I Want a New Left

The Revelation of the Year: America’s Foreign Policy

The revelation of the year was the realization that America’s foreign policy isn’t so bad in comparison with leftist foreign policy. We saw this with the Arab spring. The U.S. had supported dictators in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, while the left supported dictators in Libya and Syria. The American-supported dictators were gone without a great deal of violence, but the situation was quite different for the leftist-supported dictators. Libya’s Gadhafi didn’t hesitate to use mercenaries to attack his own people, and Al-Assad in Syria has killed thousands in his attempt to retain power.

This isn’t to minimize how brutal rulers like Egypt’s Mubarak were, but it does show that democracies when dealing with dictatorships don’t have a lot of options. In retrospect, supporting Mubarak wasn’t so bad, though he should have been told to urge his people to become more moderate if they wanted democracy.

Israeli Soccer: A Nicely-Taken Penalty Kick

Here is a video of a nicely-taken penalty kick in an Israeli soccer game. Although it’s a little hard to tell, it looks like the ball hits the (inside) side netting before it hits the back netting. And notice that the goalie guesses right, but still can’t make the save. This shows what I have been talking about for years, the importance of being able to kick the ball with good accuracy when taking a penalty kick. The closer to a post you can get it, the less likelihood that the goalie will save it.

By the way, it’s a little strange to have classical music rather than rock music playing during the highlights of a soccer game, but then I’ve always thought it was a little strange to have any music playing during the highlights. I expect to hear announcers giving the play-by-play.

Good News for the Poor in South Africa; Bad News for “The Times”

See here for news about a discovery of natural gas in South Africa and a discussion of how the NY Times spins this as bad news.

Against all the other leftists, who want a redistribution of wealth and who in any case think helping the environment is more important than helping the poor, I say that poor people need lots of good jobs as well as low prices for basic necessities. This discovery will help push heating costs down worldwide and will probably offer some good jobs for poor people in South Africa. It's good news, no matter what The Times' readership thinks.

Iran and the Left

The other day the local newspaper had a letter from someone complaining about a previous letter writer who had urged us to attack Iran in order to retrieve our captured drone. The complainer began by arguing that we wouldn’t like it if Iran had sent a drone over us and we would consider it an act of war.

Down through the years I’ve seen many letters to the editor written by people, presumably leftists, arguing in this fashion. Ordinarily, these letters are on the topic of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and they insist that Iran has just as much right to a nuclear weapon as we do. The basic premise is that all nations ought to be treated as equals.

But there are two problems here. The first is that, for everyone, there is some regime, either current or historical, for which they would not wish to argue this way. The usual example here is Nazi Germany (an example that works for nearly everyone in the West). If we were sending drones over Nazi Germany, wouldn’t we think we had a better right to do it to them than they had to do it to us? Ditto for Nazi Germany’s supposed right to a nuclear weapon. We don’t need to treat every nation as our equal.

And there is no reason for us to regard Iran in particular as an equal. It’s not an innocent member of the community of nations, but is one bent on wreaking havoc. If it gets a nuclear weapon, it will use it, whereas we’ve had such weapons for decades and have only used atomic weapons twice, way back in 1945.

The second problem goes back to the left’s curious adoption of Iran as an ally. There is very little for the left to gain by pushing for Iran to get more power, except that a reactionary regime will become more powerful, and a comparatively enlightened one (the U.S.) will lose some power. Why is this to be sought after? It has never been explained, but it leads to some serious consequences when taken to an extreme. Let’s say, for example, that Iranian warships basically controlled the Atlantic Ocean. Lots of trade between America and Europe would be curtailed, and furthermore, it would be nearly impossible to travel there. How many of the liberals and leftists wanting a more powerful Iran really want this? Not many, I bet.

Gender Equality? Not At All

On the front page of today’s New York Times is the following paragraph:

Days after Jean Quan was elected mayor [of Oakland, California] in the fall of 2010, the Oakland police put a wheel clamp on her silver Prius while it was parked outside City Hall. She cursed her husband for not paying the family’s parking tickets....

Why was it his job to pay the family’s parking tickets? You can bet that feminists would be outraged if the genders were reversed in this story.

Global Warming and Lies of the Left

In this post, Bob Owens makes the following comment about media lies:

It’s easy for people to look at areas in which they specialize and find the lies that editors and journalists pass off as “news,” but what people are afraid to do is consider is that the rest of the news is just as blinkered.

