Utopia, you are standing in it!

Four years ago, I read Kim Ghattas’ account of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom.  The book was personal, clear, concise and analytical.  Her latest book, BLACK WAVE: SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN, AND THE FORTY-YEAR RIVALRY THAT UNRAVELED CULTURE, RELIGION, AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY piqued my interest in light of recent events.  Iran’s attack on Saudi oil fields, the proxy war in Yemen between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Iran’s machinations dealing with shipping in the Persian Gulf, and President Trump’s recent order resulting in the assassination of Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and the head of its Quds force makes the book extremely timely, but also very important as we seek to understand events in the most explosive region in the world trying to discern how the competition between the world’s leading Sunni and Shi’a countries will unfold.

Ghattas’ task is…

The hatred of industrial wind turbines being speared across their rural landscape has stirred the renowned French passion for resistance and revolt.

Not so long ago, French renewable energy rent seekers thought they could count on their countrymen’s love of énergie éolienne to provide a social licence to carpet France in these things and to thereby destroy its picture postcard vistas, into the bargain.

Well, that was then, this is now.

Bernard Durand is a French environmentalist, engineer, researcher and naturalist. Durand has written extensively on the growing French opposition to wind power in the past and has pulled it together with the publication of his book: Un vent de folie: L’éolien en France: mensonge et arnaque?” [ Mad as the sea and wind: Wind power in France: a lie and a swindle?]

Unfortunately, Monsieur Durand’s book is yet to be translated into English. However, he gives a reasonable…

A Feb 2nd Guardian op-ed on the new US peace proposal by Diana Buttu, former legal advisor for the PA negotiating team, was predictably loaded with anti-Israel vitriol, smears, half-truths and outright lies about Israel and the history of the peace process.

However, she did, quite inadvertently, get one thing right in the headline:

Whilst this headline is inspired by a passage in the op-ed arguing that, for Donald Trump, what Palestinians think doesn’t matter, these words can be taken another way – one that Buttu clearly didn’t intend, but which accurately reflects the truth, at least insofar as media coverage is concerned.  What we’re referring to is a dynamic eloquently expressed by former AP Jerusalem correspondent Matti Friedman in his essay at Tablet (“An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth”, Aug. 26, 2014).

A reporter working in the international press corps here understands quickly that what…

I didn’t realize that Steve Pinker was teaching a general-education course on Rationality at Harvard, nor did I know that it was livestreamed—for free. All of us can watch this course, and I’ll be tuning in from time to time. Here’s the relevant tweet with the link.

Today’s lecture begins with one of my favorite songs (and presumably Steve’s): “Reason to Believe”—the Rod Stewart version. I guess he precedes each lecture with a song, which is a great idea. From that I’ll be able to discern his taste in music.

Anyway, I’m watching this lecture at lunchtime (today’s topic: “Why should we follow reason”?), and you may want to peek in. A screenshot:

When you go to the lecture page, you’ll see a small video screen in the…

The French get 85% of their power from nuclear plants and haven’t suffered so much as a scratch since they started in 1962. By contrast, the wind industry (which really only got off the ground in the late 1990s and still generates a trifling amount of electricity) has clocked up around 190 fatalities, so far (eg, see above).

Climate alarmists railing about carbon dioxide gas and not talking about nuclear power generation, can’t be taken seriously. Nuclear power is the only stand-alone power generation source that does not emit carbon dioxide gas during the process.

The fact that, among climate warriors, those seriously promoting nuclear power are few and far between, speaks volumes about what’s really driving them. If CO2 really was about to destroy the planet, these characters would be talking about nothing else but nuclear power, and how to deliver it to all and sundry.

Instead…

The opening page of the 1619 Project in the New York Times (click on screenshot to go there)

by Greg Mayer

Last August the New York Times Magazine launched what it called the “1619 Project“. The project’s promoters wish to change the general understanding of American history, and to have their view of American history adopted by schools. The project has generated a wave of backlash from historians. (The Times‘ Project is run by journalists, not historians.) While being sympathetic to some of the Project’s ideological goals, historians have decisively refuted many of the factual claims that are key to the Project’s interpretation. (We’ve discussed the Project in previous posts here at WEIT: here, here, and here, with links to some of the historians’ critiques.)

Not all historians are critical though, and Alexander Lichtenstein, an historian at Indiana University, has published an article

I just recently came across a very, very good book on the history of the Middle East. As far as theory goes, it is lacking, but it is readable enough that the intelligent layman can pick it up and learn new things from it. Written by historian Eugene Rogan, it’s titled The Arabs: A History and it has won numerous awards. Be sure to check it out. One new fact that I learned is that while terrorism as a tactic in the Middle East did not appear on the radar until the 1920s, it was undertaken on behalf of Jewish interests, not Muslim ones. Rogan explains:

The terrorists had achieved their first objective: they had forced the British to withdraw from Palestine. Though their methods were publicly denounced by the leaders of the Jewish Agency [the pre-state government], the Irgun and Lehi [terrorist organizations] had played a key role…

As the campaign proceeds, I become less and less enamored with Elizabeth Warren, once my favorite candidate for President. (Now I have no overwhelming favorite, though according to the New York Times “issue quiz” I’m a centrist whose views align more with the policies of those like Yang and Biden. But, like most of us here, in November’s election I’ll be voting for whichever Democrat gets nominated. Trump is and will be a disaster for America.)

Still, I don’t like Warren’s dissimulation, her hectoring tone, her Medicare For All policy (which seems to be morphing into “Optional Medicare”), or the desperation she evinces as she falls ever farther behind Bernie and Joe in the polls.

That desperation is the only way I can account for Warren’s behavior this week during the impeachment hearings. As you probably know, Senators were allowed to submit written questions to Chief Justice John Roberts, who…