[BlisteredWhippet]

All of you are wrong. Ultimately, Ad homs don't mean anything. Thirdly, we can wax philosophic about what is going on the the Middle East, but moral absolutes are no longer useful. Its total war. It breaks down to existential dilemmas. The arabs had their land sold out from under them- boo hoo- and then they lost the initiative and consequently their right to force unilateral terms of existence. Hamas represents their failure to accept compromised terms of existence. Sucks, but, what are you gonna do? Out-reproduce the enemy? That appears to be the strategy.

The fact is that Hamas shot XX,000 missles into Israel, and now Israel counterattacks. So fucking what? This is a zero-sum game now. Israel knows an integrated society would simply lead to being overrun. This is how cultures survive - or die- by expressing their existential title by force. The arabs would merely ram their religion and culture down everyone's throat. No, they'd say- we're secular- as they play hypnotic prayer music 7x daily.

Can't say I blame the Israelis. If Cuba were firing missles into the US I don't think we'd think twice. That Israelis stole land 60 years ago- well, what are you gonna do? What is anyone going to do?

I'd cry about 1000 Palestinians but, we've got 6.0x10[sup]9[/sup] impending deaths. All precious little babies at one time or another, I'm sure.

[threadbear]

You obviously don't understand the nature of the conflict, the history of the region, Whippet. Also, your vision of the future would reduce us all to orcs. We have to start to empathize more, fear a little less, and raise each other up.

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/01/jim-kunstler-is-an-important-writer-his-blog-has-a-huge-following-and-he-public-jew-hating-has-made-a-comeback-in-the-usa-am.html]In the unhealed Jewish heart, Arabs became Nazis[/url]

[cbxer55]

I used to read his site every monday. Not anymore.
Tired of his ultra-left secular-progressive spiel.
Removed him from my favorite list in December.

[oddone]

Whippet,
FYI Palestinian women give birth to average 5.5 children. That's world top 10. A demographic bomb. maybe the world economic collapse (aka "maybe" recession so far) is a blessing in disguise for sivilisation...

And the solution for a mostly sivilised society is to bulid fences. Just like in US.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

I haven't been able to read his stuff for a while. You are right on threadbear.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oddone', 'W')hippet,
FYI Palestinian women give birth to average 5.5 children. That's world top 10. A demographic bomb. maybe the world economic collapse (aka "maybe" recession so far) is a blessing in disguise for sivilisation...

And the solution for a mostly sivilised society is to bulid fences. Just like in US.

[Ayame]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '
')So whats the solution to ME?

Fence them off and let them eat sand, to put it in plane English.
However there is no need to send our troops there.
Cordone sanitarie policy will do.

[BlisteredWhippet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'Y')ou obviously don't understand the nature of the conflict, the history of the region, Whippet. Also, your vision of the future would reduce us all to orcs. We have to start to empathize more, fear a little less, and raise each other up.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'S')o whats the solution to ME?

Fence them off and let them eat sand, to put it in plane English.
However there is no need to send our troops there.
Cordone sanitarie policy will do.

[BlisteredWhippet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Glenn Condell', '
')


Thanks by the way for the post Phil, hits the nail. In a crowded field, you must be the busiest man in New York.

At the risk of further drift away from Gaza to peak oil...

'I have a 110+ GB library of articles and reports, one-half of which have been wiped from the web. It will take years to catalogue it properly.'

Mr W - if you ever get around to that, I would love to browse the results.

I have to say though that I am with Johnny Rico on peak oil, which is like climate change in that, yes, lots of scientists disagree with the conclusion of the consensus of experts that we are in trouble, but the cost of ignoring the consensus warnings (because they might be wrong) in the event that they are true, dwarfs the cost of heeding them, even if they turn out to be flat wrong.

What's worse - a global project to limit emissions, costing trillions and impacting it's true some communities far more than others - or the actuality of the worst-case scenarios most respected experts now say are possible if the models are largely correct? It is no contest. It's the stakes that matter, and if both outcomes are possible, we have to choose the lesser of two evils - this is simply prudence.

