit, and that society should reward people in accordance with their value and merit. But a capitalist society does not satisfy the principle of distribution “to each according to his merit or value.” Apart from the gifts, inheritances, and gambling winnings that occur in a free society, the market distributes to those who satisfy the perceived market-expressed demands of others, and how much it so distributes depends on how much is demanded and how great the alternative supply is. Unsuccessful businessmen and workers do not have the same animus against the capitalist system as do the wordsmith intellectuals. Only the sense of unrecognized superiority, of entitlement betrayed, produces that animus.

It is my hypothesis that, more generally, the vast majority of academia subconsciously identifies as members of the New Class (by whatever name they may call “our kind of people”) before everything else, and will naturally tend to favor policies that reflect New Class sensitivities and interests. Big-government philosophies, and especially redistributive “social justice” programs run by bureaucratic elites, have a natural appeal to them.

And academics can rent-seek with the best of them. I have seen liberal academics be apologetic about receiving defense-related funding, but applying for and accepting it nevertheless. Or people who receive research funding for the liberal pet cause du jour while, out of earshot and with a couple in them, admitting to be skeptical about it. I have heard more than one academic tell me flat out that (s)he thinks Al Gore is a huckster, but if his AGW doom talk can scare people into weaning themselves off fossil fuels before they run out then it will have served a useful purpose. And of course, easy availability of funding for research in… is a useful benefit. (With all due respect, but “pia fraus” and “taqqiya” belong in religions, not science.)

Ideally, an academic should seek the truth wherever it can be found, without fear or favor. In the real world, academics are humans and no human foibles are alien to them. One of the most sobering things  I learned in my 4.5 decades on this mortal coil is that in some “real world” matters, farmers and small businessmen without any formal education can exercise more sound judgment than most professors.

ADDENDUM: I should have pointed out the degree to which already existing tendencies are exacerbated by the whole “postmodern” fad. To state that personal perspective may create observer bias, or that it may be worthwhile to look at historical or political events through different eyes, is one thing. To deny the very existence of objective truth (even as a platonic ideal) is another: if there is only the “struggle between competing narratives” (how people who believe in this radically subjectivist notion can take pride in being “reality-based” is a miracle of psychology), then the search for truth (by however imperfect means) degenerates into a sophistry contest. Which is how many conservatives increasingly look upon humanities and “soft subjects” academia (actually, various unprintable versions of “mutual gratification society” are more commonly heard) — and which, in turn, increases the mutual aversion. There is a definite “feedback loop” going on here…

Music video: Rory Gallagher, “Follow me”

My favorite tune, hands down, by this woefully underrated blues-rock guitarist. This is a live performance, and the bass player was clearly “with it” as well. Enjoy!

The revolt of the masses and our ruling class

Jerry Pournelle quotes “The revolt of the masses” by Jose Ortega y Gasset:

Doubtless the most radical division of humanity that can be made is that between two classes of creatures: those who demand much of themselves and assume a burden of tasks and difficulties, and those who require nothing special of themselves, but rather for whom to live is to be in every instant only what they already are.

* * *

The mass-man would never have accepted authority external to himself had not his surroundings violently forced him to do so. As to-day, his surroundings do not so force him, the everlasting mass-man, true to his character, ceases to appeal to other authority and feels himself lord of his own existence. On the contrary the select man, the excellent man is urged, by interior necessity, to appeal from himself to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, whose service he freely accepts.… Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline — the noble life.

A superficial, out-of-context reading would make Ortega y Gasset seem like an elitist. However, Wikipedia (of all places) clarifies:

Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are made up, contrasting “noble life and common life” and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man. He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the English-speaking world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specific target is the bourgeois educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied young man or Mr. Satisfied), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the command he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them. His summary of what he attempted in the book exemplifies this quite well, while simultaneously providing the author’s own views on his work: “In this essay an attempt has been made to sketch a certain type of European, mainly by analyzing his behaviour as regards the very civilization into which he was born”. This had to be done because that individual “does not represent a new civilisation struggling with a previous one, but a mere negation …”

The members of the over-credentialed, under-educated US “elite” and commentariat fit the image of the señorito satisfecho to a tee.

Paul Berman on “The flight of the intellectuals”

Michael Totten has a long, fascinating interview with Paul Berman entitled “The flight of the intellectuals”. (The title is a nod to the book La trahison des clercs/”The treason of the intellectuals” by Julien Benda.)

Much of the interview focuses on the mental contortions of the modern intellectual left that dismiss Arab liberals while they regard a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” like Tariq Ramadan as an authentic moderate.

