Mighty Oil-Eating Microbes Help Clean Up The Gulf

In response to which, I would also point out what too few people know: namely, that nature alone, apart from man, spills far more oil than all the world’s oil companies combined. To wit:

Natural Oil Leaks Equal To 8–80 Exxon Valdez Spills

Oil residue in seafloor sediments that comes from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara, Calif., is equivalent to between 8 to 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills, according to a new study by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Oil content of sediments is highest closest to the seeps and tails off with distance, creating an oil fallout shadow. The amount of oil in the sediments down current from the seeps is the equivalent of approximately 8 to 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills, the study said.

WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy said Chris Farwell, the lead author of a paper on the subject and at the time an undergraduate working with UCSB’s Dave Valentine, “developed and mapped out our plan for collecting sediment samples from the ocean floor. After conducting the analysis of the samples, we were able to make some spectacular findings.”

There is an oil spill everyday at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara, where 20-25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years.

Earlier research by Reddy and Valentine at the site found microbes were capable of degrading a significant portion of the oil molecules as they traveled from the reservoir to the ocean bottom, and that once the oil floated to sea surface, about 10% of the molecules evaporated within minutes.

“One of the natural questions is: What happens to all of this oil?” Valentine said. “So much oil seeps up and floats on the sea surface. It’s something we’ve long wondered. We know some of it will come ashore as tar balls, but it doesn’t stick around. And then there are the massive slicks. You can see them, sometimes extending 20 miles from the seeps. But what really is the ultimate fate?”

Read the rest of the article here.

It didn’t take long for federal judge Susan Bolton to zero in on the holes in the Obama administration’s argument in their lawsuit against Arizona and its new must-enforce policy on immigration violations. Bolton, a Democratic appointee, shot holes in the Department of Justice’s pre-emption argument immediately, and in a broader sense wondered why the federal government concerned itself at all over Arizona’s get-tough policy on illegal immigration:

“Why can’t Arizona be as inhospitable as they wish to people who have entered or remained in the United States?” U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton asked in a pointed exchange with Deputy Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler. Her comment came during a rare federal court hearing in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer (R).

Bolton, a Democratic appointee, also questioned a core part of the Justice Department’s argument that she should declare the law unconstitutional: that it is “preempted” by federal law because immigration enforcement is an exclusive federal prerogative.

“How is there a preemption issue?” the judge asked. “I understand there may be other issues, but you’re arguing preemption. Where is the preemption if everybody who is arrested for some crime has their immigration status checked?”

Answer: there is none. Even the DoJ recognizes that. They have a BIET program that is designed to help local law enforcement personnel do exactly what the White House complains Arizona is doing. Checking people who are arrested or detained for valid ID, and probing their status if they fail to have it, is so basic to law enforcement that Bolton must feel as though she’s slipped into the Twilight Zone.

The answer to her first question will undoubtedly be that Arizona can’t discriminate against people in their desire to be inhospitable. But SB1070 contains language specifically prohibiting discrimination, and sets objective measures on identification that will constitute a positive assumption of legal status. If the DoJ wants to argue that Arizona is applying the law in an unconstitutional manner, then they would have reason to take Arizona to court — but not before the law goes into effect.

Based on the initial reactions of Bolton, the White House may get laughed out of court more quickly than first thought.

(Link)

Then, in the following video, he says (and I quote): “If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house”:

Were it not for the obvious fact that Barack Obama is a chronic liar, the fact of him signing the individual mandate into law would be virtually incomprehensible. And of course he told us a few short months ago (at around the 3:00 minute mark of the following exchange) that the individual mandate is not a tax:

But that was then, and this is now. From the New York Times:

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”…

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Says Cato’s Michael Cannon:

The next time Obama is in the mood to reverse himself on the individual mandate, he might consider this statement from June 2009:

When the government makes health insurance compulsory, that is socialized medicine. (Why else would ObamaCare win plaudits from Fidel Castro?) It would be nice to hear the president admit it.

London 2012 Olympics: Usain Bolt set to shun Britain over punitive tax rules

Organisers of next month’s Aviva London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace had hoped to stage the first 100 metres head-to-head of the season between Bolt, Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell but the triple Olympic champion is set to shun the meeting because it would expose him to a huge tax bill.

Unless the tax rules are relaxed, athletics administrators fear British fans will be denied the chance to see the sport’s biggest star in action again until he returns to the capital in two years’ time to defend his Olympic titles.

“I wouldn’t be optimistic about seeing Bolt compete on British soil this year and there is a strong chance he won’t be back until 2012,” said an insider close to the negotiations with the Jamaican.

Since April, foreign sports stars competing in Britain are liable for a top rate of income tax of 50 per cent but, controversially, the tax is charged not just on the money they earn in Britain but on a proportion of their worldwide sponsorship income.

(Link)

Usain Bolt is not the only one with good sense. Today’s headline in the UK Telegraph reads:

Usain Bolt’s Tax Dash From UK Causes Alarm For Ryder Cup Organisers

The article continues:

The European Tour, which stages the Ryder Cup in partnership with the United States Professional Golfers’ Association, is among a number of governing bodies concerned that the Inland Revenue’s policy of taxing overseas sports stars in the UK on their global endorsement income is undermining their ability to stage top-quality events.

Also lobbying for a change in the law is UK Athletics, the London Marathon and the All England Club, which has concerns that the tax issue has reduced the quality of the field at Wimbledon warm-up events, including Queen’s. The sports this week requested a meeting with sports minister Hugh Robertson to discuss the issue.

…Other sportsmen understood to have avoided UK events, in part because of the tax issue, include Roger Federer, who has never played at Queen’s, and Sergio Garcia, who is thought to require a top-three finish at this week’s Open to avoid losing money on his week in Scotland.

The European Tour will tell the Government that the tax measures disproportionately affect overseas golfers and are a major reason why UK tournaments, including the Welsh Open played over the Celtic Manor course that will host the Ryder Cup, attract fewer overseas stars.

(Link)

All of which serves to illustrate nicely, once again, that there are producers of wealth and there are plunderers of wealth, and government, by definition, can only ever be the latter.

FDR

Yes, the truth about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which people on both sides of the political spectrum hate to hear, is that he not only did not bring this country out of the Great Depression: he prolonged it for well over a decade.

By the time FDR’s reign of destruction was through, the United States was still in a deep depression, and the interventionist precedents he established, which served only to keep the country depressed, haunts America to this very day.

Never again, until Barack, has an American president so brazenly and so consistently demonstrated this lack of regard for individual human beings; and never since Barack has a president stomped so savagely upon the unalienable right to life and property.

Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.

It was not until 1947, when wartime controls and government spending finally ended and free markets were at last allowed to operate somewhat freely – i.e. without the stranglehold of the federal government – that this country at last began to emerge from its eighteen-year depression.
That depression was much exacerbated by the interventionist Herbert Hoover, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt took interventionism to a whole new level.

Quoting FDR’s own economic adviser, Rexford Tugwell:

“The ideas embodied in the New Deal Legislation were a compilation of those which had come to maturity under Herbert Hoover’s aegis. We all of us owed much to Hoover” (Rexford Tugwell, 1946).