'Kunstler's not prophetic'

Mint, that is (a) a little early, don't you think? and (b) a prophecy itself. The point is even abiotic oil will run out too, won't it? The earth and it's resources are finite aren't they? Oil takes millions of years for geological processes to refine it down to the sweet crude we enjoy, or even the tar sands that cost us the earth to enjoy. It's a bit like global warming; some of the science may be dodgy, but a large majority of experts in relevant fields agree it is at least possible, if not probable, that it's happening. Is it sensible, as a conscious species, to gamble that the naysayers are correct, because there's less short and medium term pain involved in their scenarios?

That kind of thinking invites the Black Swans Nassim Taleb has made famous; rare and unexpected events, the magnitude of which can destroy any human construct. The meltdown, despite clear warnings from at least a dozen people I know of (including both Engdahl and Kunstler by the way) was a Black Swan, because too many people pooh-poohed possibilities that their strenuous probability studies (of the past of course, the only data available) did not equip them for the inherently unstable future.

You mention Amory Lovins but it's my understanding that he and the RMI accept oil depletion as a given, but argue 'soft energy' can replace it. They wrote a book called 'Winning the Oil Endgame' after all, so it's misleading to suggest they think peak oil a crock. Many experts disagree that their replacement technologies and soft energy strategies are sufficient, and Kunstler sides with them. I can't say for sure, but I again go back to the stakes - what if the doomsayers are correct vs what if they are off the mark? Again, it's no contest.

What gets lost in all this is that science is by it's nature about disagreement, even argument. Feynman said that doubt is the engine of science, no scientist can afford certainty - it turns into dogma fast, and after all, every scientific proof is subject to doubt. The sun may not rise in the morning if a black hole opens up nearby. Nothing is certain.

Whereas doubt is death in politics. He who hesitates is lost, while the scientist must test, wait, entertain opposing conclusions. The pollie who expresses doubt can start planning for retirement.

Most science doesn't need to face the public - fruit flies, better textiles, pure physics etc - not even the back pages. But peak oil and climate change have come into every living room because they are potential civilisational threats. They have therefore entered the political realm, where the differences of expert opinion are artificially polarised in the interests of arriving at a certainty that can be successfuly marketed to the electorate. Inevitably something of the detail and nuance of both sides goes missing, and the targets end up being compromises that please no-one.

But that's politics, well, democratic politics anyway, and we have to expect that the political establishment (and the constituent establishments it represents) will have little patience for scientific to-ing and fro-ing; they will pick the side their constituencies force upon them and will not evince much doubt about it.

It's not perfect but it's all we have, and all I ask is that if they err, they do so on the side of caution. It seems to me this is what is happening, but wearing my science hat, I agree that (a) they may have chosen the wrong horse, or (b) they have left their run too late.

Posted by: Glenn Condell | January 13, 2009 at 09:32 PM


----




I am using up my bandwidth allocation in one go, but here's Kunstler in March 06 (he was earlier but I haven't time to trawl):

'This week's Sunday Time Magazine devoted itself to the idea that housing bubble is (in Martha Stewart's words) a good thing. In fact, Martha herself is getting into the racket, lending her name to a 650-unit (they're just units) suburban subdivision outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. If she was shrewd about the deal (could it be otherwise?) than Martha will get paid whether the project tanks or not.

Really, the whole issue of the Mag was just an opportunity for the financially-strapped Times to sell a shitload of advertising to the real estate investment trusts, the luxury condo hucksters, and the home furnishing industry. It will probably go down in history, along with Yale economist Irving Fisher's 1929 proclamation that the US had achieved "permanent prosperity," as one of the seminal documents of societal cluelessness in the face of obvious calamity.'

Prophetic enough for you, Mint? And here is Engdahl as far back as July 2004:

'Given the scale of the money-printing by the Fed and the US Treasury since 2001, it is pre-programmed that the „correction“ of the latest Greenspan credit binge will impact the entire global financial and economic system. Some economists fear a new Great Depression like the 1930‘s. The world today depends on cheap US dollar credit. When US interest rates are finally forced higher, dramatic shocks will hit Europe, Asia and the entire global economy, unlike any seen since the 1930‘s. Debts that now appear manageable will suddenly become un-payable. Defaults and bankruptcies will spread as they did in the wake of the 1931 Creditanstalt collapse...

The rise in home prices has been driven by cheap interest rates and banks rushing to lend with abandon. Because two semi-government agencies, the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as FannieMae, and the Government National Mortgage Association, or GinnieMae buy up the bank‘s mortgage contracts, taking the risk from the local banks, so the local lending bank has less pressure to guarantee that he lends to low-risk credit-worthy families likely to repay the loan.'

