Melanie Phillips on Israeli Television

Interesting interview with the author of "Londonistan", on Israeli public TV. One expects for Ms. Phillips' point of view to be reviled in the UK and Europe. But when she is looked at askance even in Israel, one has to wonder how long the Jewish state can continue to exist.

Survival is not a bloodless sport. Survival of a nation is particularly bloody, and has never been otherwise. Either a nation's people believes in their right to exist or they do not.

The Fear and Hate that Leftists Feel Toward their Detractors

viaImpactLab
When the left wants to caricature its detractors, it has an entire palette of media colours with which to work. Late night talk and comedy shows are willing to do whatever it takes to ridicule anyone who publicly objects to the mainstream steamroller of expanding central control and dictate.

The rules are different when the left attacks the center or the right. When the left is on the attack, there are no limits, no rules of conduct, nothing beyond the pale -- everything is allowed, including violence and various forms of privacy invasion. The end justifies the means, when you are assured of your own righteous purity in the service of the One Truth.

Understanding the way that a person's brain would have to be wired in order to derive any type of assurance or self-confirmation from viewing the caricatures pictured above will leave an educated observer more than a bit discomfited. It is rather like the way a Palestinian's brain is wired, that leads him to rip an Israeli to bloody pieces with his bare hands. Disturbing.

Humans are naturally violent, so it is necessary for any surviving human populations to possess the capacity for violence -- if only in self-defense. But when latent human violent tendencies are stoked by political opportunists, the problem can become endemic or institutionalised. Such perverted societies can promote war in the name of peace, or genocide in the name of tolerance.

Why the left lends itself to this approach is fairly easy to see. It is desperation and fear of loss of power. Such desperation can be used to excuse virtually anything. And it will be.

The Iranian Bomb: A Question of When

With a new, radical Islam-friendly US President in office, there is no longer a need to pretend that Iran has forsaken its nuclear weapons program. The Obama administration is fine with a nuclear Iran, which leaves only tiny Israel to decide whether to make its objections clear beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Iran reports having thousands of centrifuges spinning away to make fuel for their upcoming power reactors. Others think that Iran has it in mind to make weapons material using those same centrifuges. In fact, Iran could divert just 1% of its centrifuge production and have enough weapons-grade material to make a few bombs per year.

...A standard power reactor that generates electricity requires about 20 tons of uranium a year, utilizing uranium with about 4.5% U235 content. A centrifuge facility intended for this civilian use would be spinning thousands of centrifuges to do 106,000 SWUs each year. Diverting a bit of that 4.5% U235 and adding just 1,300 SWUs of additional effort would yield 20 kilograms of 94% U235. If this were to be done on the sly, about 1% of the total centrifuge work would have to be falsely labeled or otherwise disguised. Diligent inspectors might catch this, or they might not. _ThreatMatrix

The article above provides more technical information on using centrifuges to enrich uranium for various uses. More information can be found at Wikipedia.

A large number of western pundits -- oriented more toward appeasement than reality -- have trumpeted the "peaceful Iran" message, based upon an eroneous CIA "threat assessment" from 2007. But that message was either hopelessly naive or intentionally misleading. The chumps in academia, media, and the political sphere who fell for that line have conveniently moved on to other things.

Meanwhile, Iran just keeps on keeping on. SWU after SWU after SWU, the uranium 235 just keeps getting richer. (a SWU is a "separative work unit", or one batch around the centrifuge) With Obama as US president, Iran has nothing to fear from the great Satan.

Any Analysis That Neglects Intelligence Is Sham

The respected magazine The Economist often presents economic and political analyses of various countries and regions. The Economist's looks at "Arab Backwardness" over the years neglect a very important consideration: intelligence of Arab populations.

