Bombings in Gaza: A Christmas present for Hamas?

In general, extremists seem to fear moderation more than they fear opposite extremists. Hamas may cry foul about these attacks, but maybe this sort of intervention is what keeps them relevant. A secure and lawful Palestine would have little place for the antics of Hamas's militant leadership. And the leaders who prosecuted the invasion of Lebanon to save Israel from Hizbullah are now pursuing the Hamas bogeyman with excellent zeal.

What both these sides may fear most is elections in Israel and U.S. leading to more constructive engagements that will, slowly but surely, leave them behind the way the IRA in Ireland succumbed to a reconciliation of former enemies through a political process.

The truth about Iraq

I am not sure the recent book on how the administration coerced intelligence services to corroborate the case to go to war with Iraq is all that earth shattering a disclosure. Cheney’s parade across the Potomac to strong arm analysts into telling us what he wanted to hear is well known. The public was fed a whopper the way Columbus lied to his crews about how far they had sailed in order to preempt a mutiny. Columbus is generally held in high regard, as evidenced by the national holiday in his name. While we are a long way from celebrating “W Day”, there is a good chance that the demise of Saddam’s despotic Baath regime will be replaced by republican institutions that will in time make Iraq a better place to live, raise a family, and explore and develop petroleum resources.

Beer Will Do

I think Monty Python had it right when they said that American beer is like making love in a canoe...

July 10, 2008

Beer: Is There Anything It Can't Do?

By George Will

WASHINGTON -- Perhaps like many sensible citizens, you read Investor's Business Daily for its sturdy common sense in defending free markets and other rational arrangements. If so, you too may have been startled recently by an astonishing statement on that newspaper's front page. It was in a report on the intention of the world's second-largest brewer, Belgium's InBev, to buy control of the third-largest, Anheuser-Busch, for $46.3 billion. The story asserted: "The (alcoholic beverage) industry's continued growth, however slight, has been a surprise to those who figured that when the economy turned south, consumers would cut back on nonessential items like beer. ... "

"Non what"? Do not try to peddle that proposition in the bleachers or at the beaches in July. It is closer to the truth to say: No beer, no civilization.

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson's marvelous 2006 book "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World." It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water. And Johnson begins a mind-opening excursion into a related topic this way:

"The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol."

Often the most pure fluid available was alcohol -- in beer and, later, wine -- which has antibacterial properties. Sure, alcohol has its hazards, but as Johnson breezily observes, "Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties." Besides, alcohol, although it is a poison, and an addictive one, became, especially in beer, a driver of a species-strengthening selection process.

Johnson notes that historians interested in genetics believe that the roughly simultaneous emergence of urban living and the manufacturing of alcohol set the stage for a survival-of-the-fittest sorting-out among the people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and, literally and figuratively speaking, went to town.

To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had -- what Johnson describes as the body's ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases. This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone. Those who lacked this trait could not, as the saying is, "hold their liquor." So, many died early and childless, either of alcohol's toxicity or from waterborne diseases.

The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors -- by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. "Most of the world's population today," Johnson writes, "is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol."

Johnson suggests, not unreasonably, that this explains why certain of the world's population groups, such as Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, have had disproportionately high levels of alcoholism: These groups never endured the cruel culling of the genetically unfortunate that town dwellers endured. If so, the high alcoholism rates among Native Americans are not, or at least not entirely, ascribable to the humiliations and deprivations of the reservation system. Rather, the explanation is that not enough of their ancestors lived in towns.

But that is a potential stew of racial or ethnic sensitivities that we need not stir in this correction of Investor's Business Daily. Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.

So let there be no more loose talk -- especially not now, with summer arriving -- about beer not being essential. Benjamin Franklin was, as usual, on to something when he said, "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Or, less judgmentally, and for secular people who favor a wall of separation between church and tavern, beer is evidence that nature wants us to be.

Leader of the K's backs Al Gore

I received this email from the nominal leader of the Ks ( http://theksband.com )

While I have not read it, I am certain it will reach many who will no doubt wish to respond and in the process fill my inbox with ever-branching email threads.

beginning of kommunique

This is an extremely rare political message to our mailing list. Forgive the intrusion, but the seriousness of the problem is such that I have to use what resources I have. I hope you forward it and/or hit some of the links below. I am very frightened for this world. I don’t want to wait for the ice caps to melt to realize that we have a great crisis, the crisis of our age with global climate change. We will kill the terrorists, and their bleak worldview will be rejected where it grows, but that will all be for naught if we face an ecological holocaust, or if we create a world of hardship, with a vast exodus from the equator and from island nations swallowed by a rising ocean. For the most part we’ve simply turned our minds from this vast problem, but Al Gore, God bless him, has not. He laid out a challenge the other day that we should embrace as a nation. Whatever you think of Al Gore, this is too big a problem to let go and this is the solution.

Here are some things we can do: http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/action/

Here’s how you can find out who your congressperson is. Write a letter. https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

Likewise, your Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Here is Al Gore’s speech. This should become THE political movement of our time. Obama and McCain should be forced to adopt this challenge as their own. It sounds tough, but I think we’re ready for big changes. It can be a little scary, but that means we get to create the future, not let it happen to us. Here’s a link and the text below. http://www.wecansolveit.org/pages/al_gore_a_generational_challenge_to_repower_america/

[original kommunique included entire text of speech available at the link directly above]

That’s the end of the speech. Thanks for reading. We really need to do this. I hope you understand why I sent this, and hope you further the message.

Thanks,

Dan Kilian

The Ks
ending of kommunique

China's support for Sudan alarming

The proposed indictment of the President of Sudan challenges the United Nations to honor its commitment to defend ethnic groups from genocide. Chinese reluctance to condemn an ally that provides it with oil should raise eyebrows if not the hair on our skin as the world readies itself for this year's Olympic games.
If China is bludgeoning Tibet and aiding the slaughter in Darfur and Abyei, with financial and material( http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/13/2302298.htm?section=justin ) support, on the eve its premier public relations event of a generation, what ruthlessness will foster in the future, when world opinion is less of a concern?