Prophetic too, and earlier even than Roubini. Point being, both the accused antisemite Engdahl (who once called George Soros a 'court Jew') and conformed Zionist Kunstler, who may also disagree about oil, saw the crash coming and were ignored. How much better off would we all be had Engdahl been invited to consult with the Fed or Treasury back in 04?

In the early days of climate change theory, it was the worriers who were the outliers - we may perhaps regret not listening to them earlier - but they have convinced enough of their fellows to have coalesced into a strong majority, most of them now of the opinion that the climate Black Swan is just around the corner. If we continue to ignore them, after the lessons of the crash, we may as well be lemmings.

Taleb once said: My classical metaphor - A Turkey is fed for a 1000 days. Every day confirms to its statistical department that the human race cares about its welfare "with increased statistical significance". On the 1001st day, the turkey has a surprise.

Taleb has applied this logic to climate change and I guess would do so with peak oil too. I think it applies also to Israel - every outrage so far has resulted in some foreign clucking, but the Zionist beast keeps growing fatter, so it keeps on eating the neighbour's children, until one day, it has a surprise.

Posted by: Glenn Condell | January 13, 2009 at 10:00 PM

[EndOfGrowth]

JHK needs to wake up

" Lately, public Jew-hating has made a comeback in the USA among two distinct groups: one is the extreme right-wing crypto-Nazi step-child of the old John Birch Society bunch, the idiots who believe the world is a web of conspiracies against wholesome Christian white folks. As a young newspaper reporter with an interest in political pathology back in the early 1970s -- a heyday for extremism -- I used to cover the Birchers' antics (and study their belief system, if you could call it that). Their paranoid ideology has survived the decades marvelously intact, complete with all the colorful leitmotifs including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Orders of the Illuminati narrative, the Bilderburgers conspiracy story of world domination, and a Jesus-soaked crusade against "socialism" that has mutated far beyond the quaint sepulcher of John Birch into a broad mostly Southern evangelical, Nascar-tinged, aggressive apocalypticism."




http://www.abidemiracles.com/555701.htm

[pedalling_faster]

the best way to boycott Kunstler is

D o n ' t__B u y__H i s__B o o k s.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayame', '
')Don't get me wrong I'm not Jew lover or whatever I just can't understand the people of Gaza get such an easy ride: food aid, fuel paid for by EU, 80% don't have to work etc.

[Cynus]

Kunstler argued for supporting Isreal? HE MUST BE BOYCOTTED! We must prevent ourselves, and everyone else, from hearing these ideas until he repents and accepts the one true position!

[Leanan]

We aren't going to fence off the Middle East. That's where the oil is. If not for the oil, we wouldn't give a rat's rear.

And just fencing off the Middle East is no solution, when there are nuclear weapons involved.

Though I suppose on the bright side, nuclear winter might balance out global warming...

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oddone', 'W')hippet,
FYI Palestinian women give birth to average 5.5 children. That's world top 10. A demographic bomb. maybe the world economic collapse (aka "maybe" recession so far) is a blessing in disguise for sivilisation...

And the solution for a mostly sivilised society is to bulid fences. Just like in US.

[BlisteredWhippet]

So what is it that you want, Threadbear? A neutered Kuntsler? Is he not to be allowed an opinion on the subject?

The facts are (and I KNOW the facts) that this is an existential problem. The only reason Gazans and Palenstinians are in this mess, today, is a historic predisposition toward Pride, common among many Arab nations. They lost their war, and it was face they lost more than anything. They will not admit defeat, they will not integrate, they will not eat their loser pudding.

The post-colonial guilt complex of supposing that this condition will be ameliorated by enhancing their status will similarly fail, since Pride can't be founded in Pity. No amount of food and medicine pumped into Gaza will restore Honor.

Pride, Honor, Shame, and Dishonor. These virtues and anti-virtues are the real, honest atomization of the situation.

Now, lets analyse Israel's latest campaign through the lens of modern military ethics, as Kuntsler has done: The calculation clearly benefits Israel. They targetted Hamas, balancing lethality with prudence. An ugly business, but, in the end it was 10,000 frightened Israeli Mommies that were afraid of Hamas' dumb rocket fusillades.