The interview should be read in its entirety, but let me quote a few passages that stand out:

In regard to the Soviet dissidents of the past, at least nowadays there is a consensus of opinion that, yes, the dissidents were correct and we should have listened to them. So why didn’t we? When I say “we,” I mean the intellectual community as a whole in the Western countries. And it’s for a whole set of reasons.An outright sympathy for communism and the Soviet Union itself was only one of those reasons. This only accounted for one set of people.

There were other people who dismissed the dissidents for what you might call conservative reasons. They wanted to assume the Slavic world was hopelessly steeped in traditions of autocracy and ignorance and habits of obedience and deference — the traditions of tsarism. They could see very well that communism in the Soviet Union had replicated the whole tsarist system, in a new version. There was a leader at the top whose rule was uncontestable. There were the masses at the bottom who had to proclaim the wisdom of the leader at the top. And a lot of people looked at this and said, yes, this is what the Slavic world is supposed to be. This is the authentic thing. Slavs are inherently inferior to Westerners. They aren’t capable of being free people. They aren’t capable of thinking for themselves.

So when the dissidents rushed out and told us that the Soviet Union is crushing individual liberty or doing other oppressive things, our response to them was to pat them on the head and say, well, it’s nice that you got out, and you are welcome to stay, but you’re not talking about the real world. The real world is one where Slavs are destined to remain forever victims of oppressive tyrants, and this is because Slavs enjoy being victims, so we’re not going to take people like you, the dissidents, all that seriously.

The logic behind that kind of thinking is very appealing, to some people. It pictures a world that is dominated by cultures that we like to regard as authentic — cultures with unchanging deep qualities that go back thousands of years, and may be rich with cultural jewels, but will never produce anything more progressive and will certainly never embrace the kinds of freedoms and advantages and dynamism that we celebrate in our own culture. So that’s one idea.

Then there’s another idea that appeals to many people, which is based not on our own feeling of superiority, but on our own inferiority. We look at ourselves in the Western countries and we say that, if we are rich, relatively speaking, as a society, it is because we have plundered our wealth from other people. Our wealth is a sign of our guilt. If we are powerful, compared with the rest of the world, it is because we treat people in other parts of the world in oppressive and morally objectionable ways. Our privileged position in the world is actually a sign of how racist we are and how imperialistic and exploitative we are. All the wonderful successes of our society are actually the signs of how morally inferior we are, and we have much to regret and feel guilty about. So when we look at the world, we should look at it in a spirit of humility and remorse, and we should recognize that other people have been unfairly treated.

We should recognize the superiority of those other people over ourselves. Money-wise, we may be richer. But, morally, the other people are richer. And so, we should despise ourselves, and we should love the other people — the people who possess qualities so superior to our own as barely to be human. And then, filled with those very peculiar ideas, we set about looking for messianic figures who might express the superior culture of the other people, and might lead the human race to a higher stage of development. And if someone objects to this analysis, we say, oh, we inferior Westerners are incapable of understanding the mysterious thought-patterns of those other people, so who are you to judge?

MJT: I think you have it pretty well worked out.

Paul Berman: I assure you, I don’t.

MJT: This all sounds right to me. You just described two very different, even opposite tendencies, one which you’ve described as conservative, the other which could only be described as leftist. Lately, though, it seems what you describe as the conservative view of the Slavic world is now, in some ways, a left-wing view of the Arab world.

Patronizing and condescendence, thy name is leftism.

Mubarak now resigned for real

It actually did happen, but with a false start. Insty has a roundup.

Today is the people’s. But remember tomorrow…

BREAKING: Mubarak to step down, xfer power to military junta. UPDATE: xferring authority but staying on until September

Fox News reports:

President Hosni Mubarak will step down shortly and transfer authority to the Egyptian Higher Council of the Armed Forces, a senior Egyptian official confirmed to Fox News on Thursday.

The group is comprised of the minister of defense, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi — who stands atop the military hierarchy — along with the military’s chief of staff, the chief of operations, and commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Air Defenses.

The source pointed out that the transfer of power will occur “outside of the constitutional framework” because under the Egyptian constitution, Mubarak’s resignation ordinarily would mean that the speaker of the house would become president and elections would be held within 60 days. […] The source did not know how long the military would reign nor what mechanism or timetable would be put in place to end the military’s administration of power, but said that “when (the transfer of power from Mubarak) does happen, they will presumably indicate the direction of the country.”

The source drew parallels with the Army coup of 1952, and the removal of King Faroukh, noting that it took six months before the monarchy was dissolved and the modern republic formed.

[…] The source predicted, without certainty, that Mubarak will retire to Sharm el-Sheikh and lead an “isolated” existence.

The official also expressed criticism of the Obama administration and the American press for short-changing the reform process that Mubarak and Suleiman had begun to put in place, and which the official claimed had been moving along “fine” in “very rapid” fashion.