This is the way I think about global warming in connection with a certain scientist friend of mine. He is a professor, and he is liberal, but not so liberal that his political views outweigh his interest in the truth. Down through the years he has had many a battle with the more ideologically committed members of his department over one thing and another, but the latest is that one of them wanted to raise the score of one of her students on a comprehensive exams so that that student could get honors. When she had been chair, she did this sort of thing regularly, but now that my friend is chair, he is putting his foot down and not allowing her to do it. She is accusing him of going against department policy and that the whole department should be consulted about it. But in the first place, she hadn’t consulted anyone in making this dishonest policy, and anyway it means that if he wants to be honest he would have to consult the rest of the department, which is quite ridiculous.

He added that for all he knew, she fudged data like this in her research, too. And this is what I fear is going on with the “research” being done by climate scientists. I’d like to be able to get my friend to see this, but he insists that their research is solid.

Maybe someday he will see the light.

Two Good Videos

See here (scroll down) and here. The first is a talk by Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryan Airlines. From the standpoint of poor people, O’Leary is a hero because he has made air travel possible for them. Naturally, this isn’t the way that leftist elites view the situation.

The second is of a woman interviewing wealthy liberals who had gathered to lobby for higher taxes on the rich. What she specifically asks them is if they would be willing to donate money immediately instead of waiting for taxes to be raised. Not one is interested. (I’ll give a small amount of credit to the guy who points out that he has basically already done so by using fewer deductions than he could have used.) I used to hate rich conservatives, because I thought they didn’t pay their fair share of taxes, but I’ve been hating rich liberals for a few years now, because I think they hog all the best jobs. But it’s pretty clear from this that they aren’t willing to pay their fair share, either. Oh, they say they will pay them, but only when taxes on the rich are officially raised.

Do these people have a clue about the bad impression they are creating among rich conservatives? Rich conservatives look at their behavior and conclude, with good reason, that they aren’t really sincere, because otherwise they’d give voluntarily. Compare it to something else: environmentalism. People who are devoted to environmental issues both want the government to mandate that others behave in certain ways, but they often (though not always) behave in those ways voluntarily. They ride their bikes to work rather than drive their cars, for example.

It’s easy to believe from watching this video that these rich liberals had a hidden agenda, which is either wanting to make themselves look good or maybe finding a way to stick it to the rich people they hate (the conservatives).

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Even though it’s not that cold where I am (about 37º F), I’d still rather be here.

Blame Game in Syria

Two suicide bombers killed over 40 people in Damascus yesterday. The question is, Who did it? The opposition blames the regime, saying that they think the regime will use this as evidence that the uprising is not a popular one and is only the work of terrorists and that therefore its use of force is justified:

The Syrian opposition, however, said that the blasts were part of a plan hatched three days ago by Al Assad's regime to coincide with the League mission [to monitor the Assad regime].

“The message to the mission is clear, even the state security complex is unsafe for inspection,” Bassam Jaara, spokesman for the Syrian revolution in Europe told Gulf News.

See here. This same link also says that the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus has claimed responsibility for the attacks, though that has now been denied. There is also this sentence from the link:

Some blamed the emir of Qatar, seen by supporters of Al Assad as leading the campaign against the regime.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah, in fantasy land, blamed America and Israel – see here – while here in America, we aren’t blaming anyone. So who does the Syrian regime blame? Given that they’re allied with Hezbollah, one might guess that they have blamed us, but in fact they’ve blamed al-Qaeda. Furthermore, this link at the Washington Post says:

Intelligence officials questioned the veracity of the government’s assertions — issued by Syrian-run news media — that al-Qaeda was responsible, noting that it would be difficult for al-Qaeda to carry out such an ambitious operation in the tightly controlled police state. However, some analysts noted that the attacks bore many of al-Qaeda’s hallmarks, including the coordinated use of suicide bombers against heavily guarded targets.

I have to say that the opposition’s claim that the regime did it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The bombs targeted two buildings used by Syria’s intelligence agencies, and if the regime were actually going to stage an attack against itself, one can assume those are two of the last places they would choose.

Egyptian Protests: Which Friday?

According to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, protesters dubbed yesterday the “Friday of free women” (assuming I have translated the Arabic correctly; it has a big headline saying, “Egypt triumphs for the dignity of women”). But various English-language newspapers in the Middle East said it was the “Friday of Regaining Honor and Defending the Revolution.” See here, for example.

Take your pick.

By the way, I couldn’t find any mention in our media of what the protesters had dubbed yesterday’s protest. For some time now, protesters throughout the Arab world have used Fridays for protests, since that is their day off for religious services, and they often come up with some slogan for the upcoming Friday as part of the protest. The fact that our media doesn’t mention this practice is just one more reason why one needs to look at foreign media to find out what’s happening in the rest of the world.