One of FDR’s first acts as President was to close down all banks, a maneuver he hoped would prevent scared depositors from withdrawing their savings.

What this maneuver actually did, however, was intensify the public’s panic. It didn’t improve banking at all, nor did it help in any way with the Great Depression.

Unemployment rates over the course of the Great Depression looked like this:

• 1929: 3.2 percent
• 1930: 8.7 percent
• 1931: 15.9 percent
• 1932: 23.6 percent
• 1933: 24.9 percent
• 1934: 21.7 percent
• 1935: 20.1 percent
• 1936: 16.9 percent
• 1937: 14.3 percent
• 1938: 19.0 percent
• 1939: 17.2 percent
• 1940: 14.6 percent

FDR averaged 17.7 percent unemployment, which is staggering: to be more precise, FDR’s unemployment average was more than five times the 1929 level.

Many FDR apologists like to cite the 1933 to 1940 drop in unemployment as the greatest drop, percentage-wise, in the unemployment rate ever by an American President. Of course, what this fails to take into account, among a litany of other things, is the fact that centralized banking, as opposed to privatized, through the artificial manipulation of interest rates, caused the problems to begin with, and the subsequent interventions, first by Herbert Hoover and then by FDR, exploded those problems astronomically, as testified by the unprecedented unemployment rates that decade saw: in other words, 14 percent unemployment, is, by any legitimate standard, ghastly, and only a lunatic or a fool would call it “a success.”

Quoting economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, who used statistical models to evaluate the results of FDR’s New Deal:

“The Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impacts of New Deal programs.”

As Ludwig von Mises correctly noted, in the absence of government intervention, unemployment is always voluntary. Yet over ten million Americans were unemployed in 1938.

Compare that to the eight million in 1931.

Fact: not until FDR conscripted millions of men and sent them off to war did unemployment levels truly come down to manageable levels. Which, however, was hardly the end of the Great Depression; for unemployment, as everyone knows, is only one of several components. Thus:

In terms of aggregate production, statistics show no recovery until after World War II ended, when the size of government was at long last reduced.

The gross national product (GNP) didn’t recover to 1929 levels until 1940.

Personal consumption was 8 percent lower in 1940 than in 1929.

Net private investment, the backbone of a healthy economy, from 1930 to 1940 was negative $3.1 billion, a breathtaking figure.

Because of FDR’s mind-spinning interventionist policies, European nations came out of the Great Depression years ahead of America.

FDR believed that the Great Depression was caused by low wages. That was his fatal flaw. Because, in fact, the truth was the diametric opposite, as we now know: low wages (and prices) were caused by the depression.

And yet based upon this stupendous misunderstanding of basic economics, FDR proceeded to mandate wage and price controls, which thus kept the American people in a state of poverty for well over a decade.

When prices and wages are forced by government, the demand for labor is necessarily reduced. Why? Because in order to stay in business, businesses must turn a profit; so that when wages and prices are forced, businesses must adjust their employment and spending accordingly, or they run out of money. They must therefore cut back on workforce, and they must decrease output. In this way, forced wages create unemployment. You see, not even FDR can subvert economic law.

This is the most basic cause and effect process you can imagine: employers simply cannot pay out money that they don’t have.

Production and production alone generates wealth. That’s another crux, and FDR’s interventionist policies crippled production.

By means of the National Industrial Relations Act (NIRA), FDR’s First New Deal sought to turn United States agriculture, and other industries, into a massive government cartel.

It was at this time also that FDR began restricting production, so that unemployment began increasing.

The NIRA failed spectacularly, but in the process, it gave birth to another disaster: the National Recovery Administration (NRA).

The NRA was bureaucratic up to the gills, and, among other things, it required every businessperson to sign a pledge to observe FDR’s job-destroying minimum-wage laws, his maximum-hour laws, and his prohibitions on “child labor” (i.e. teenage labor), and so on.
Prices were therefore not permitted to rise above or fall below “costs of production,” regardless of consumer demand.

Quoting historian John T. Flynn:

[Code-enforcement police] roamed through the garment district like storm troopers. They could enter a man’s factory, send him out, line up his employees, subject them to minute interrogation, take over his books at the instant. Night work was forbidden. Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants at night (John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, 2007).

Countless people across America were arrested and sentenced to jail or prison for invented crimes like “pressing suits of clothes for thirty-five cents when the Tailors’ Code fixed the price at forty cents” (Ibid).

FDR also made the private ownership of gold illegal.

He nationalized gold stocks.

He created an abortion called the Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA), which implemented a government cartel on agriculture markets, and which quite literally paid millions and millions of dollars to farmers for slaughtering their livestock and burning their fields, while the rest of the country starved.

Under the AAA, one sugar refining business was paid $1 million to not refine sugar.

He made null and void all existing contracts that promised to pay in gold, which was an act of pure and simple theft, and which in any case did not inflate prices, as was his whole intention in making gold illegal in the first place.

In 1935, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Roosevelt’s NRA and AAA were unconstitutional.

It’s worth noting also, if only for posterity sake, that the NRA and the AAA were both explicitly modeled after Mussolini’s fascist system, of which FDR was an explicit admirer.

FDR also emulated Mussolini’s propaganda campaign against freedom and free-markets. Under the Second New Deal, Roosevelt’s AAA, which the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional, was, however, resurrected under the “soil conservation program.”

It too paid taxpayer money to farmers for not producing.

A number of other programs that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional were simply reenacted by FDR under different names as well.

Many of these unconstitutional programs, also modeled after European fascism, are still in place today.

The Second New Deal, announced on January 4, 1935, introduced a number of new programs, in addition to the renamed old, each one equally unconstitutional, though never, alas, brought before the court.

There was, for instance, the National Labor Relations Act.

There was the Fair Labor Standards Act, which amounted to more job-destroying minimum-wage laws.

There was the Works Progress Administration.

Of course too there was the egregious and now bankrupted Social Security Act, which, among other things, forgot to take into account increasing life expectancies, and so was doomed to fail from the start, a fact which, unfortunately, most Americans don’t realize even today.

Also, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which Herbert Hoover made into law in 1932, was much more stringently enforced under FDR’s authoritarian hand, thereby making it impossible to prosecute against labor union violence, of which the whole history of labor unions is largely composed.

Extortion by unions was under FDR legally permitted, as long as that extortion concerned “the payment of wages by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee” (Congressional Record 78th Congress, first Session, House, 1934).

There were in addition, of course, the interminable taxes imposed upon businesspeople, which taxes siphoned money out of the private sector and increased unemployment, as taxes against entrepreneurs always and inevitably will, since they take away the capital that is normally used to reinvest and thus produce.

Indeed, tax increases (much of which were used to pay FDR’s bureaucrats) were as responsible as anything else for annihilating the American economy.

Quoting FDR’s adviser Harry Hopkins:

“I’ve got four million at work [in federally created jobs], but for God’s sake, don’t ask me what they are doing.”