As a case in point, the official cited the committee to amend the constitution that had been formed, including with opposition membership, and which he said had agreed swiftly on the six article[s] of the constitution to be reformed.

The official said the “constant requests for more measures, to be undertaken more quickly, more rapidly … the constant push” and “lack of recognition” for the reform measures being undertaken in good faith all conspired to create a “national consensus” in Egypt that forced Mubarak’s ouster.

“They did not give too much room for the (reform) process to move forward,” the official said of the Obama administration.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Mubarak announced that, while he is transferring authority to his newly-minted VP Omar Suleiman, he will remain president until September.

Hawaii, tipping, and cultural misunderstandings

Fox News had a segment on about how restaurants in Hawaii are now proposing to add a 15% surcharge to the bill for Japanese tourist.
You say: “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” The rationale is: since Japanese tourists don’t tip (tipping is not customary in Japanese restaurants), the customary 15% tip should be added to the bill so the waiters are not cheated out of their money.
While Japanese are of course the most numerous/visible such group, let’s remove the racial component by pointing out the numerous times I’ve had to remind Belgian and Dutch visitors to the USA about tipping. Now the alleged “excessive parsimony” of the Dutch is a common theme of Belgian jokes about them (the Dutch have similar jokes about the Scottish — neither Belgium nor the Netherlands are big on “political correctness”), but neither the Belgians nor the Japanese have a reputation for stinginess. It’s simply a cultural misunderstanding: waiters in Belgium, the Netherlands (and presumably Japan) are salaried employees and restaurant bills in Belgium, for example, typically state “VAT and service included”. If you were to add a 15% “service charge” to a restaurant bill the Belgian would pay it without a second thought. When I explained to Belgian visitors to the USA or Israel that their tips are the income of the waiters, they understood immediately.
It remains to be seen how mainland American tourists would react if Hawaiian restaurants were to add on a blanket 15% “service charge” to all bills. Yet this would, to a naive outside observer, seem to be the obvious solution…

Jerry Pournelle on Egypt

Jerry Pournelle:

It’s getting more clear: the Egyptian Army is waiting things out. The US official policy is idealism: the US supports democracy and freedom, and opposes oppression, and —

The realistic appraisal is a bit different. And exactly what is democracy? The Egyptian middle class doesn’t think that a modern country chases a President into exile at the demands of a mob. Neither does the Army. The Army doesn’t want to fire on the populace. The silly test of crowd resolve, a bunch of civil servants and tourist guide union people “armed” with riding corps riding into the square, showed that the crowd wouldn’t disperse without serious action by the Army. Having the cops shoot people wasn’t in the cards. The Army told Mubarak to retire, with honor, and he has agreed to; luckily for all his term ends shortly anyway. The mob refuses to disperse; the Army waits. It hasn’t yet said it is time to go home, but many Egyptians would like to have an economy again. The feeling among many of the middle class is “He will retire, his son won’t run for office, well have a technocrat as the next President. What more do we want? We don’t like the Jews, but we don’t want another war either.”

There will be elements who want to provoke the Army, and there are reports of shooting at the bridges.

The Al Jazeera footage shows night fighting with night sights on weapons; that’s probably the police. It wasn’t indiscriminate firing. Unlikely to be the Army.

Assuming that things don’t boil, Mubarak will leave in the fall. With military honors, and he will take up residence somewhere near government house, probably with a role much like Clinton has.

That will be in Fall. There is enough time to have some organization of a “loyal opposition” and that will probably happen. Meanwhile there are food riots across the Arab world, and the US continues to subsidize burning corn in automobiles so we can avoid importing oil from countries that pay for wheat and maize.

Read also his earlier entries on the same page. But do not worry. The country is in the very best of hands.

UPDATE: Clarice Feldman (via Insty): The Incredible Lightness of Obama.

The Egyptian, an 82-year-old with terminal cancer, easily bested the community organizer, the man elected by people who quite clearly confused the last presidential election with an American idol contest. While many who elected the American president probably do not yet realize it, it is lucky for them that he lost the showdown, for had he not, the results would have created worldwide havoc and devastation.

And also:

The man who in 2009 in Cairo said, “So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed on one nation by any other” was now dictating to Mubarak the kind of government Egypt should have and when it should have it.  Mubarak noted only the obvious: that if he stepped down immediately, the situation would devolve into chaos.  The rulers of Egypt have a stake in its continued existence which supersedes Obama’s adolescent moral preening.  Had Obama any real interest in democracy in Egypt, he would have followed Bush’s lead and done something to help bring that about before this.[…]

I think it’s a good rule of thumb that whenever Obama begins a statement with “Let me be clear,” he means quite the opposite of whatever follows.  And someone might whisper in his ear that if you run around the world bowing deeply before foreign rulers and undermining your country’s moral position and standing in the world, you cannot expect to have your imperious demands be taken seriously abroad.