War is executed as policy by Mommyocracies. Conversely, we cannot be blind to the fact that over-reproduction is simply a stratagem by opposing mommies who, with their own logic of retributive action, pump out children into what is essentially, an environment soaked with genuine belief in predestiny. This glorious future is 40 virgins, or some shit. Whatever.

I am increasingly of the opinion that the real drivers of world problems are in fact, women. What is the meaning of the validity of a comparison between human beings and their reproductive choices and plant life? Simply that procreation is an act of elemental physics. Woman represents the necessary lack of volition such fundamental transmogrification requires.

I am a plant, she says, doing what plants do. You can't blame me- you may as well blame plants- or at least the executive functions of functional DNA that describe inclinations toward vegetative behavior on the X chromosome.

Its telling, to me, that in these societies, the worst possible, most hideous sound is the irrational, unceasing wailing cry of ritualized anguish. I'd superimpose my position that heavy doses of anarchy and irreligiousity would ameliorate the situation, but, lets face it- I've never met a woman yet who didn't view an emotional outburst as something that is always justified.

I also dispute the idea that this approach (by Israel) will not finally provide a solution. History is rife with examples of successful seige-occupation type strategies. The groundhog day analogy is false- otherwise, they would be facing a new 6-day war every year, or an attack via Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, etc... The fact is, the situation is proportionally smaller today and much more manageable. So the efficacy of the approach, bitched and moaned about at every turn, is not in question. It is working. What is eternal is women's instinctive, knee-jerk sentimentalism for something that never existed: a comprehensive peace. They just, I think, like a good cry, no matter where it comes from.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BlisteredWhippet', 'S')o what is it that you want, Threadbear? A neutered Kuntsler? Is he not to be allowed an opinion on the subject?

The facts are (and I KNOW the facts) that this is an existential problem. The only reason Gazans and Palenstinians are in this mess, today, is a historic predisposition toward Pride, common among many Arab nations. They lost their war, and it was face they lost more than anything. They will not admit defeat, they will not integrate, they will not eat their loser pudding.

The post-colonial guilt complex of supposing that this condition will be ameliorated by enhancing their status will similarly fail, since Pride can't be founded in Pity. No amount of food and medicine pumped into Gaza will restore Honor.

Pride, Honor, Shame, and Dishonor. These virtues and anti-virtues are the real, honest atomization of the situation.

Now, lets analyse Israel's latest campaign through the lens of modern military ethics, as Kuntsler has done: The calculation clearly benefits Israel. They targetted Hamas, balancing lethality with prudence. An ugly business, but, in the end it was 10,000 frightened Israeli Mommies that were afraid of Hamas' dumb rocket fusillades.

War is executed as policy by Mommyocracies. Conversely, we cannot be blind to the fact that over-reproduction is simply a stratagem by opposing mommies who, with their own logic of retributive action, pump out children into what is essentially, an environment soaked with genuine belief in predestiny. This glorious future is 40 virgins, or some crap. Whatever.

I am increasingly of the opinion that the real drivers of world problems are in fact, women. What is the meaning of the validity of a comparison between human beings and their reproductive choices and plant life? Simply that procreation is an act of elemental physics. Woman represents the necessary lack of volition such fundamental transmogrification requires.

I am a plant, she says, doing what plants do. You can't blame me- you may as well blame plants- or at least the executive functions of functional DNA that describe inclinations toward vegetative behavior on the X chromosome.

Its telling, to me, that in these societies, the worst possible, most hideous sound is the irrational, unceasing wailing cry of ritualized anguish. I'd superimpose my position that heavy doses of anarchy and irreligiousity would ameliorate the situation, but, lets face it- I've never met a woman yet who didn't view an emotional outburst as something that is always justified.

I also dispute the idea that this approach (by Israel) will not finally provide a solution. History is rife with examples of successful seige-occupation type strategies. The groundhog day analogy is false- otherwise, they would be facing a new 6-day war every year, or an attack via Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, etc... The fact is, the situation is proportionally smaller today and much more manageable. So the efficacy of the approach, bitched and moaned about at every turn, is not in question. It is working. What is eternal is women's instinctive, knee-jerk sentimentalism for something that never existed: a comprehensive peace. They just, I think, like a good cry, no matter where it comes from.

[seldom_seen]

I've got to hand it to you BW. You have an interesting, thought provoking and unconventional take on the issue. Some of the best writing on the subject that I have read.