This same Harry Hopkins again: “We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.”

Even prior to World War II, government spending under FDR doubled and then some.

Government spending went from $4.6 billion in 1932 to $9.1 billion in 1940.

Over $23 billion in deficits were accumulated.

Current profligacy makes these numbers look comical, and indeed in terms of sheer profligacy, Barack cannot be matched; but one must not fail to take into account the times.

Deficits annually during FDR’s reign averaged 42 percent of the federal budget, a truly incredible figure, especially considering that in 1932 FDR had the nerve to campaign against budget deficits, and he even vociferously denounced them.

The primary purpose of FDR’s preposterous New Deal spending – at least, according to many – was simply to ensure his reelection, because he, like his protégé, was another power-mad politician. Accordingly, he gave free money to hoards and hoards of poor people in exchange for the vote.
What follows is from the Official Report of the U.S. Senate Committee on Campaign Expenditures, 1938:

• In one Works Progress Administration (WPA) district in Kentucky, 349 WPA employees were put to work preparing forms listing the electoral preferences of every employee on work relief. Many of those who stated that they did not intend to vote for Roosevelt were laid off.

• In another Kentucky WPA district, government workers were required, as a condition of employment, to pledge to vote for the senior senator from Kentucky, who was an FDR supporter. If they refused, they were thrown off the relief rolls.

• Republicans in Kentucky were told that they would have to change party affiliations if they wanted to keep their WPA jobs.

• Letters were sent out to WPA employees in Kentucky instructing them to donate 2 percent of their salaries to the Roosevelt campaign if they wanted to keep their jobs.

• In Pennsylvania, businessmen who leased trucks to the WPA were solicited for $100 campaign contributions.

• As in Kentucky, Pennsylvania WPA workers were told to change their party affiliation if they wanted to keep their jobs. Many people refused and were fired.

• Government employment was increased dramatically right before the elections. In Pennsylvania, “employment cards” were distributed that entitled holders of the cards to “two to four weeks of employment around election time.”

• A Pennsylvania man who had been given a $60.50-per-month white-collar job was transferred to a pick-axe job in a limestone quarry after refusing to change his voter registration from Republican to Democrat.

• Tennessee WPA workers were also instructed to contribute 2 percent of their salaries to the Democratic Party as a condition of employment.

• In one congressional district in Cook County, Illinois, the WPA instructed 450 of its employees to canvass for (Democratic) votes around election time in 1938. The men were all laid off the day after the election.

(Cited in John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, and How Capitalism Saved America, by Thomas Dilorenzo.)

In the words of historian Stanley High:

“In states like Florida and Kentucky – where the New Deal’s big fight was in the primary elections – the rise of WPA employment has hurried along in order to synchronize with the primaries” (Stanley High, “The WPA: Politicians’ Playground,” Current History, 1939).

In 1969, when all this evidence about New Deal spending came into the light, FDR apologists (i.e. academics) immediately began making excuses and rationalizing FDR’s disgustingly biased spending – for instance, the fact that residents of western states received 60 percent more federal money than residents of southern states. All the excuses these academics have made are factually inaccurate and have been refuted, many times over, by people like Jim F. Couch and William F. Shugart, in their excellent book Political Economy of the New Deal.

Franklin Roosevelt was, to quote one David Gordon, “a vain, intellectually shallow person whose principal interest was to retain at all costs his personal power” – i.e. “total subordination of his country’s welfare to his personal ambition” (David Gordon, “Power Mad,” 1999).
FDR had no grasp of economics, and in fact was really just another garden-variety politician, much like today’s world leaders, but more so.

Charles Bolden, Rocket Scientist?

Here’s some head-scratching calculus which I, for one, cannot fathom:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA’s orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.

“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,” Bolden said in the interview. (Link)

If you have a strong stomach, you can watch the full interview here — not that I necessarily recommend it.

As a practicing doctor in California it troubles me that those with the ability to influence health care legislation have either been politically motivated to remain silent, or strikingly inarticulate when it comes to voicing the major issues patients and taxpayers will face with the new health care bill. My own, long-held view has been that any reform should be of the free market variety.

In that sense, I’m increasingly scared as I learn more about what’s inside the health legislation passed by Congress not long ago. Despite the rising level of unhappiness with what has transpired, it dismays me that the general public, like me, is not fully aware of the financial tsunami that is on the way for patients, insurers and hospitals thanks to this legislation, not to mention the irregular way in which it was passed.

In the newspapers we all read that the legislation was passed via reconciliation. Most people do not understand what this represented. What Congress did was to pass this legislation under the Congressional Budget Act of 1984, which allows a loophole to avoid a 60 vote filibuster in laws which refer to changes in revenue and spending amounts; i.e. budgetary issues.

The legislation which Congress passed certainly does affect the budget, but clearly the bill’s intent wasn’t budgetary; rather it concerned dramatic changes for a large portion of our economy: health care. Given the bill’s intent, one can only hope that the upcoming elections bring greater ideological balance so that what promises to be damaging can at the very least be amended.

“Obamacare”, as it is colloquially termed, is financially a disaster for doctors, hospitals, insurers, and will ultimately be a disaster for our nation’s budget. It is also unfortunate for patients needing care.

Obamacare’s proponents tout the legislation’s cost controls, along with expansion of coverage for those who currently do not have insurance. The policy wonks seek cost containment and “efficient” use of resources. More realistically, cost containment could only be achieved if access to care were rationed.

Rationing in mind, Rahm Emmanuel’s brother published a very well received paper in the New England Journal Of Medicine about efficient or optimal deployment of resources in health care. The upshot is that a young man is worth spending a lot of money on, a young child much less, and for seniors, pretty much nothing; all in a calculated return on investment model.

For physicians, Obamacare initially offered promises of tort reform, as well as promises to reverse the Medicare cuts that made it so difficult for physicians to practice. Neither is in the final legislation. As a result, doctors will continue to practice defensive medicine, and for doing so will face 20%+ cuts in their Medicare payments.

Physicians in primary care will initially see an income boost from 2011-2014, thus encouraging them to take on indigent patients the system needs to absorb. Unfortunately, starting in 2014, the payments per patient will fall for primary care doctors too.

Specialists will receive a financial hit right from the beginning. The goal here is to have less in the way of specialists, and more general practitioners. On its face this will drive more doctors into early retirement.

As for the physicians that choose to continue practicing, they’ll have difficulty staying afloat financially, and many will seek employment opportunities similar to those of “foundation” practices (such as those seen in states like California where hospitals can’t employ physicians), or hospital owned practices in other states.

The explicit goal here is to slow the move toward private practice. Doctors in foundation types of practices act more like union or shift-workers, and less like professionals. Their productivity tends to be lower than in traditional private practices; ergo more doctors are needed for a similar number of patients. Considering a scenario of rising physician retirement alongside a large increase in the number of patients, it is unclear how treatment and diagnosis will occur in a timely fashion.