Ouch.

Egypt: a letter from Salim Mansour

Salim Mansour writes the following dispirited letter to Claire Berlinski (via Insty):

Since I do not have an opportunity to write in public more than one column per week, I am limited to what I can say. Extremely distressed by the crew in Washington, and in most European capitals. Media is so corrupted by left-leaning thinking that there is not much of an analysis to be expected in the media that is now competing with facebook, twitters, etc. The dumbing down of thinking is itself a huge problem the West is facing now as it tries pathetically to undertstand/explain politics and history of other cultures when it no longer has faith in its own civilizational values. I despair, and so I follow Samuel Pepys who confined himself to his diaries while London burned and I am trying to devote my time to reading and writing of my own (that of course I might not be able to publish, and even if published few will read).

I am more convinced now, as I wasn’t when Paul Kennedy wrote about the rise and fall of great powers, that the West has gone over the tipping point in its terminal decline. That intelligent people, or people who claim to be intelligent, (I have in mind the talking heads in the U.S. media such as Chris Matthews or Fareed Zakaria) cannot make the difference between the sham of the Muslim Brotherhood talking about freedom and democracy and the generic thirst in man to be free. These are the people who have like the Bourbons learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They are glibly about to put the Lenins of our time into trains heading for [he means St. Petersburgs] of our time, they find nothing odd that they are pushing for the Muslim Brotherhood to be taken into governing when everything needs to be done to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out even as one carefully negotiate the long historic transition of Arab societies from tribal autorcracy and military dictatorships to representative rule and constitutionally limited government. I read you when I can, and I wish that you and others like you were closer to the main media control in the West, or in government.

Read also Claire’s response. Of course, the mutual gratification society (I hope that this is a more printable word than “circlej***”)  in the MSM does not truly believe in anything more than in the illusion of their own intellectual and moral superiority.

Spengler on Egypt: “It’s the price of wheat, stupid”

… so what do developments in Egypt have to do with the price of tea in Asia wheat on the worldwide market?

“Spengler” is the pen name for an erstwhile investment banker at Bank of America who is also a senior editor at First Things. Actually, his article, “Food and failed Arab states“, is a lot more nuanced than my title, and a must-read despite its length.

Even Islamists have to eat. It is unclear whether President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt will survive, or whether his nationalist regime will be replaced by an Islamist, democratic, or authoritarian state. What is certain is that it will be a failed state. Amid the speculation about the shape of Arab politics to come, a handful of observers, for example economist Nourel Roubini, have pointed to the obvious: Wheat prices have almost doubled in the past year.

Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer, beholden to foreign providers for nearly half its total food consumption. Half of  Egyptians live on less than $2 a day. Food comprises almost half the country’s consumer price index, and much more than half of spending for the poorer half of the country. This will get worse, not better.

Not the destitute, to be sure, but the aspiring and frustrated young, confronted the riot police and army on the streets of Egyptian cities last week. The uprising in Egypt and Tunisia were not food riots; only in Jordan have demonstrators made food the main issue. Rather, the jump in food prices was the wheat-stalk that broke the camel’s back. The regime’s weakness, in turn, reflects the dysfunctional character of the country. 35% of all Egyptians, and 45% of Egyptian women can’t read.

The main cause, as he explains, is actually the growing prosperity of the big Asian countries: as their denizens become better off, they add more meat to their diet, and it takes about 7 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef.

In this case, Asian demand has priced food staples out of the Arab budget. […] Asians are rich enough, moreover, to pay a much higher price for food whenever prices spike due to temporary supply disruptions, as at the moment.

Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians and Yemenis are not. Episodes of privation and even hunger will become more common. The miserable economic performance of all the Arab states, chronicled in the United Nations’ Arab Development Reports, has left a large number of Arabs so far behind that they cannot buffer their budget against food price fluctuations.

Earlier this year, after drought prompted Russia to ban wheat exports, Egypt’s agriculture minister pledged to raise food production over the next ten years to 75% of consumption, against only 56% in 2009. Local yields are only 18 bushels per acre, compared to 30 to 60 for non-irrigated wheat in the United States, and up 100 bushels for irrigated land.

The trouble isn’t long-term food price inflation: wheat has long been one of the world’s bargains. The International Monetary Fund’s global consumer price index quadrupled in between 1980 and 2010, while the price of wheat, even after the price spike of 2010, only doubled in price. What hurts the poorest countries, though, isn’t the long-term price trend, though, but the volatility.

People have drowned in rivers with an average depth of two feet. It turns out that China, not the United States or Israel, presents an existential threat to the Arab world, and through no fault of its own: rising incomes have gentrified the Asian diet, and – more importantly – insulated Asian budgets from food price fluctuations. Economists call this “price elasticity.” Americans, for example, will buy the same amount of milk even if the price doubles, although they will stop buying fast food if hamburger prices double. Asians now are wealthy enough to buy all the grain they want.

