Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

My Bowels! My Bowels! I Cannot Hold My Peace

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(Jeremiah 4.19)

My parents brought me to this country when I was just four years old. That was back in 1950; I can still remember the taxi that took us from the airport to our new home, the laid table, and the first Hebrew word (mayim, water) I learnt. Sabbaticals etc. apart, since then Israel is where I have spent my entire life. Not because I had no choice. I also have a Dutch passport and was sufficiently well-known, professionally, to find work in many places around the world. But because I wanted to. Some time ago I asked my father, a Holocaust survivor who since then has passed way at the age of 99, why he had taken his young family from Europe to the Middle East. “So as not to feel Jewish,” he shot back at me.

Looking back, I cannot remember even one day when Israel was not “under threat.” The Arab threat (this was long before anyone had heard of Palestinians). The Egyptian threat (in the early 1950s it was called “the second round;” we children even used to play a board game by that name). The Syrian threat. The Jordanian threat. The Palestinian threat. The Soviet threat. The Iraqi threat. The PLO threat. The Hezbollah threat. The Hamas Threat. The Iranian threat. The political threat. The economic threat. The military threat. The guerilla threat. The terrorist threat. More than enough threats to make anyone’s head spin! Some of the threats were very serious, some less so, a few almost entirely imaginary.

Again looking back I think that, on the whole, Israel has coped admirably. The obstacles notwithstanding, this sliver of a country has seen its population going up more than a tenfold. Its economy is flourishing—just look at what happened to the shekel, once nicknamed the drekel (little piece of dirt), over the last ten years or so. Year by year, the number of foreign visitors is breaking all records. The country which during its first decades was desperately begging for capital is now exporting it to many places around the world. Israeli science and technology are among the most advanced anywhere. Israel is the only country that has more trees than it did a hundred years ago. Relative to the size of the population, more new books are published in Israel each year than anywhere else. And the Israeli military is among the most powerful of all. For which thank God, or else the country would undoubtedly look like Syria does.
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In many ways, a good place to live and raise one’s children as I have done and as I hope my children will do. Above all, a rambunctious place where everyone has long been free to come out with what he (or, for God’s sake, she) thinks—five Jews, ten opinions, as the saying goes. If Israeli Arabs choose to join the cacophony, then in this author’s opinion at any rate so much the better. But things are changing. A year ago—how fast time seems to flow—I wrote of Dareen Tatour. She is the Israeli Arab woman who was jailed for writing a poem in which she called on the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation (see my post, “The Fourth Reich is Rising,” 19.10.2017). Today there is talk of trying people for believing and saying that the only way to save Israel from itself is by applying pressure from outside; pressure to find some way to end the occupation, of course. Too, the relevant cabinet committee has approved a bill that will deny government funding from any “cultural product” that “undermines” Israel’s identify as a “Jewish and democratic state” and “desecrates” the state’s symbols.

Both bills smell to high heaven. So far neither has become law. Should either or both of them pass, however, they may very well prove to be a first step on a slippery slope that leads—well, we all know where. So let me say, for the benefit of anyone who may or may not be listening: I have never accepted, not will ever accept, a single penny for running this blog. Nor do I know whether my posts and other works count as “cultural products.” Presumably not, because the line I have followed is strictly politically incorrect; but that is the last of my worries.

Following in the tradition of Jeremiah the prophet, though, I shall not give up my freedom to think and say and write and post whatever I want. Not for the Knesset, should it enact the laws in question. Not for the courts, should they try to enforce them. Not even for the bunch of right-wing Jewish Mafiosi in- and out of the Knesset who keep barking at anyone who differs with them.

My bowels! My bowels! I cannot hold my peace.

The Flop

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Is “me too” really a sign that women have finally gathered what it takes to avenge themselves on those bad, bad, bad men who always want one thing only? Or is it just a rather underhand reaction to feminism’s utter failure to change the way the world works? For an answer, consider the following.