Hospitals are similarly not going to fare well, and many will simply go under. Previously, hospitals took in higher payments from privately insured patients in order to care for those who couldn’t pay, or for those covered by Medicaid. At the same time, hospitals which had a higher number of indigent patients also received what is called disproportionate share funds from state and federal governments. Rural hospitals in particular received extra funds.

But with Washington’s new mandate, the expectation is that all of the previous non-paying patients will now pay for themselves such that subsidies for indigent-care will be eliminated. Unfortunately, this will occur in concert with reduced inflows from privately insured patients whose costs will be reduced to Medicaid levels.

In short, the money from the increased volume of “paying” patients is not enough to counter the loss of disproportionate funds and decreased classic private insurance payments. The net result will be a deficit for many hospitals. They will not be able to keep their doors open if they sustain persistent losses, which is what is expected.

Many insurance companies will be squeezed out of existence thanks to rules that will bar them from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. And unlike the federal government they won’t be able to operate in the red forever. The end result points to a single-payer system run out of Washington.

Looking ahead, it is increasingly apparent that by 2020 we will have severe cuts in service thanks to rising retirement among doctors, a decrease in the number of private insurers, and a reduction in the number of hospitals due to federal mandates that fail to marry costs with services. The end result will be rationing and delay of elective procedures, denial of expensive but effective treatments a la England, and most likely a single-payer system the likes of which is seen in other, less advanced health care systems around the world.

Here is more on how our healthcare crisis began.

And here is the real solution.

The following explanation of the Multiplier Theory, though exceptionally clear and cogent, gets a bit technical, but please read through it. It is short, and it is also crucial that everyone understands the degree to which economic illiteracy grips the political leaders who have power over us.

The multiplier effect can be defined as the greater resulting income generated from an initial increase in spending. (For example, an increase in spending of $100 will generate a total increase in income received of $500 as the initial income is respent by each succeeding recipient–these figures are based on an assumption that each income receiver spends 80% of his additional income and saves 20%, the formula being Multiplier = 1 / % Change in Saving.)

Fundamentally, the multiplier is theory run amok, as Henry Hazlitt has explained in The Failure of the New Economics:

If a community’s income, by definition, is equal to what it consumes plus what it invests, and if that community spends nine-tenths of its income on consumption and invests one-tenth, then its income must be ten times as great as its investment. If it spends nineteen-twentieths on consumption and invests one-twentieth, then its income must be twenty times as great as its investment….And so ad infinitum. These things are true simply because they are different ways of saying the same thing. The ordinary man in the street would understand this. But suppose you have a subtle man, trained in mathematics. He will then see that, given the fraction of the community’s income that goes into investment, the income itself can mathematically be called a “function” of that fraction. If investment is one-tenth of income, income will be ten times investment, etc. Then, by some wild leap, this “functional” and purely formal or terminological relationship is confused with a causal relationship. Next the causal relationship is stood on its head and the amazing conclusion emerges that the greater the proportion of income spent, and the smaller the fraction that represents investment, the more this investment must “multiply” itself to create the total income! p. 139

A bizarre but necessary implication of this theory is that a community which spends 100% of its income (and thus saves 0%) will have an infinite increase in its income–sure beats working!

A further reductio ad absurdum is provided by Hazlitt:

Let Y equal the income of the whole community. Let R equal your (the reader’s) income. Let V equal the income of everybody else. Then we find that V is a completely stable function of Y; whereas your income is the active, volatile, uncertain element in social income. Let us say the income arrived at is:

V = .99999 Y

Then, Y = .99999 Y + R

.00001 Y = R

Y = 100,000 R

Thus we see that your own personal multiplier is far more powerful than the investment multiplier, it is only necessary for the government to print a certain number of dollars and give them to you. Your spending will prime the pump for an increase in the national income 100,000 times as great as the amount of your spending itself. pp. 150 -151

The multiplier is based on a faulty theory of causation and is therefore in actuality nonexistent. Keynesians today will often admit to this but cling to their multiplier by citing the fact that it has a regional effect. Without them saying so explicitly, what this means is that if income is taken from citizens of Georgia and spent in Massachusetts it will benefit the Massachusetts economy(!).

The multiplier is an elaborate attempt to obfuscate the issues to excuse government spending. It and Keynesian theory are nothing more than an elaborate version of any monetary crank’s call for inflation; Keynes managed to dredge up the fallacies of the 17th century’s mercantilist views only to relabel them as the “new economics”!

(Link)

In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax — even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation.

Late last night, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the Florida-based lawsuit against the health care law, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction and that the State of Florida and fellow plaintiffs haven’t presented a claim for which the court can grant relief. To bolster its case, the DOJ cited the Anti-Injunction Act, which restricts courts from interfering with the government’s ability to collect taxes.

The Act, according to a DOJ memo supporting the motion to dismiss, says that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.” The memo goes on to say that it makes no difference whether the disputed payment it is called a “tax” or “penalty,” because either way, it’s “assessed and collected in the same manner” by the Internal Revenue Service.

But this is a characterization that Democrats, and specifically Obama, angrily denounced during the health care debate. Most prominently, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Obama argued that the mandate was “absolutely not a tax increase,” and he dug into his view even after being confronted with a dictionary definition:

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but…

OBAMA: …what you’re saying is…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

At the time Obama made that statement, the Senate Finance Committee had just released its own health care bill, which clearly referred to the mandate penalty as an “excise tax.” But in later versions, the word “tax” was stripped, because it had become too much of a political liability for Democrats. The final version that Obama signed did not describe the mandate as a tax, and used the Commerce Clause — not federal taxing power — as the Constitutional justification for the mandate.

“”This is an about face from what is laid out in the law,” said Karen Harned of the National Federation of Independent Business, which joined the Florida lawsuit against ObamaCare. “In the text of the healthcare law, the findings for passing an individual mandate specifically rely on the effects of individuals on the national economy and interstate commerce. Nowhere in the findings is the mandate referred to as a tax. The Justice Department is now calling it a tax to try and convince the court not to rule on whether or not Congress exceeded their authority under the Commerce Clause by legislating that all citizens must purchase private health insurance or face a penalty.”

Put another way, the administration is now arguing in federal court that Obama signed a massive middle-class tax increase, in violation of his campaign pledge.

Read Philip Klein’s full article here.

Q: Congratulations on the success of your novel More and More unto the Perfect Day. Where can we read an excerpt?

Ray Harvey: At my website.
[Editor's note: You can also hear an excerpt here:

Q: If your finger isn't typing, where is it?

Ray Harvey: It's on the pulse of the people.

Q: Are you really a bartender?

Ray Harvey: Yes.

Q: What is your signature cocktail?

Ray Harvey: The Harvey Fingerbanger.

Q: It sounds fantastic.

Ray Harvey: You have no idea.

Q: What all's in it?

Ray Harvey: Two parts finger, three parts banger. The rest is secret.

Q: Working in the food and beverage industry -- has it made you into a foodie?

Ray Harvey: Perish the thought!

Q: Do you have dietary restrictions? Vegetarian? Vegan?