If wheat output falls, for example, due to drought in Russia and Argentina, prices rise until demand falls. The difference today is that Asian demand for grain will not fall, because Asians are richer than they used to be. Someone has to consume less, and it will be the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, in this case the poorer Arabs.

[…] Wheat supply dropped by only 2.4% between 2009 and 2010 – and the wheat price doubled. That’s because affluent Asians don’t care what they pay for grain. Prices depend on what the last (or “marginal”) purchaser is willing to pay for an item (what was the price of the last ticket on the last train out of Paris when the Germans marched on June 14, 1940?). Don’t blame global warming, unstable weather patterns: wheat supply has been fairly reliable. The problem lies in demand.

Obviously, if food constitutes 50% or more of your family budget (as appears to be the case for many poor Egyptians), doubling of food prices means privation if not outright hunger. “Spengler” is rather pessimistic, but does have one concrete policy recommendation that sounds like the most sensible thing I have read so far:

Under the title The Failed Muslim States to Come (Asia Times Online December 16, 2008), I argued that the global financial crisis then at its peak would destabilize the most populous Muslim countries[…] I was wrong. It wasn’t the financial crisis that undermined dysfunctional Arab states, but Asian prosperity. The Arab poor have been priced out of world markets. There is no solution to Egypt’s problems within the horizon of popular expectations. Whether the regime survives or a new one replaces it, the outcome will be a disaster of, well, biblical proportions.

The best thing the United States could do at the moment would be to offer massive emergency food aid to Egypt out of its own stocks, with the understanding that President Mubarak would offer effusive public thanks for American generosity. This is a stopgap, to be sure, but it would pre-empt the likely alternative. Otherwise, the Muslim Brotherhood will preach Islamist socialism to a hungry audience. That also explains why Mubarak just might survive. Even Islamists have to eat. The Iranian Islamists who took power in 1979 had oil wells; Egypt just has hungry mouths.

Read the whole thing

Egypt, Chris Matthews, and the changing face of prostitution as well as politics

Insty does not shy away from “risque” topics such as prostitution, and via him I found this article by Sudhir Venkatesh on the changing face of the world’s oldest profession. When I saw the name I just had to read it — Sudhir Venkatesh, now an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia, was the graduate student of Steven D. Levitt whose “embedded research” on the economics of Chicago crack gangs made for one of the best parts of the “Freakonomics” book.

Basically, what is happening is that technological change increasingly enables the “ladies of the night” to cut out the middleman and recruit clients directly. This is rendering an increasing number of pimps unemployed, and, with few marketable skills, they have a lot of trouble finding a more respectable career.

May I suggest “MSM political journo” as an alternative? On the occasion of the Ronald Reagan centennial, I cannot help quoting the Gipper: “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” (Remarks at a business conference in Los Angeles, March 2, 1977)

And prostitutes are to pimps like political hustlers are to… their enablers in the MSM. Such as Chris Matthews, one of the chief pimps of B-HO, who is now finally losing his tingle over the 0bama admin’s handling of Egypt, and declared himself “ashamed to be an American” [You don’t have to be ashamed that you are an American, Chrissy — it’s enough that I am 😉 I am almost equally ashamed to say I largely agree with Chrissy on the topic at hand, if only owing to the Law of Broken Clocks.]

Of course, sadly for him and the likes of him, blogs and social media there too allow the “clientele” to connect directly and cut out the middleman…

Walter Russell Mead: The Egyptian revolution goes off-script

Water Russell Mead (see also his earlier entry here) blogs on Egypt:

The Egyptian government has survived the first crisis of the revolution and both the government and the protesters are moving to a new trial of strength.  Surviving the first blast of popular fury — and of international criticism — is an important milestone for the government.  The longer it can hold out, the more likely it is that the core power centers of the Egyptian regime — the ‘deep state’ as the Turks say — will survive the Mubarak era and dominate the country for some time to come.

I am not sure what to wish for.  The current Egyptian system in many ways has overstayed its welcome and the economic, political and social development of the country has been seriously affected.  Revolutions, though, however thoroughly justified, have their drawbacks.  Both the major revolutions of the English speaking world, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776, ended unusually well.  Those revolutions, however, were the exception that proves the rule.  The outcome of other revolutions has been less unambiguously good.