1. Physique

Contrary to the hopes of feminists such as Anne Fausto-Sterling (Myths of Gender, 1992) and Collette Dowling (The Frailty Myth, 2000), women have not closed the physical gap between them and men. At best attempts to close it, such as have made by several armed forces around the world, merely provided another proof of what all normal people have always known, namely that doing so is impossible. At worst the outcome was injuries, including such as turned women into cripples or else left them unable to have children. Either way, women continue to depend on men for protection. Had it not been for men who, for reasons of their own, are ready to protect women against other men, the entire feminist movement would have been not merely impossible but inconceivable.

The myth that working women can simply ignore their periods and work as men do is no closer to the truth now than it was when feminists first invented it. Countless women have gone on record saying that they had taken leave from work during the days in question; thanks to feminism, though, many of them were unable to tell their bosses about the real cause of their trouble. Nor have some radical feminist fantasies about virgin births and dispensing with men as sperm-donors been realized.

2. Career

Partly, but not only, as a result of these factors, the division of labor, meaning men’s work versus women’s work, has remained practically as gendered as it was a century ago. For example, even in an “egalitarian” country such as Sweden almost all commercial pilots, divers, miners, and foresters are men. And almost all flight attendants—a term specifically invented to obfuscate the facts—cashiers, secretaries, minders of little children and—are women.

Partly because they tend to do work that is physically light, clean and safe, partly because of the problems associated with motherhood, women still do not get paid as much as men are. By some calculations, assuming present trends continue, the point where that will happen is still decades and perhaps even centuries away. Often the more senior and remunerative the position men and women occupy, the more true this is. Since women tend to spend fewer years in the working force, the same applies to pensions.

Another way of putting this is that, today as ever, the higher one climbs the slippery pole of power and fame the fewer women one meets. Just some six percent of heads of state are female. As Margaret Mead used to say, the world is run by men and strong women (among whom, no doubt, she counted herself). Furthermore, not one female head of state got to where she is by running for office on a feminist platform. Not Angela Merkel. Not Theresa May. Much less the late Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher, all of whom spent a lifetime to avoid having the epithet “feminist” applied to them. Hillary Clinton, the female candidate for the US presidency perceived as being the most pro-feminist of all, was trounced by a man to who is not only a declared male chauvinist but a sexual harasser and predator as well.

Mission impossible: Finding even one important movie in which a woman over 50 plays the main role. Apparently neither men nor women are interested in watching one such.

The age-old situation whereby the entry of too many women into any occupation, institution, and organization causes the social prestige, and consequently the economic rewards, that go with that occupation, institution and organization to decline still persists. And vice versa, of course.

3. Relationships

The age-old situation whereby most household work is done by women, either such who do it for themselves and their families or such who rely on relatives or hire others in their places, remains unchanged.

Today as ever, the more successful a man the more attractive he becomes to women; however, except for female models, actresses, and the like, the opposite does not apply. Why? Because, as Gloria Steinem once pointed out, indeed, often the more successful a woman the more like a man she becomes.

Hypergamy, the age-old tradition whereby most women hope to gain an advantage by trying to marry men who are older than themselves and belong to a higher class, persists. That is why, contrary to the hopes of Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch (1970), and long before her Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) women have not stopped desperately trying to make themselves more attractive to men. As by adapting themselves to fashion, wearing makeup, buying and wearing jewelry and accessories, undergoing cosmetic surgery, going on a diet, trying to learn how to have orgasms or pretending to have them, and much more. Women, in other words, often are not only seen as sex objects but see themselves as such. Which in turn is one reason why the fight against pornography, put on by such feminists as the late Andrea Dworkin, has led nowhere.

Women go on imitating men in many things, including dress. However, the opposite rarely occurs. Whereas a great many women wear pants, practically nowhere do men wear skirts (when they do, as in Scotland, they are called kilts). Women take on (filch?) men’s names until they, the names, become first gender-neutral and then female only; but the opposite does not apply. These processes prove that penis envy, meaning the desire of women to be and do anything men are and do, is at least as strong among present-day women, feminists specifically included, as it was when one of Freud’s female students, Henriette Lampl de Groot, came up with the idea.