Ray Harvey: No, no, no. Not that which goeth into a man can defile him but only that which cometh out; for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Gourmandizing of any kind is one of the surest signs of stupidity. The food snobbery of the vegan or the food snobbery of the vegetarian or the food snobbery of the organic-only cult, no matter how shabbily dressed, is every bit as beastly as the food snobbery of the rich and famous.

Q: As an anti-environmentalist --

Ray Harvey: I'm not primarily an "anti-environmentalist." I'm primarily an anti-statist. Environmentalism is just one of many species of the genus Statism, nothing more, nothing less.

Q: As an anti-statist, are you stalking your victims? If so, doesn't your tendency to shoot from the hip startle them?

Ray Harvey: On the contrary, it lulls them into a false sense of security.

Q: Your article on Postmodernism, including the comments, created a small sensation in our office. What, may I ask, is reality? Can you prove existence?

Ray: Reality is existence. And existence is that which exists. Reality is that which is. The only alternative to existence is non-existence. But non-existence does not exist. There is only existence. In the words of Victor Hugo: "There is no nothing." Regarding whether we can prove existence: yes. Proof, by virtue of what it is, assumes existence. How so? Existence must necessarily come before proof, because of what proof actually is: i.e. the preponderance of evidence which admits no other alternative. Evidence means that something exists. The very proof of existence is existence itself, to which there is only one alternative: non-existence. But non-existence does not exist. Only existence exists.

Q: Where do thoughts go when one is not thinking?

Ray Harvey: Where does the wind go when it's calm? Said Voltaire.

Q: Who or what have been your biggest literary influences?

Ray Harvey: Karl Shapiro, Dostoevsky, Blood Meridian and Suttree [by Cormac McCarthy], Nine Stories [by J.D. Salinger].

Q: More than once, you’ve been accused of declaiming, as you’ve also been accused of ribaldry.

Ray Harvey: Paraphrasing Nabokov, Conventions and cliches, particularly of the sexual variety, breed remarkably fast: the blotchy buttock, the bulbous breast, the baggy balls, phony moans of bliss, the endless talky-talky of dick this, ass that, vagina this, oral that — it’s worse than primitive; it’s boring. The lack of style in these discussions of various copulation techniques is enough to wilt the most tremendous of boners.

Q: What is the real difference between Democrats and Republicans?

Ray Harvey: There is no real difference; the difference is purely superficial. Death by taxation, or death by so-called tradition; death by property expropriation, or death by middleclass morality. Both are anti-freedom.

Q: I see –

Ray Harvey: But I’d like to say a little more about that: if you’re going to call yourself liberal, or if your going to call yourself conservative, fine. At the very least, though, have the decency to refrain from calling yourself a proponent of freedom. Freedom is one thing and one thing only.

Q: Yes?

Ray Harvey: That absence of compulsion. Freedom does not does not guarantee wealth; it does not guarantee success. It simply means that you are left alone. Freedom means no entitlements, no minimum guarantees, no help (or hindrance) at all, no public education, no “free” health care, no drinking laws, no illegalization of drugs, and so on.

Q: What exactly do you mean?

Ray Harvey: I mean that everyone believes in freedom — until everyone finds out what freedom actually means. Then no one believes in it. Freedom does not mean “freedom until it comes to legalizing drugs.” Nor does it mean “freedom until it comes to doing away with speed limits.” It does not mean “freedom until it comes to recycling.” It does not mean “freedom until it comes to a woman’s right to decide what happens to her own body, and what lives off that body.” Freedom does not mean “freedom until liquor stores are open on Sunday.” It does not mean “freedom until it comes to no drinking-age laws.” Freedom doesn’t mean “freedom until a war breaks out, at which time you can lawfully be drafted.” None of that is freedom.

Q: What is justice?

Ray Harvey: Justice is the legal recognition of the fact that each and every human being, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, class, or creed, is individuated and sovereign, and no human or government institution may therefore infringe upon another’s property or person.

Q: Why is justice important?

Ray Harvey: The path of the just is as a shining light, which shines more and more unto the perfect day. But what is the alternative? Only injustice. We are each born free. Freedom is a birthright.

Q: Gordon Gano once said “Happiness is a word for amateurs.” Do you think that’s true?

Ray Harvey: No, I do not.

Q: What is happiness? A chocolate turtle?

Ray Harvey: Yes.

Q: Would it be fair to say that you see life as a funny but cruel joke?

Ray Harvey: No, it wouldn’t fair. That question has the unmistakable shimmer of inanity. Life is neither inherently silly, nor inherently angst-ridden. The only alternative to life is death. And death is what gives life meaning in the sense that death is what life constantly strives against. But it’s not the other way around: from the perspective of the dead, life obviously doesn’t carry any particular relevance. I think you may be confusing me with the walleyed Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, or one of his ventriloquist dolls.

Q: Where is The Good located?

Ray Harvey: The Good resides inside the human brain, which is conceptual by nature and operates (therefore) by means of choice. There can be no good nor evil if there is no choice. Thought is not automatic. Thought requires effort; it requires an act of will. Quoting the psychologist Rollo May: “When we analyze will with all the tools that modern psychology brings us, we shall find ourselves pushed back to the level of attention or inattention as the seat of will. The effort which goes into the exercise of will is really effort of attention; the strain in willing is the effort to keep the consciousness clear, i.e. the strain of keeping attention focused.” That is where The Good resides. That is the source of all good and all bad behavior: the choice to pay attention or not. The rest is just an elaboration on this.

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.”

Is the president saying that he didn’t react quickly because he was trying to placate Tea Party activists, thus blaming them for the slow response? Obama almost makes it sound like he let the Gulf die to make a point against those who are for smaller, more responsible government, doesn’t he?

Besides, the whole argument is bogus, desperate, and perhaps eventually counterproductive for Obama.

Dan Riehl:

Patently false. If the Tea Party mentality held sway, we’d be drilling in ANWR and closer to the shore in shallower water, so this disaster would never have happened. He’s opening the door for even more attacks over how government overreach creates problem like this.

On top of that, it was Obama who was talking about more drilling just before the rig explosion. Is he now saying that was a bad idea, he simply pushed for pure politics? Americans are smart enough to know there’s a big difference between how the government reacts in a major disaster, or a war, versus how it encroaches into their lives more and more on any given day.

(Link)

Today, June 4th, is the twenty-one year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China, when the communist dictatorship of that country quashed a political reform movement, which was begun by Beijing students to bring about more freedom.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) ended these protests by force, which is the only way governments can ever resolve disputes of this sort, since government by definition is an agency of force.

When it was all over, the People’s Republic of China began arresting its people on a widespread scale.

They also went to great lengths to suppress protesters and other people of China who were supportive of the protesters’ cause.

The People’s Republic of China banned the foreign press and controlled all later coverage of the event.

Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government (Andrew Nathan, The Tiananmen Papers).

The protesters, among whom were advocates of laissez-faire as well as disillusioned communists and Trotskyites and many other groups besides, were united only in their hatred for that oppressive regime. The Tiananmen Square protest was a protest against authoritarianism.