The French Revolution, for example, quickly degenerated into the Reign of Terror and culminated in the military dictatorship of the “Emperor” Napoleon and a generation of brutal war.  The liberals of the February Revolution in Russia lost out to the mindlessly bloody and destructive Bolsheviks ten months later, and Russia plunged into an unspeakable civil war and the genocidal horrors of Leninist/Stalinist rule.  China’s revolutionary communists killed scores of millions of people through their grotesque mixture of brutality, fanaticism and incompetence.  The clergy of Iran turned on their allies, leading the country into the horrifying and pointless war with Iraq and establishing a regime worse than anything the Shah could have dreamed of.

I do not know what will happen in Egypt; no one does.  Most revolutions do not go on to the radical stage; they fail at an earlier era.  If the forces of order withstand the first dramatic assaults, they are often well positioned to grind their enemies down.  The Revolution of 1848 failed almost everywhere in Europe — except in France when it brought in another dictatorship and another Napoleon.

Tahrir Square, downtown Cairo – February 2, 2011 (twitpic/AJE Live)

But whether the Egyptian Revolution succeeds or fails, it does not seem headed for 1688 or 1776.  The liberal and enlightened forces in Egypt, real and inspiring though they are (and I’ve met many wonderful Egyptians), are too weak and too inexperienced to have much chance of holding onto power when and if the government crumbles away.  Egypt’s problems are too daunting, its militants too strong and too well organized, its civil society is too deeply divided between Islamists and liberals, and its civic and religious life has been too deeply wounded to make the emergence of moderate, forward-looking and constructive governance look likely right now.  There is nothing wrong with hoping that something better may come — and I do — but hope is not a plan.

It is generally difficult in revolutionary situations to interpret events clearly.  Through the smoke and noise, it appears at this point that while the personal power of President Mubarak has eroded, the heart of the military power structure in the country is still intact.  President Mubarak appears to be negotiating for a dignified exit (perhaps including some financial and legal guarantees) while all around him the Egyptian power structures are trying to ensure their own survival at a chaotic time.

At the moment there is a standoff.  Mubarak didn’t flee in a helicopter, the junior officers and the troops have so far remained loyal to the generals, and the police retreated but they have not disappeared.  The television and radio stations are firmly in government hands; the streets belong to the revolution.[…]

In revolution, momentum matters.  In a poor country like Egypt, mass demonstrations cannot continue indefinitely.  The middle class can stay in the streets, but the poorer people need to feed their families.  A few days’ pay is all that stands between many families in Egypt and hunger.  Beyond that, the kind of excitement that gives people the courage to defy authorities and risk death depends on an emotional surge that tends to fade as time drags on.

The Egyptian authorities needed to stall for time and slow down the clock.  That they seem to have done; if they can hold the line, the regime (though not the Mubarak family) has a reasonable prospect of riding out the storm or of forcing a longer term stalemate.

Stalled revolutions often produce temporary, halfway regimes in which elements of the old power structure and leaders of the popular protest movements — neither strong enough to rule without the other — try to govern together.  Both still hope to gain (or hold on to) total control, so they are rivals as much as they are partners in government.  These arrangements are extremely unstable; hard-liners in both camps are waiting for the opportunity to destroy their opponents and gain exclusive power.

There is no iron law about how this process works out.  Sometimes the old regime recovers; the unrest gradually dies down, the army stays loyal and the day comes when the pre-revolutionary regime (often the same forces with a new leader) reasserts itself.  This happened over much of Europe when the revolutions of 1848 fizzled out.  It happened again after World War One when communist attempts to seize power in countries like Germany and Hungary led to the return of conservative rule.

Sometimes the revolutionary momentum continues and ultimately the moderate and liberal elements of a coalition government lose power to the hard line revolutionary forces.  This is what happened when the October Revolution in Russia threw out the liberals and moderates and put the Bolsheviks in charge.  It is what happened in Cuba and Iran.  It happened in France when the moderates (like Lafayette) were defeated by the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror got underway.

In these situations, Americans almost always want the moderates to win.  Those are usually the people whose values are closest to our own, and with whom we can likely do business.  Unfortunately, moderates are usually too weak, too disorganized and frequently too idealistic to hold on to power in chaotic and violent times.  The hard liners — people on the ‘right’ like the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran or like Lenin and his colleagues on the left — are often much tougher, more focused and can bring more effective forces into the field than the liberal social reformers like the Marquis de Lafayette.

Protest sign in Cairo (Twitpic/elihuh2001)

For many years now, there has been a quiet tug of war between the United States and the Mubarak government.  Americans wanted Mubarak to nurture and support moderate and liberal-minded leaders and groups so that when this moment of crisis finally and inevitably came, the moderate forces would be well equipped to offer the country constructive leadership.  The Egyptian government generally resisted; it felt that as long as the choice seemed to be Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood, the US would continue to back the government, however unhappy we were with it.  Despite that refusal, the US (and many European countries who have also engaged with Egyptian civil society) continued to do everything it could to encourage the rise of a liberal and modernizing movement in Egypt.  We are about to find out how successful this was.