For good or ill, the famous “double standard” still persists. Accused of promiscuity, Catherine the Great of Russia once said that she had fewer lovers in a lifetime than man of her male colleagues did in a year. To this day, a man who has many female sexual partners is often admired and envied; a woman who does the same is put down as a slut—not just by men but by many women too.

Feminism and Its Discontents*

Feminism remains overwhelmingly a middle class ideology. After more than five decades, it still has not been able to make considerable inroads among upper- and lower class women. The former do not need it and are reluctant to share their privileges with their less fortunate “sisters.” The latter don’t have the time for it.

Since 1975 or so the gap in life expectancy between men and women, which had been growing for decades, has been closing again. This in spite of the fact that, in practically all countries, perinatal death has continued to decline. The reason? Because so many women, misled by feminists, have begun to work outside the home, thus subjecting themselves to the same stresses as those affecting men.

Survey after survey in various countries has found that women are no happier today than they were forty years ago; also, that relative to men their happiness has been on the decline.

Women have not ceased complaining; isn’t the whole of feminism one long complaint? Freud’s question, “was will das Weib,” what does the woman want, remains as relevant as it was when he asked it almost ninety years ago.

For many people, including some women, feminism has become a swearword.

Conclusion

Feminism has failed. So much so, indeed, that very few people can even remember that, back in the 1970s, there were such things as environmental feminism, left-wing socialist feminism, utopian feminism (which advocated female-only communities) and so many other kinds as to boggle the mind.

To repeat my question, could it be that “me too,” as one of the few survivors, far from being a sign that things are getting better, is a desperate rearguard reaction to the fact that feminism has been a flop?

  • Compliments to Marie Jo Buhle.

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Alienation

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Alienation is in the news. Back in February 2017 no less a guru than Mark Zuckerberg started railing against it, arguing that “there has been a striking decline in the important social infrastructure of local communities over the past few decades. Since the 1970s, membership in some local groups has declined by as much as one-quarter, cutting across all segments of the population.” The decline, he went on, “is related to the lack of community and connection to something greater than ourselves.” Even husbands and wives, parents and children, were paying more attention to what their smartphones said than to each other. How sad.

Like so many other American tycoons, past and present, Mr. Zuckerberg is an idealist at heart. Or at any rate that is how he wants to come through. That is why he promised to use Facebook to fight the trend, even if it meant that doing so required an entirely new business model. Instead of spending as much time as possible on the Net, people would look into each other’s eyes and embrace each other while saying soul full things like “you are great,” “I want to help you,” and “I love you.” How wonderful. As is always the case when an exceptionally rich and exceptionally powerful person says this or that, the pronouncement was picked up by the media which spread it and by academia who provided it with the requisite number of footnotes.

Rich people’s words are golden, especially in the U.S. Far be it from me to doubt anything Mr. Zuckerberg has said. Instead, all I can do or want to do is point to a few elementary facts.