It actually began some seven weeks before, on April 15th, 1989, after the death of a largely pro-free-market, anti-corruption government official named Hu Yaobang. Many Chinese people wanted to mourn his death because they regarded him as something of a hero. By the eve of Hu’s funeral, a million people had gathered in Tiananmen Square.

In fact, many large-scale protests sprung up all throughout the cities of China, including Shanghai. These others remained peaceful, however.

It is not known exactly how many people died altogether in Tiananmen Square, although at one time the Chinese Red Cross gave a figure of 2,600, which they later denied.

During those seven weeks, many of these protesters were openly discussing a principle that we almost never hear discussed even in this country — though it was this country’s foundational principle — a principle that is so profound and so complex that only a small minority of people today grasp its awesome logic. That principle is the principle of individual rights.

It was, incidentally, this same communistic Chinese government that American pseudo-intellectuals, like Norman Mailer, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky, have described as (quoting Chomsky’s own words) “a relatively livable and just society,” about which “one finds many things that are really quite admirable.” Furthermore says Chomsky:

China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting and positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step.

Among the people who died in the Tiananmen Square massacre was a young girl, a student, who worked as a pastry chef in a Dim Sum cafe on the Yangtze. She was the daughter of an engineer. In a country that did not (and does not) permit freedom, she came to understand the principle of individual rights and the inseparable link that exists between property and person — which is to say, economics and politics, or body and brain, all of which amount to the same thing. She wore a white bandanna that said Freedom Now. Think of her the next time you hear Chomsky and his groupies discussing, from the comfort of capitalistic abundance, the beauty of socialism.

And remember always: big government — any big government — must inevitably and by definition resort to force.

Here, however, is some of what you won’t see from that same machine:

Video taken by IDF [Israel Defense Force] naval boat shows the passengers of the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships in the ‘Free Gaza’ Flotilla, violently attacking IDF soldiers who were trying to board the ship after having sent repeated requests for the boat to change course.

The ‘Free Gaza’ Flotilla had publicly insisted on their non-violent intentions, however their violent attack on the IDF soldiers was clearly premeditated. They had knives, metal rods, firebombs and other items ready to use. (Link)

Nor will you see how many Israeli soldiers were armed with paintball guns.

Quoting Melanie Phillips, of Spectator magazine:

As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse.

Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are traveling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara — the main flotilla ship — at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’.

And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion — backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine — was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.

The notion — uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media — that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.

And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today — and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.

This is what the Jerusalem Post reported earlier today about what happened last night:

“According to the IDF, the international activists ‘prepared a lynch’ for the soldiers who boarded the ships at about 2 a.m. Monday morning after calling on them to stop, or follow them to the Ashdod Port several hours earlier.

“… Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.”

Also in the Jerusalem Post, David Horowitz wrote:

“Benayahu said soldiers, who had been dispatched to block the flotilla because of fears that it was carrying weaponry and other highly dangerous cargo into the Hamas-controlled Strip, were attacked with knives and bars and sharpened metal implements.

“Benayahu said two pistols that had been fired were subsequently found aboard the one ship, the Marmara, on which the violence erupted. And, most dramatically, he said that one IDF soldier had his weapon snatched away by one of the ‘peace activists’ on board, that this weapon was then turned against the IDF soldiers, who came under fire, and that they had no choice but to shoot back in self-defense.

“… What seems urgent now is to make publicly available footage that shows exactly what did unfold. In early afternoon, video footage screened on Israel’s Channel 2 appeared to show one of those aboard the Marmara stabbing an IDF soldier. Any such footage should have been made available hours earlier. Critically, if footage showing a soldier’s weapon being snatched and turned on the IDF troops exists, it should be broadcast, and the sooner the better.”

Some of this footage is now available on the web but much of it is hard to follow: as ever, the Israelis have been far too slow in making the most telling images and information available in comprehensible form (including in English rather than in Hebrew, for heaven’s sake!). This clip appears to show masked and armed flotilla activists beating Israeli soldiers (although here is the BBC report accompanying that footage, in which the voiceover appears to be claiming, perversely, that the people in masks were Israeli soldiers. That said, the report on Radio Four’s World at One was fair and balanced).

This clip shows an Israeli soldier being stabbed. This IDF clip, and this one show attacks on the commandoes including throwing one off the deck, attacking others with a metal pole and a firebomb and an attempted kidnap of another.

It is also becoming clearer as the day wears on that, far from storming the boats in order to attack those on board, the Israelis were hopelessly ill-prepared for the violence they encountered. Israel’s Channel 10 and IDF radio have reported that the Israeli naval commandos were equipped with paint ball rifles to ensure minimum casualties among the flotilla terrorists, with their hand guns to be used only as a last resort. The terrorists tried connecting the steel cables from the overhead helicopters to the boat’s antenna, in order to cause the helicopters to crash. Only when the terrorists beat the soldiers with iron rods, stabbed them with knives and tried to lynch them did the soldiers respond. The Israeli commandoes were pushed down stairs, thrown overboard, and shot at.

Here is a report by an Israel army radio reporter on board:

“‘The activists had many things ready for an attack on the soldiers,’ Lev-Rom said, ‘including, for instance, a box of 20-30 slingshots with metal balls; these can kill. There were also all sorts of knives and many similar things. These are what they call “cold” weapons, as opposed to live fire. It was quite clear that a lynch had been prepared.’

“Lev-Rom said, however, that it appears the army, ‘even though it prepared for many different scenarios, was not ready for this one. The army seems not to have known what type of people were there and what type of weapons they had. It was hard for Israel to conceive that the ship, sponsored by the country of Turkey, would have such weapons. Israel was prepared to deal with anarchists, and instead had to deal with terrorists – that’s the feeling here.’”

Here is an even more vivid account showing how unprepared the Israeli soldiers were:

“Navy commandoes slid down to the vessel one by one, yet then the unexpected occurred: The passengers that awaited them on the deck pulled out bats, clubs, and slingshots with glass marbles, assaulting each soldier as he disembarked. The fighters were nabbed one by one and were beaten up badly, yet they attempted to fight back.

“However, to their misfortune, they were only equipped with paintball rifles used to disperse minor protests, such as the ones held in Bilin. The paintballs obviously made no impression on the activists, who kept on beating the troops up and even attempted to wrest away their weapons.

“One soldier who came to the aid of a comrade was captured by the rioters and sustained severe blows. The commandoes were equipped with handguns but were told they should only use them in the face of life-threatening situations. When they came down from the chopper, they kept on shouting to each other ‘don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ even though they sustained numerous blows.

“The Navy commandoes were prepared to mostly encounter political activists seeking to hold a protest, rather than trained street fighters. The soldiers were told they were to verbally convince activists who offer resistance to give up, and only then use paintballs. They were permitted to use their handguns only under extreme circumstances.

“The planned rush towards the vessel’s bridge became impossible, even when a second chopper was brought in with another crew of soldiers. ‘Throw stun grenades,’ shouted Flotilla 13’s commander who monitored the operation. The Navy chief was not too far, on board a speedboat belonging to Flotilla 13, along with forces who attempted to climb into the back of the ship.