One reason that revolutions fail is that the middle classes can ultimately become more frightened of the lower classes and of continued disorder than they are of the government.  This could happen in Egypt; small business needs order and municipal services.  Many of the liberal, secular Egyptians leading some of the early demonstrations could be spooked by signs of Iranian style Islamic militancy — or any kind of forcible redistribution of property and mob violence.

The Egyptian army has been the most important political force in the country since Egypt’s last big revolution drove out the odious King Farouk in 1952.  During all that time the army has seen the Muslim Brotherhood as a rival and an enemy.  Will these two ancient enemies now kiss and make up?  Will they enter a marriage of convenience in which each partner seeks to slip poison into the partner’s food?  Will either the army or the Brotherhood so dominate the street that one takes power alone?  Or, if power between them seems fairly equally balanced, will they vie for the support of Egypt’s small but wealthy and influential group of liberals — not to mention the country’s significant Christian minority, the Copts?

We can be sure that these scenarios and others are whirling in the minds of the leaders of Egypt’s political forces right now.  Nobody knows how it will all work out.  It could be hours, weeks or even months before we have a clear sense of Egypt’s new direction.  One more push from the demonstrators could break the military’s will to resist — or the wave could crest and the fever break.

An important factor in Egypt’s future will be the degree to which the country depends on a strong relationship with the outside world.  Egypt is not a major oil producer and its 85 million people need more than the waters of the Nile to live the good life.  Revenues from the Suez Canal, tourism and a continuing flow of foreign investment are all essential if Egypt’s economy is to provide hope for its people.  Egypt’s military does not want and cannot afford a major arms race with Israel — nor could any new Egyptian government manage the consequences of yet another war.  Egypt is no Libya, Iran or Venezuela: it cannot afford the kind of irresponsible foreign policy those countries indulge in — though no doubt there are some Egyptians who would like to give it a try.

The only thing in all this I am certain of is that the Egyptian Revolution, however it ends, will not be the only revolution in the 21st century.  We live in a revolutionary world and governments in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe and Latin America are out of touch with public opinion and overwhelmed by economic and social forces that they cannot manage.   Many heads of state and many army staffs are likely to go through what President Mubarak and the Egyptian military are going through this week.

Read the whole thing.

Egypt: the view of Egyptian scientists

Michael Harms, director of the Cairo office of the DAAD (Deutsche Akademische AustauschDienst, i.e., German Academic Exchange Service), offers a view from the Egyptian capital in an interview with Nature magazine. (Hat tip: Mrs. F2; emphasis mine)

Where are you now?

My team, as well as 55 German DAAD fellows, have been camping here in the office since Friday. We’re located in the diplomatic quarter on the Zamalek Nile Island, just a few kilometers from Cairo’s main square downtown and the centre of the protests. The situation here is still very critical: there are armed guys patrolling the streets, and there are militia everywhere.

What is the mood among Egyptian academics?

They basically share the same views with the majority of the protesters: a deep fury about the Mubarak regime. Most intellectuals say the regime is unfair and corrupt. But nobody really has a program or a vision for the future, nor are there any common goals for the time to come.

The many academics I have spoken to do not think there is currently a political force which would be capable of unifying the country. Certainly they don’t trust the Muslim Brotherhood [a leading political opposition group] to do it. There is also a widespread feeling that Western-style democracy is not a panacea for Egypt. But few have a good idea of what a political system that would suit Egypt should look like.

How would you describe Egyptian science?

There are many problems. Universities are critically under-funded and academic salaries are so low that most scientists need second jobs to be able to make a living. Tourist guides earn more money than most scientists. You just can’t expect world-class research under these circumstances. […] Some 750,000 students graduate each year and flood the labor market, yet few find suitable jobs – one reason for the current wave of protests.

But there are some good scientists here, particularly those who have been able to study and work abroad for a while. The Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education has started some promising initiatives. For example, in 2007 it created the Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF), a Western-style funding agency. And Egypt is quite strong in renewable energies and, at least in some universities, in cancer research and pharmaceutical research.

Read the whole thing. And I cannot recommend this piece I linked yesterday enough: The Story of the Egyptian Revolution: An on-the-ground narrative by Sam Tadros

 

 

Surprise: Jewish groups that “signed” Soros-backed anti-Beck letter repudiate, citing misrepresentation

Yid With Lid has the goods:

Carried in the January 27th edition of the Wall Street Journal was an advertisement/open letter from four-hundred Rabbis organized by a socialist Jewish organization called Jewish Funds for Justice (JFJ), with strong ties to financier George Soros (the full ad is embedded at the bottom of this page). As discussed the day the ad came out, the rabbis efforts brought shame upon themselves, their holy profession and the entire Jewish people, and even worse have committed a Chillul Hashem (desecration of God’s name). A conversation with one of the signers, Rabbi Steven Wernick , the day after my initial post raised more questions (which as of this moment the Rabbi still hasn’t answered).