  • Google Ngram tells me that, between 1940 and 1973, the relative frequency with which the term alienation was used “in millions of books” grew sixfold. Since then, instead of increasing as per the Manifesto and as the ubiquity of electronic communications suggests should have happened, it has actually declined.
  • The Beatles’ “All the Lonely People” and “He’s a Real Nowhere Man” came out in the 1960s, long before anyone had heard of either Zuckerberg (who was born in 1984!) or Facebook.
  • The Lonely Crowd came out in 1951. In it sociologist David Riesman and his fellow authors described the collapse of community and the rise a type, which according to them was becoming more and more common, whom they described as “other directed.” People whose main requirement in life was not the love of those they knew well but the esteem in which they were held by strangers; today, no doubt, they would measure that esteem by the number of hits they got on Google. A society dominated by such types was said to face profound deficiencies in leadership, individual self-knowledge, and human potential. 
  • As they say: “small place, big hell.” Living with a small number of people one knows very well is not necessarily better than being anonymous in a large city. Back in 1943 the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote a famous play with the title, L’enfer c’est l’autre (hell is the other). In it two women and one men, suffering from no particular discomfort but locked up in a single room, made each other’s lives as hellish as anything can be and kept at it as long as the performance lasted.
  • Long before caricatures started showing married couples lying in bed and communicating by email or SMS, they used to show couples sitting across from each other at breakfast with the husband’s face buried in his newspaper.
  • Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times was made in 1936. It focused on a factory worker who, made to perform like a machine, was alienated to the point where he himself turned into a machine. Except in that it made people roar with laugher, there was little behind the film that was original. Before Chaplin there were Henry Ford and his assembly lines; and before Ford there were Frederick Taylor and scientific management.
  • When Karl Marx discussed alienation in The German Ideology (1844) he was not referring to Mr. Zuckerberg either. What he meant was the kind that resulted from the division of labor. Factories, Marx argued, created a situation where workers, instead of engaging in agriculture in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, and writing critical essays in the evening, only used a small part of their faculties all day long. Doing so they became alienated form their own nature; to put them together again, an entirely different kind of society using entirely different methods of production was required
  • Finally, my dictionary tells me that, in nineteenth-century America, the phrase “alienation of affection” meant “falling in love with someone else” and was sometimes used by lawyers in divorce cases. The evolution of the term can be traced to Middle English and from there to Old French. In Latin, where it originated, it meant a transfer, surrender, or separation. As, for example, in alienatio amicitae (to be separated from one’s friends), alienatio sacrorum (to be separated from the sacred), and alienatio mentis (to go out of one’s mind).

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Do I have to point out, once again, that all this was long before anyone ever heard of the particularly alienating effect of modern means of communication?

Some Solutions

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US Sanctions reach a Turning Point

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By: Karsten Riise*

A defining moment for the US sanctions regime

Each year, the USA finds a new country or group of countries to target with sanctions. Each year the USA adds about 1,000 individuals to its ever longer sanctions list. Now, US sanctions are coming to a turning point.

Up till now, the EU – representing around the same percentage of the world economy as the USA – was sitting put, as the USA grew its sanctions regime to ever more bizarre proportions. Together, the USA and the EU constituted nearly half of the world economy, and US sanctions previously “only” used to target the other half of the world’s economies. Hitherto, the EU had no compelling reasons to strain is relations with the USA because of US sanctions not affecting themselves. 

But now, “secondary sanctions” regarding Iran also hit hard at strategic EU companies and financial institutions and negatively affect EU global strategic interests in energy from the Persian Gulf. US sanctions in effect attack the liberty, security and sovereignty of its biggest group of friends, the EU. 

Thus, we have now come to a defining moment for the global sanctions regime, run by the USA.

The US economy is already less than a quarter of the world’s GDP in USD dollars, and in 2023 it will fall to only just about one fifth of the world (source: IMF). The non-US part, the 4 fifths of the world economy (now including the EU and China), constitute an increasingly advanced group, and they are about to collude against the US sanctions regime. Collusion is the result of parallel interests, and the EU may not actually (or at least not publicly) coordinate all its counter-sanctions with other major power centers.

We talk about the world’s most powerful and complex political-economic structures starting to fundamentally change, here.

So we need to analyze the bigger picture, how complete systems of counter-strategies against present and possible future US sanctions are being planned and implemented by strong powers around the world – all directed (but maybe only sometimes coordinated) against the USA. These systems of counter-strategies will include, but not be limited to, the following:

 

Finance

Payment transfer streams will develop to avoid US banks – hurting the global position of the USA’s major “growth-industry”. It will be a chance (as well as a good excuse) for the EU, China, Japan, India and everybody else, to nationalistically promote THEIR banks in the international system, at the expense of US banks.

 Looking at the long-term trend, the US financial industry has become really the ONLY big growth industry which drives upwards the USA economy. No other sector in the US economy has the combination of size and growth, which finance has (weapons are a bit the same, but finance is unique in size) – so this will be very hard for the USA.