Here are some Middle Eastern IQ and literacy rates to look at:

COUNTRY .... LITERACY RATE......AVERAGE IQ

Bahrain................. 85 ................... 83
Egypt ................... 51 ................... 83
Iran ..................... 71 ................... 84
Iraq ..................... 58 ................... 87
Israel ................... 95 ................... 94
Jordan .................. 86 .................. 87
Kuwait .................. 79 .................. 83
Lebanon ................ 83 .................. 86
Oman .................... 64 .................. 83
Qatar .................... 79 .................. 78
Saudi Arabia ........... 71 .................. 83
Syria ..................... 70 .................. 87
Turkey ................... 82 .................. 90
United Arab Emirates . 79 .................. 83

Canada has a 97% literacy rate, the USA has a literacy rate of 99%.
Canada has an IQ average of 97 and the USA has an average of 98. Source

The religion of Islam is a perfect fit for illiterate and unintelligent tribal peoples, such as arabs. Please be aware that the Arab world is genetically diverse and based upon the speaking of Arabic and / or the dominance of Islam. It is the legacy of past conquests and bloodshed.

Cousin inbreeding of low intelligence tribal people combined with rigid tribal and religious customs create and perpetuate a population of superstitious and violence - prone persons. Expressing surprise at the backwardness of such people without acknowledging such obvious underpinnings reveals The Economist as devious, manipulative, and / or incredibly credulous. But The Economist shares such traits with the most esteemed of modern academic and think tank geopolitica.

This "half blind" method of global and regional analysis typifies the modern approach to scholastic research. The next level will leave it all in the dust, of course. But for now, this willful ignorance is one of the great shames of modern human between-levels civilisation.

Backward and unintelligent people will conquer nations of far more intelligent and civilised people, if given the chance. The current government of the US appears intent on making such conquest appear easy. Whether such an appearance will be valid or not, it will lead such primitive people to believe that they can topple the "Great Satan." This makes war and violence far more likely than not.

Nuclear War in the Middle East? OK With Putin

The Hamas/Hezbollah rockets, based on the Russian Katyusha and Grad, are not delivered via DHL from Allah. It doesn't require the guile of a KGB man like Mr. Putin to imagine a way to accelerate Iran's nuclear program, which has been aided by Russian technology and protected by the Kremlin from meaningful international action.

So the question for Western leaders is whether they doubt Mr. Putin would hesitate to provoke a war in the Middle East. If his regime falls, he and his cronies will face the loss of their immense fortunes and criminal prosecution when their looting is exposed. What are thousands of lives in the Middle East to a Kremlin mob that is openly preparing for the day when they will have to open fire on their own citizens to stay in power? _GarryKasparov

Why would Putin help Iran develop its arsenal of nuclear weapons, and help to stoke tensions in the Middle East to the breaking point? Why would he risk an all-out nuclear war in Southwest Asia -- land of the world's larges petroleum reserves? Why would he want the price of oil to rise, and much of the Persian Gulf oil to become inaccessible? Because he wants to stay in power!

Russia and its fellow petrodictatorships are in dire need of a way to ratchet up global tensions to inflate the sagging price of oil. Petrodictators, after all, need petrodollars to stay in power. The war in Gaza and the otherwise inexplicable skirmish with Ukraine over natural gas have helped the Kremlin in this regard, but $50 a barrel isn't going to be nearly enough. It will have to reach at least $100 and it will have to happen soon.

The effects of the financial crisis are rapidly reaching every level of Russian society. With no avenue for political expression left open to us, Russians are ready to take to the streets. Vladimir Putin has reacted true to form, ramming through new "anti-extremism" laws, building up the interior ministry's paramilitary police forces, and increasing the volume of the xenophobic propaganda in state-controlled media.

The natural place for the Kremlin to find its new crisis is the Middle East. Open hostilities between Iran and Israel would lift the price of oil back to a level that would allow Mr. Putin and his gang to keep funding the crackdown. Israel's anxiety over Iran's nuclear-weapon ambitions is the most vulnerable link in a very weak chain.

_WSJ (Kasparov)_via_LaRussophobe