Second, Iran has been airlifting medium-range surface-to-surface missiles into Syria, presumably under the terms of a new agreement signed by the Iranian and Syrian defense ministers Gen. Ahmad Vahidi and Gen. Ali Habib. The purpose of this latest pact between Syria and Iran is, as always, to strengthen the encirclement of Israel by their proxies Hizballah and Hamas. To this end Syria lately delivered to Hizballah a shipment of mobile-launched, highly lethal Fateh-110 missiles, which can carry a half-ton warhead 150 miles, putting all of Israel’s principal cities within range from Lebanon.

These developments are, of course, worrisome to all in terms of the general stability of the region, but to Israel they present an immediate, and extremely acute, existential threat. It is hard for me to believe that they will not act, and soon. What this will mean in terms of US involvement is far from clear, but at the very least I should expect that the Navy will not stand idly by.

I think there are probably a lot of people in Washington and Jerusalem who aren’t getting much sleep right now. Maybe a few other places too.

It is hard to believe that the once-proud Dutch people, now cowering before their ascendant Muslim masters, have fallen so far as to be willing to prosecute one of their own members in what amounts to a sharia blasphemy trial by proxy. But there it is: there in the dock stands the brave Mr. Wilders, under indictment, in his native land, for speaking out in its defense. It is sickening.

Despite the enormous importance of this case, which threatens the single freedom that guarantees all others, the trial has received scant coverage here in the States, and shamefully, next to no editorial comment. The court has just postponed further proceedings until July at the earliest; there was nary a peep about any of it in any of the major news sources.

Others are watching, though. The National Review has just published a little symposium, to go with the International Free Press Society festschrift we mentioned in an earlier post . And if you like stronger stuff, well, here’s Pat Condell.

One of these populations, as of last week, no longer exists. The last of the Bo-speaking subtribes of the Great Andamanese culture, a woman named Boa Sr (don’t ask me how to pronounce it), has died at the age of 85 or so. The language, which represented a chain of cultural transmission that may have been as much as 70,000 years old, has died with her.

Read this poignant story here. Don’t miss the audio clip.

But despite my disinterest in this as a political issue, I must admit the story of Mr. Obama’s origins is a curious one, and an article I read today raised a possibility I had not heard anyone mention before.

Have a look here. Be sure to look at the photos.

Coffee?

A discussion of all this is underway at View From The Right, here.

This is a strategy that will likely backfire in the larger court of Dutch public opinion: Geert Wilders is easily the most popular public figure in Holland right now, and his persecution in this show trial, by a craven government already on its knees and fumbling for the jizya, is going to be a political victory for him no matter how it ends.

There is now a website devoted to news about the trial, here: http://www.wildersontrial.com. And as always, the clearinghouse for news about the Eurabian resistance movement is the steadfast Gates of Vienna.

Now some will say that this is a niggling point, and that there are other, more pressing issues that dwarf this petty faux pas, but I can certainly see why Ms. Palin has her Irish up over this. Words can hurt, and it is shocking for a man in Mr. Emanuel’s prominent position to display such callous disregard for the feelings of the nation’s congenital imbeciles. Indeed, given that Mr. Emanuel is the President’s “right-hand man” in his dealings with Congress, one would have to be some sort of brain-dead vegetable not to see that this sort of insensitivity could leave Mr. Obama a political cripple in future negotiations (and of course, to have his proxy speak so carelessly, and so damagingly, must be particularly galling to someone as articulate as Mr. Obama). Criticism of the President’s judgment is already heating up, and a mis-step like this is sure to throw another faggot on the fire, blackening his reputation even further — especially with those members of his base who already see him as something of an Indian-giver for having welshed on so many of his campaign promises. The last thing the President needs is to expose another chink in his armor while his his political opponents continue to nip at his heels.

Make no mistake about that Sarah Palin! She may be out of politics for the moment, but she’s still one heap tough squaw, and she’s on the war-path.

The law, as it stands, is incoherent. It begins with the assumption that it is detrimental to the military to have homosexuals in the ranks (let us accept this axiom arguendo, for now; we shall revisit it below). It then imposes an artificial veil of ignorance as to whether this undesirable state of affairs actually obtains. If that veil should in some way happen to be lifted, however, the military is then free to discharge the party thus exposed.

The absurdity is obvious enough if we imagine this reasoning applied to other military procedures. (Please keep in mind throughout that solely for the sake of argument we have accepted the premise, obviously implicit in the existing law, that the military is better off without homosexuals in the ranks.)

Let’s say that the Army procures rifles from various suppliers. Clearly it is in the Army’s, and by extension the nation’s, interest to have the most accurate rifles it can get. Let’s say also that some manufacturers make rifles that are less accurate than others, but look just the same. Finally, let us propose a rule that makes it illegal to test shipments of rifles for their accuracy. The only way rifles can be rejected is if the manufacturer reveals that they are defective, or if the defects are revealed by a third party — or become obvious in the field.