US banks hitherto have a central role in facilitating all global money transfers, and a lot of international money transfers between third-countries somehow technically go via the USA. This system architecture will now be stopped – not just by China, but also by the EU, and probably by India. 

Everybody outside the USA will be reluctant to let their money be touched by US financial institutions, or let their money touch US shores even for a milli-second. And of course, the EU and China know how to engineer legal and technical solutions for this.

The growth of US credit card systems will be impeded. Instead, cards from China, the EU (and India?) will take bigger shares of this profitable and fast growing world market. Russia was the first country on this trend, kicking out all US credit card companies, and inviting in the Chinese credit card system. The EU may well strengthen the role of EU credit cards, and create actions which “incidentally” (oops!?) will hurt US credit cards in EU markets. The finance center of London, UK will after Brexit be caught in this cross-fire between the EU and the USA – if the UK sides with the USA against EU counter-sanction initiatives, the EU may develop strong tools to draw UK credit-card business into EU-jurisdiction.

New global IT money transfer system regimes, which counteract US influence on SWIFT, will erode US political influence. The SWIFT system is based in Brussels, but under heavy US political influence. Russia has already built itself an alternative to that. The EU can no longer accept that the US might be able to hurt EU companies on their SWIFT transfers. The EU will therefore have to take actions either to liberate SWIFT from US control, or to create a parallel EU-system.

 Avoid Wall Street

Why should countries take up loans in the US, if they can have the same loans without risk of future sanctions from China or even the EU?

The IPO of the Saudi ARAMCO oil company has been stalled – unconfirmed information states that fear of US courts reaching out against Saudi assets after 11 September, is part of the reason. Already, the trend is that the biggest IPOs in the world move to Asia.

De-dollarization

The EU now will shift trade of energy from dollars to Euro – this trend will also diminish dollars in other international trade. Trillions of international dollars flowing around in trade may come back “home” to the USA – risking inflation and economic crisis.  Gold is according to unconfirmed reports being speedily bought up by governments, not only by Russia and China, but even Turkey, recently also hit by US sanctions.

Strategic supply

Airbus cannot deliver airplanes to Iran, because, among other things, vital parts are sourced in the USA. This will change. Strategic supply chains will morph to avoid US sub-suppliers, carriers (ships, airplanes, IT), technology, service partners etc. – fundamentally hurting the US global position. We are not speaking used-cars, here, we speak strategic business sectors. The EU and China may not state this anti-US sourcing publicly as an official policy, they will just pull the strings to do it VERY effectively in strategic sectors.

Also, US deliveries in other strategic sectors like food (grain and soy from US farmers) and US energy will be affected by counter-sanctions. China sheds US soybeans and pushes their price down – the EU (less dependent hereof) may then offer to pick-up cheap surplus soybeans from the USA as a bargaining card. The idea of larger US delivery of LNG to the EU probably will be mostly words, but the amounts of LNG from the USA to the EU may possibly increase marginally. The EU may even come to a cold calculation, that the EU in the gas sector might have a more maneuverable partner with Russia than with the USA. The EU has in several aspects a substantially advantageous size-relation towards Russia, and not towards the USA, and while Russia enjoys a good relationship with China, Russia will like to balance its relations too.

 Tourism and education

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, and the USA sells its cultural influence to all tourists coming. University education is not only a strategic business to finance national research – Universities are also a cornerstone for the USA to influence future management generations around the world. Why not send tourists and students to other places than the USA? Chinese tourists and students are of significant importance to the USA, and China has plenty of other destinations to send tourists and students, other than to the USA.

Using the state to shield business

As a counter-sanction, the EU now moves central banks and state-owned companies into the fray in financing, and as business partners and intermediate partners, when dealing with Iran. US sanctions on EU state-owned entities can then amount to a US declaration of (economic) war, not only against EU private entities, but directly against EU states.