That however, is the not the end of the story.  Over the past few days, three of the groups used to corroborate the false charges raised by Jewish Funds For Justice have repudiated the letter arraigned by the George Soros proxy. All three weren’t contacted prior to the use of their names, disagreed with the thrust of the letter and were not happy that they were included. A fourth came out and said the letter was too one sided.  Not surprisingly  the only group/person not raising some objection to the letter has an association with George Soros.

The first one to weigh in was Jeffrey Tobin of Commentary who saw the letter as an overt attempt to silence someone with home they disagree politically[…]

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal there were two letters published from organizations named in the JFJ open letter:

Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld Vice President American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors wrote:

I suppose that I am to rest easy now that these rabbis and the individuals they quote in their advertisement find Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes… represent a greater threat to the welfare of the Jews than George Soros. I have no position on Mr. Beck, but I am frankly puzzled as to how he merits so great an expenditure by this group. What a waste of communal resources this represents when there are so many needy people, Holocaust survivors and others.

This absurdity and the fact that these rabbis have never seen fit to comment on Mr. Soros’s support for entities that have harmed Israel and Jewish interests (and in my view, Western interests generally), force me to speak out. [my emphasis]

[…] I also know that in my 30 years of participation in large-scale annual commemorations I have yet to meet a survivor who expressed support for Mr. Soros.

Most surprising was the second letter which was from Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, who has often used his organization as an arm of the progressive movement. Foxman defended Beck and Fox News as friends of Israel :

I was surprised to see my name and statements attributed to me used in the advertisement from Jewish Funds for Justice calling on Rupert Murdoch to “sanction” Glenn Beck for his repeated use of Holocaust and Nazi images on his Fox News program.

I want to make it clear, for the record, that I do not support this misguided campaign against Fox News, even though my name was used.

While we have said many times that Nazi comparisons are offensive and inappropriate when used for political attacks, in my view it is wrongheaded to single out only Fox News on this issue, when both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can share equal guilt in making trivializing comparisons to the Holocaust.

Furthermore, the open letter signed by hundreds of rabbis is a trivialization in itself—bizarrely timed for release on United Nations’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant in much of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism remains a serious concern, and where the Iranian leader has openly declared his desire to “wipe Israel off the map,” surely there are greater enemies and threats to the Jewish people than the pro-Israel stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck.

A fourth person sited in the letter Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University, said that she didn’t disagree with the thrust of the letter but felt it was distorted because of it was one-sided:
I don’t disagree with the thrust of JFSJ’s ad. That said, I do worry that it is a distortion to focus solely on the conservative end of the political spectrum.

When I saw the original ad I seriously wondered if these above organizations had completely taken leave of their senses. I am relieved that this is not the case. I cannot say that this incident lowers my esteem of the ones behind it by much, since it is currently approaching absolute zero in microkelvin steps.

See also YWL’s earlier coverage here and  here.

Kabuki theater in Egypt? An analysis

[On screen: The Story of the Egyptian Revolution: An on-the-ground narrative by Sam Tadros, via @NROcorner]

The unfolding events in Egypt have made me wonder whether we are not watching an elaborate kabuki perf0rmance, as I tweeted earlier in the day.

I am not talking about the anti-Mubarak protestors, mind you, but about the response. Suppose I were a senior Egyptian army officer (the army being the only institution in Egypt that enjoys wide respect) and I were thinking like a macchiavellist in the Middle Eastern mold.  What would I do?

• I would let the protest swell to the point where Mubarak clearly can’t hang on to power anymore, let alone transfer it to his son (which would be a recipe for suckage).
• I would make sure the army appears to be winking a friendly eye towards the protesters
• Once Mubarak starts backtracking (in typical “too little too late”) fashion, I’d let the army disappear for a bit
• Then pro-Mubarak thugs come beating the protesters up, and the
• And… the cavalry comes racing in (i.e., the army) to “restore order”.
• Mubarak gets sent into the desert as a scapegoat, a senior army or intelligence figure becomes the new strongman, some sops get thrown to the protesters, and…
• … fundamentally the same regime, with a different figurehead, continues to rule Egypt.

Far-fetched? You decide. And bad as this outcome may be, in the warped Middle East reality it may actually be preferable over the alternative (which is a government dominated or co-opted by the Islamists). Would that there were another way, that somehow led to true democracy rather than “one man, one vote, one time”…

[Egypt:] “…Confusion will be my epitaph/As I crawl a cracked and broken path/If we make it we can all sit back and laugh/But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying…”