Crazy, right? Obviously such a policy would impose an unjustifiable cost upon the fitness of our military, and no sane person would ever sign it into law. But if we accept its implicit premise, this is just what “don’t ask, don’t tell” does. So why does this cockamamie law exist? It is based on a fundamental, and all-too-pervasive, liberal misunderstanding of the role of the military: a misunderstanding that extends also to a great many other government agencies — for example fire and police departments — and indeed to government itself.

This inverted perspective on the part of modern-day liberals leapt out at me during President Obama’s recent State Of The Union address, in which he said the following:

This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.

Notice: the “right” to serve. Note that the President was not attempting to persuade us that there is such a right; he simply assumed that such a “right” clearly and uncontroversially exists, and that it was being “denied” to homosexuals. I sat bolt upright when I heard this, and fully expected that it would be pounced on during the news-channel post-mortems, but it wasn’t. Nobody seemed to have noticed.

This is a very clear example of the proper function, to the liberal mind, of of all agencies of government: they exist not only, or even primarily, for the limited and specific purposes they were created to serve — which would mean that they should be optimized for those purposes and no other — but must also serve as publicly funded venues for the self-actualization of individual Americans, even if performing such a function is to the detriment of their original purpose.

On what possible basis, other than this, would anyone imagine that there is a “right” to serve in the Army? Indeed, why even have an army? The very notion of maintaining a standing army was looked on with considerable distaste by the Founders, who saw it as a financial and organizational burden, and a potential threat to liberty. Certainly they would all have agreed that if a national military force must be assembled, the only acceptable criteria for its composition and disposition would be those of military efficacy. And those criteria are still, at least partially, operative today: there remain various qualifications — of age, fitness, intelligence, etc. — that must be met in order to serve. I, for example, have no doubt that if, at 53, I were to apply for recruitment I should be turned away. But where, then, is my “right to serve”? In my case, nobody seems to mind that I have no such” right”; I am simply too old. Presumably, then, at least some of the criteria still in effect are there in order to select those recruits that will lead to optimum military efficiency. But given that maintaining a standing military force is an enormously costly and burdensome enterprise, and one that we would prefer not to have to undertake at all, why would we not make the optimization of its composition and operation our only criterion for recruitment? Why should we consider anything else?

We do so now only because of this topsy-turvy understanding of the proper role of the military. The current, absurd policy is an attempt to make it serve two purposes at once: its original, proper role as the guarantor of our nation’s security, and its new, altogether unintended role as a publicly funded jobs-and-social-outreach program. These are utterly incommensurate functions, and the discomfort over this schizophrenic “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is entirely the result of the tension between them. President Obama is quite right: it should be done away with. But nobody, gay or straight, has a “right” to serve in the military. The idea is absurd.

So, then: should homosexuals be allowed to serve in the armed forces? If it makes for a stronger military, then yes indeed they should. If not, then no. It’s as simple as that. I realize that this may be a difficult question to answer, but we should make a sincere and serious effort to resolve it, as empirically and objectively as we can, without worrying about howls of “discrimination” from people who cannot understand why we even have a military in the first place. If, after careful study and frank discussion, we conclude that the answer is yes, then we should admit gays freely and openly, and accord them full respect and martial honor. And if the answer is no, then we should not be afraid to list “heterosexuality” as a necessary qualification like any other. But the present arrangement is as infantile as it is insulting.

I want to be quite clear that I take no position one way or another here as to what the answer to that question shall be; it is beyond my expertise to answer it. (There is no need to remind me of similar controversies regarding race.) My only point is that the sole consideration for the admission of any person, or class of people, into the armed services ought to be the optimization of the military itself. That this is not immediately self-evident to all is itself a symptom of our political and cultural effeminization and decline.

I’m still a bit woozy, though, so for tonight, some “shameless filler”: a most extraordinary piece of email that appeared in my inbox earlier today. Here’s the text, in full:

blat

[link removed]

Good evening, Alphonse!

Thus the assurance in My note. Then feel the wrath of Satan! Suddenly Zane was choking. That is all. It had him now. Recall their mighty deeds! He could toss in a bomb.
Here is the place behind the ear. But with an accent. The stallion leaped into the sky. Jacob looked them all over to see. He was worried. There are your pension papers. After a while.
The air molecules were agitated into glowing. The Drusus was ready to spring. Tompetch had no idea what it was. Then it was all over. Atlan began again. Bink was last to go. Might as well start there. What can I do for you? Then Tompetch screamed in terror.
It is against anybody learning the truth. How are you going to do it? Bink gave it no chance to think. Fij-Gul felt relief. They were on Wanderer. He was terribly confused by it all. That’s the way I like it. Worse and worse! The landscape on the vidscreen sank past.

Below this haunting fragment was an image of an attractive couple straining to increase their tribe. The picture bore a hortatory caption:

Show your girlfriend what a real sex is!

ORDER CIALIS

I feel there must be some hermetic meaning, some occult semiotic payload, in this mysterious communiqué — but like poor Tompetch, I have no idea what it is.

But hey, that’s the way I like it. Worse and worse!

First, I thought the president seemed oddly unfazed by recent events. He certainly wasn’t ill at ease; indeed he seemed remarkably relaxed and confident — even, at times, downright cocky. (An affectation of his that I am finding harder and harder to bear as time goes on — the Mussolini-style chin lift — was in play throughout.)