Buying other than US weapons

The EU recently is implementing a grand and ambitious strategy to increase its own weapons-industry – independent of the USA. To increase the volume strength of EU weapons-makers, the EU will need to minimize imports of US weapons. The EU will have to make their own, only importing as few items as possible from the USA. Saudi Arabia is by far one of the world’s biggest arms purchasers – and nearly all is bought form the USA. However, should the romance between the leaderships of Saudi Arabia and the USA cool down, Saudi Arabia would be well advised to diversify their weapons sources too. And Saudi Arabia even already has Eurofighters from the EU and embryonic arms-relations with Russia and to build on.

The collusion against the USA

US trade war unites the EU, China, India, and the rest of the world (even the UK) against US interests. With aggressive, unilateral trade-war, started by the US, all the rest of the world will now have even more motives to coordinate their counter-strategies to the US sanctions regime.

The EU may seem slow to react – and this may lure US politicians in their hubris to believe that the EU cannot or will not. But believe me, the EU will – because this has become a strategic must. The EU has seen the hand-writing of US sanctions on their wall – they will think this through, plan and make deep preparations to free EU sovereignty from US control. Just read between the lines of EU’s Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s recent State of the Union speech. When the EU rolls out their US counter-sanction measures, it will be big, comprehensive and VERY effective.

Negative changes for the USA will last

Once alternative systems to US banks, finance, the US dollars etc. have developed and matured, they will NOT go away. 
The USA is in its hubris about to destroy its global claim for economic hegemony – and that is a good thing.

  • Karsten Riise is former senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark andSweden C urrently he conducts research and management of major changes with Change News and Change Management.

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From Bad to Worse, I Myself Would Say

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Roey Tzezana, Rulers of the Future (Hebrew, Tel Aviv, 2017).

Dr. Roey Tzezana is an Israeli computer expert who works for Tel Aviv University among other places. His book was recommended to me by my son, Eldad van Creveld, who plays a key role in teaching computer networking here in Israel. Like so many other computer experts from the famous Ray Kurzweil down, Dr. Tzezana is trying to look into what a computer-dominated world might be like. His conclusions are not encouraging, to say the least.

As most of us have already realized, and as those who have not will discover soon enough, we are going through a truly revolutionary period. For the first time in history everything—and I mean, everything—that takes place anywhere can be recorded. Driving this development are millions upon millions of miniature sensors sufficiently small and sufficiently cheap to be mounted wherever they are wanted. On the streets. In cars and other vehicles. On doors and windows. Inside buildings. Inside individual rooms. In the sky, on board drones so small that they are hardly noticeable. Inside every kind of gadget, however innocuous. On the clothes we wear. Inside our bodies, should that be considered necessary or desirable and in case the legal hurdles are removed.

Once recorded, the information can easily be stored and kept forever. And edited, and altered, should those in charge feel inclined in that direction. With the aid of artificial intelligence capable of discovering patterns, it will also be analyzed and searched for whatever it may mean. Your health, your habits, your movements. The things you eat and drink and wear and carry with you. The things you see and hear and say and read and watch and do. The kind of relationship you have, or do not have, with anyone else. The things you take up and put down and lose and find (and do or do not return to their owner) and lend and borrow. And every financial transaction you make, of course.

Briefly, Goebbels’ claim that, in Nazi Germany, privacy only existed in people’s dreams looks as if it is about to become reality (some scientists believe that even dreams will end up by becoming transparent, but let’s not go into that here). To say nothing of any thoughts and emotions you may have. The question Dr. Tzezana raises is, qui bono? Who profits? It is at this point where leviathans, sharks and clouds come in.

Leviathans, obviously enough, are named after Thomas Hobbes’ famous 1651 book. Starting at least as far back as the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, rulers have always done their utmost to obtain whatever information they could about their subjects. The more and better information they had, the more able they were to hold those subjects in check, increase and perpetuate their own power, prevent rebellion, etc. Thus one possible, in many case even likely, outcome of the enormous network of sensors, data links, computers and artificial intelligence now being constructed by every more or less “advanced” state would be a tyranny. One which would make even North Korea looks as harmless as a Fischer-Price Toys Chatter Telephone.