“The forces hurled stun grenades, yet the rioters on the top deck, whose number swelled up to 30 by that time, kept on beating up about 30 commandoes who kept gliding their way one by one from the helicopter. At one point, the attackers nabbed one commando, wrested away his handgun, and threw him down from the top deck to the lower deck, 30 feet below. The soldier sustained a serious head wound and lost his consciousness.

“Only after this injury did Flotilla 13 troops ask for permission to use live fire. The commander approved it: You can go ahead and fire. The soldiers pulled out their handguns and started shooting at the rioters’ legs, a move that ultimately neutralized them. Meanwhile, the rioters started to fire back at the commandoes.”

It is becoming ever more clear that Islamist terror attacks like this are fiendishly staged theatrical events in which the western media – and beyond them, western governments — play an absolutely essential role in the drama. If those media and governments refused to swallow the lies and instead called operations like this and the players behind it for what they actually are, such terrorist operations would not happen. The Islamist strategy of war against Israel is carefully calibrated to deploy the most effective weapon in its armoury in the cause of jihadi violence – the western media. Right on cue, western governments accordingly deliver their own script in condemning the victims of terror for defending themselves. And so, courtesy of the west’s fifth columnists, yet another nail is driven into the west’s own coffin.

Let’s see whether this time the western elites show any signs of waking from their lethal trance.

Update: I am told that the Jewish Chronicle website was taken down earlier (now restored) by a massive denial of service, apparently to shut down its balanced coverage of the Ashdod flotilla incident. The JC’s teccies, and the server hosts, say this hasn’t been caused by just one or two people — it’s clearly now co-ordinated and growing.

**Update 2: The journalist who wrote this account, Ron Ben-Yishai, cannot be accused of being an Israel government stooge: it was Ben-Yishai who in 1982 was first into the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut and blew the whistle on the massacre there that had been perpetrated by the Phalangists while Ariel Sharon looked the other way.

(Source)

And from Jonathan Schanzer, of the Weekly Standard:

The Turkish organizers of the Gaza Strip-bound flotilla that was boarded this morning by Israeli commandos knew well in advance that their vessels would never reach Israeli waters. That’s because the organizers belong to a nonprofit that was banned by the Israeli government in July 2008 for its ties to terrorism finance.

The Turkish IHH (Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi in Turkish) was founded in 1992, and reportedly popped up on the CIA’s radar in 1996 for its radical Islamist leanings. Like many other Islamist charities, the IHH has a record of providing relief to areas where disaster has struck in the Muslim world.

However, the organization is not a force for good. The Turkish nonprofit belongs to a Saudi-based umbrella organization known to finance terrorism called the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir in Arabic). Notably, the Union is chaired by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who is known best for his religious ruling that encourages suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. According to one report, Qardawi personally transferred millions of dollars to the Union in an effort to provide financial support to Hamas.

In 2008, the Israelis banned IHH, along with 35 other Islamist charities worldwide, for its ties to the Union of Good. This was a follow-on designation; Israelis first blocked the Union of Good from operating in the West Bank and Gaza in 2002.

Interestingly, the Union of Good may not only be tied to Hamas. Included in the Israeli list of 36 designees was the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). In 2006, both the U.S. government and the United Nations designated the IIRO branch offices in Indonesia and the Philippines for financing al Qaeda. French magistrate Jean-Louis Brougiere also testified that IHH had an “important role” in Ahmed Ressam’s failed “millennium plot” to bomb the Los Angeles airport in late 1999.

Something else you aren’t likely to get from the anti-Israel propaganda machine: the murderous prayers calling for the return of the “army of Mohammed”:

Here’s the same sort of group in, of all places, Cleveland, Ohio (hat tip Michelle Malkin):

Doug Ross has more on the “humanitarian” canard, as does John Hinderaker.

The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

These words were spoken on May 5th, 1868, by General John A. Logan. It was the first official recognition of Decoration Day — or, as it was later named, Memorial Day — a day designed specifically to commemorate the fallen Civil War soldiers.

On that May day in 1868, during the first celebration, General James Garfield (later the twentieth U.S. President, and, incidentally, one of the last great Presidents this country has had) gave a moving speech at Arlington National Cemetery. After his speech was concluded, 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried in Arlington Cemetery.

Two years prior to that, however, in May of 1866, Waterloo, New York, a druggist named Henry Carter Welles (1821 – 1868), born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, suggested, rather nonchalantly at a social gathering, that a formal act of honor be shown the patriotic dead of the Civil War. He suggested a panegyric in which the townspeople decorate the graves of these fallen soldiers. A committee was subsequently formed, the stated purpose of which was “To obtain national recognition of the fact that Waterloo is the birthplace of Memorial Day through Congressional action [and] to plan and execute a proper celebration for such centennial observance.”

The next year, in May of 1866, Henry Carter Welles pitched this same idea to one General John B. Murray, who at that time was the Seneca County Clerk. General John Murray went gaga over the idea of a nationwide holiday honoring the fallen Civil War soldiers, and the rest is history: Waterloo, New York was soon recognized by the United States Government as “The Birthplace of Decoration Day.”

To us, this official recognition may sound like small potatoes, but in fact it was a difficult process to establish if Waterloo was the actual birthplace of Decoration Day: it required meticulous research to prove the claim, since a number of other communities in the country had long held informal observances in honor of the Civil War dead — and, indeed, to this day a number of communities still claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day.

Here are a few of those communities:

Columbus, Missouri; Macon, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Carbondale, Illinois.

Each year at Arlington National Cemetery, Memorial Day is celebrated with a somber ceremony in which a small American flag is placed upon each grave. It is also customary for the President or Vice President to give a completely phony speech, which insults the brave soldiers who have died for this country, and then to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

“About 5,000 people attend the ceremony annually…. Several Southern states continue to set aside a special day for honoring the Confederate dead, which is usually called Confederate Memorial Day” (Source).

Within a hundred years, Muhammad and his disciples had conquered all of the Middle East, much of Persia, India, North Africa, Asia Minor, the Asian Interior, Spain, and good part of France. As a matter of fact, had it not been for Charles Martel, who in 732 defeated the Arabs at Poiters, Europe may well have been an Islamic continent today — a piece of history that many in the Arab political culture have never quite been able to forget.

Which is one of the reasons that, 950 years later, much Islamic history is concentrated on the struggle — jihad means struggle — to prevent the reconquest of Muslim lands. Their longing is for a great leader, the caliph, to vindicate this great historic wrong, which prevented Islamic dominance of Europe, and to at last defeat European power. This longing, propelled by religious faith, was strong enough to bring, in 1683, the armies of the Ottoman sultan to the gates of Vienna, where the Muslim push was broken.

The subsequent decline of the Ottoman Empire was protracted and painful.

In 1798, Napoleon seized Egypt with ease.

By 1830, the British had seized control of many Arabian ports, and Algeria had become a permanent French base.

By 1870, much of Persia and virtually all of North Africa had become the possession of British, French, or Italian.