He made several gestures toward the Right, mostly involving taxes. They are welcome, if sincere. I was also gratified to see him mention nuclear power, which should be an obvious candidate if we are serious about clean, independent energy.

He finally mentioned the health-care debacle, after about half an hour, and he did so in a way that I thought was either utterly delusional or deliberately offensive. He made no acknowledgement whatsoever of the many reasons that intelligent, patriotic citizens opposed the bill — its cost; its gross expansion of, and concentration of power in, the government; the scandalous way the votes were bought, etc. — but rather blamed himself only “for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.” This is not only insulting — he suggests that the only way anyone could object to his scheme is not to understand it, and that Americans citizens are so dense that despite his hundreds of speeches and press releases the problem was that they still needed more of his patient tutelage — it is also worryingly unmoored from reality. Many observers lately have been saying this is a sign of enormous (and possibly pathological) narcissism, and I will not hasten to disagree.

He also seemed, for all his calls to bipartisanship, unwilling to mend fences with the Republicans, choosing instead to berate and provoke them.

Perhaps the most startling moment was his castigation of the Supreme Court for their recent decision in United Citizens v. Federal Election Board — which was not only bad form (and his hesitation and ad-libbing at that moment showed, I think, that he knew he was about to behave badly), but also factually inaccurate, as Samuel Alito was quick to point out in a muttered objection that has been replayed continually all day today.

I really haven’t much more to add. In short, nothing much seems to have changed in Mr. Obama’s mind, though a great deal has changed all around him; I don’t think this speech did much to calm the waters. We’ll just have to see.

Professor Zinn, in whose eyes the United States of America was clearly the focus of evil in the modern world, was a familiar sight in my adopted hometown of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where he was lionized by the town’s sizable part-time population of aging red-diaper Progressives (as is his friend and fellow-traveler Noam Chomsky, another longtime resident). I imagine the black bunting is going up already along Main Street; I have a feeling I’ll be spending the summer trying to contain myself.

The problem was this: given several cities on a map, how can one lay out a minimal network of roads connecting them all?

To give a simple example, if there are three cities forming an equilateral triangle, the minimal solution is to find the point in the middle of the triangle, then build three roads from there, one to each city. But as more cites are added, the solution gets much more complicated, and when there are dozens or hundreds, finding an optimal solution (it’s called a Steiner tree, after mathematician Jakob Steiner) can be very time-consuming indeed (it belongs to a class of problems known as “NP-complete”).

As it happens, though, a simple contraption made of two sheets of plexiglass and a few nails, dipped into soapy water, does the trick in almost no time at all. The mathematical writer Ivars Peterson has a web-page that shows how it works, here. The result looks like this:

This is pretty impressive; the soap film acts as an analog computer that solves the problem very quickly indeed, in a non-algorithmic way.

What made me think of all this? Well, in today’s Times there was a brief item describing a slime mold’s ability to do just this sort of thing. Experimenters laid out little piles of food in a Petri dish, and the slime mold quickly created a network of pathways joining them. To make the experiment moire interesting, the researchers organized the pattern of food-piles so as to represent the locations of cities near Tokyo, and the resulting network apparently bore a striking resemblance to the actual Tokyo-area rail system.

Read the story here.

How do you tell the difference between a UK Police Officer, an Australian Police Officer and an American Police Officer?

By posing the following question:

Scenario Question:

You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, a dangerous-looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and charges. You are carrying a Glock .40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?

UK police officer:

Well, that’s not really enough information to answer the question! Does the man look poor or oppressed? Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack? Could we run away? What does my wife think? What about the kids? Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand? What does the law say about this situation? Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it? Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children? Is it possible he would be happy with just killing me? Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me? If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me? Should I call 9-9-9? And why is this street so deserted? We need to raise taxes, have a paint-and-weed day and make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behaviour. If I raise my gun and he turns and runs away, will I be blamed if he falls over, knocks his head and kills himself? If I shoot him, does his family have the opportunity to sue me, cost me my job, my credibility, and will I lose my family home?

Australian police officer:

BANG !

American police officer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! …click…
…(sounds of reloading)…
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! …click.

Daughter: “Nice grouping, dad! Were those the Winchester Silvertips?”

Of course, as we have already understood, warming by itself is not enough: the Earth has warmed and cooled throughout its long history, and was doing so, of course, long before we showed up. In order to get the big payoff, not only does one have to demonstrate warming, one also has to demonstrate that it’s all our fault (and furthermore, that we ought to care). But one thing’s for sure: without some juicy, incriminating pictures up front, the whole racket goes bust.

But there it was: a new report from NASA, saying in no uncertain terms that they had the goods.

Well, of course they might be right: for all I know, maybe the Earth has been getting warmer in the past decade. But given how profitable the operation is, and what scurrilous machinations have already been exposed, I had a sneaking feeling that there might be more to the story.

Lo and behold! Astonishingly, it appears that there is. Have a look here.

Update: with a hat-tip to our friend Mike Zaharee, here’s more.