World War I saw the complete dismantling of the remaining Islamic realm. Turkey at that time became Westernized and secular, and much of the Arab world was put under European control — including Iran, which, in the 1930s, was ruled by a pro-Western family.

After fourteen centuries, Islamic dominance and political independence came to a close, thereby thrusting the Muslim world into a state of unmitigated confusion and humiliation. Quoting one Muhammad Nuwayhi, who 100 years ago was a leading Egyptian intellectual:

Anyone who reflects on the present state of the Islamic nation finds it in great calamity … The nation is tormented and resentful, plagued by inner contradictions and fragmentation, its reality is contrary to its ideals and its comportment goes against its creed. What a horrible state for a nation to live in (Muhammad Nuwayhi, Toward a Revolution of Religious Thought, 1907).

The European powers, meanwhile, proceeded to rather arbitrarily divide up the Ottoman Empire, and not long after the establishment of European protectorates (so-called), two strains of thought emerged among the Muslim Arabs to challenge “the horrible state.”

The first: Pan-Arab nationalism between Egypt’s Nasser and the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq. This party was very consciously modeled after Pan-German nationalism, and it accordingly supported Adolph Hitler’s “achievements” and even collaborated with Hitler against Britain during World War II. The Pan-Arab nationalist party explicitly sought a modern unified Arab-fascist nation.

The second strain to emerge was the Muslim Brotherhood which rapidly joined forces with other Islamic fundamentalist organizations, and which initially rejected Pan-Arab nationalism for being too pro-European and heretical. This Muslim Brotherhood organization longed mightily for a “pure Islamic regime.”

These two emergent groups differed, and yet they had a couple of significant things in common: undying hatred of the West, which had “dismembered” Islamic domination, and undying hatred of the “treacherous” Arab monarchies (including of course the Shah’s rule in Iran). Thus, after World War II, these two movements began working in precarious collaboration to dispose of all Arab monarchies and establish Muslim theocratic rule.

And, as everyone now knows, they were largely successful. The monarchies of Libya, for example, as well as Egypt and Iraq, were supplanted by militant Pan-Arabist regimes. Their goal was to dismantle all remaining Arab monarchies and add them to their own militant realm, and also to help the Soviet Union confront the West. They also very strongly believed that the “liberation of Jerusalem” was the key to stirring up ultra-nationalist sentiment against the West, and they made no secret of their willingness to use terrorism to achieve their ends.

Quoting Egyptian President (and Pan-Arab nationalist) Nassar, on the eve of the Six-Day War:

We are confronting Israel and the West as well — the West, which created Israel and despised us Arabs, and which ignored us before and after 1948 … If the Western powers disavow our rights and ridicule us, we Arabs must teach them to respect us and take us seriously.

Yasir Arafat’s PLO was born out of this Pan-Arab movement.

The PLO is essentially a nonsensical melange of Nasserist Pan-Arab fascism and neo-Marxist jargon, the stated purpose of which is to destroy “Western intrusion.”

The crucial point here: it has by now become cliche that if Israel would never have come into existence, the Muslim relationship with the West would be peaceful. And yet the absolutely irrefutable fact of the matter is that the Islamic world has been bellicose and antagonistic toward the West for millennium, since its inception, by definition: all faith must ultimately resort to force in order to persuade; because faith is the opposite of reason.

Gattaca — the title of which is based on the initial letters of the four DNA nitrogenous bases (guanine, adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine) — is set in the near future. It is a slightly cyberpunk, highly biopunk thriller that presents a vision of society driven by liberal eugenics.

Vincent Freeman, played by Ethan Hawke, is an imperfect man who desires to travel to the stars. But given his genetic make-up (he’s born with congenital heart condition), society, led by an elite bureau of planners called Gattaca Corp, has deemed Vincent “unsuitable.” He has therefore been relegated to the status of “underclass,” one of those human beings useful only for menial work. And yet not disclosed in his DNA is the fact Vincent’s will is unbreakable.

Thus he assumes a fraudulent identity: the identity of one Jerome Morrow. The real Jerome Morrow (played brilliantly by Jude Law) is a perfect genetic specimen who as a result of a botched suicide attempt is a paraplegic. The two of them, learning among other things how to deceive DNA sample testing, conspire to send Vincent on a space trip to one of Saturn’s moons. They succeed at passing one genetic test after another, using samples of the real Jerome’s hair, skin, blood and urine. Ultimately, a colleague of Vincent’s (A.K.A. Jerome Morrow) is killed, and so Vincent is at long last scheduled for his space mission. At which point, however, another colleague begins to suspect Vincent’s true origins, and the police investigate.

Vincent Freeman is one of the last “natural” babies. He is myopic and his DNA says that he is likely to die at age 30. He has an estranged younger brother named Anton (played well by Loren Dean), who is now a police detective pitted against Vincent. For me, the most moving moments in this very moving movie are the swimming contests — one told in flashback, when the two brothers are young, and one in the present — and when, afterward, Anton asks Vincent how as a genetically deficient human being, he nevertheless won the swimming contests, Vincent answers that he won because he didn’t save his strength for the swim back, since he was always willing to risk everything to succeed…

Gattaca is in the end a profound testament to the human spirit and to that fundamental act of will which we each possess, and which each individual alone can choose to activate, or not.

It is a movie that hammers home the devastating truth that we are each beings of a self-made soul. If you haven’t seen it, you really should.

Jumanah Albahri: “For it.”

Watch this chilling exchange, which just recently occurred at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD):

From Aaron Elias, on Pajamas Media:

Albahri’s blatant support for genocide has sparked a backlash, prompting students to try and get the UC chancellors to condemn her remarks as inflammatory hate speech. The movement has taken the form of a petition directed at UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. (The petition originated in a Facebook group named “Condemn UCSD MSA’s ex-Officer for Supporting 2nd Holocaust.”

Begun on May 13, the group has, in the course of a few days, swelled to nearly 600 members. It provides updates on the situation, including the press releases and statements released by the UCSD MSA, Chancellor Fox, and Albahri herself. Most importantly, of course, it provides a link to the petition asking Chancellor Fox (and potentially the other UC chancellors) to directly condemn Albahri’s pro-Holocaust statement.

On May 15, in a half-hearted damage control scramble, the UCSD MSA released a statement denouncing “all groups or organizations, whether state or non-state actors, who target civilians or target a civilian population to impose collective punishment.” The statement is very vague and non-committal, and does not even mention the incident or the people that elicited it. It then goes into an anti-Israel diatribe and a quote from Malcom X that is totally irrelevant to the situation in question. It is, for all intents and purposes, utterly meaningless.

Albahri, on May 16, released a statement via a new blog she set up titled “For Truth, For Justice, For Peace.” In her statement, Albahri attacks Horowitz as a “seasoned polemicist” who avoided her initial (and irrelevant) question and accuses him of turning the conversation around on her, which, of course, is something one must expect when leaping into these types of discussions.

Read her full equivocation here, which comes straight out of the anti-Semitic guidebook for how-to-try-and-make-yourself-look-victimized, which guidebooks do exist.