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In China something of the kind is being constructed even now. Meet the so-called Social Credit System. See, for the details, R. Botsman, “Chinas’ New Viral App Could be Straight Out of Black Mirror,” 21.10.2017, Wired, at http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion.). Supposed to be completed in 2020, in principle it will resemble today’s credit rating system. Gathering all the above-mentioned kinds of data and then some, it will automatically rate every citizen on a scale ranging from 350 to 950 points. Are you neatly dressed? Your score goes up by so and so many fractions of a point. Did you obey your doctor and lose weight? Ditto. Did you cross a street without marching to the next pedestrian crossing first? Down it goes by another fraction. Did you raise your voice at a government official? Did you try to access a foreign-generated article on the situation in Tibet? The results will be used to determine whether you will or will not have access (and under what conditions) to any number of desirable things. Starting with credit and ending with health services, the right to enter certain educational facilities and work in certain fields, the right to travel, and a great many other things.

All these decisions, whose number will run into billions per day, will be made automatically. In charge of the computers that run the system will be the government, of course. Its officials will decide exactly how many points each piece of praiseworthy behavior (e.g. telling people that Xi Jinping is the greatest leader, as well as the nicest man, in history) or transgression will add to your score or cost you. From time to time, the rules will be changed so as to take account of changing circumstances. Some will no doubt be published so as to help people understand what is wanted of them. Many others will not be, leaving them in the dark as to what is happening to them and why.

At the moment China is the only country publicly known to be building such a system. But this will probably change. I do not mean just tin-pot dictatorships such as exist in many different parts of the world. But also highly developed Western countries such as Canada, or Britain—the latter, in my experience, has already in many ways been turned into a mixture of political correctness and police state—or the Netherlands, or Switzerland. And he US, of course.

Technologically speaking they, and a great many others, can easily do what China can. The only thing that stands in the way are laws concerning privacy, transparency, and respect for the individual. However, should terrorism turn into a more serious problem than it already is, surely such laws will be quickly and quite easily swept away.

So what to do? Enters, says Dr. Tzezana, something he calls DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Such an organization will use the same methods to collect just as much information as China’s Social Credit System will and process it in similar ways. Instead of keeping it secret and available only to the country’s rulers, though, the information in question, as well as the rules by which it is classified and used, will be available to any member of the Cloud. Somewhat like Uber and AirBnB, but without their centralized headquarters. Operating in such a way, it will provide members with such benefits as “peer to peer insurance, peer to peer conflict resolution systems, peer to peer document storage and peer to peer support.” All incomparably faster, cheaper, and in some ways more reliable than anything available today. That way, Dr. Tzezana hopes, sharks and leviathans will be thwarted and democracy preserved. The flipside? Everyone will be publicly rated by everyone else on everything all the time.

From bad to worse, I myself would say.

Drivel

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As I have noted before on this site, Israel’s best-known women’s magazine is Laisha, (literally, “For the Woman;” perhaps the best translation would be Woman’s Own.) Specializing in sob stories, fashion, household tips, and advice on improving one’ sex life, for almost as long as I can remember myself it has been widely seen as synonymous with a mild sort of mental deficiency.

But no longer. Emerging from the depths, as it were, the very same articles (assuming they deserve the name) now appear on YNet, Israel’s most important source of written daily news that is visited by hundreds of thousands each day. Nor is this an accident, since both the magazine and the website are under the same ownership. Judging by the authors’ names, many if not most of which are probably fictional, they are written almost exclusively by women for women. Between them they present a unique mixture of gossip, egocentrism, self-pity, and plain silliness.

The following examples (headlines only) were collected during just one week. Enjoy.

2.9.2018

“Think: Why you want to have multiple orgasms.”

“Couples: take a deep breath: The terrible high holidays are coming.”

“I promised myself I would fuck someone tonight.”

“Five men talk about their second marriages.”

“Just because I am a woman, they are always talking about how I look.”

“Tit-liberation: Women of all sizes give up their bras.”

“Danna Zarmon [Danna who?] exposes the chronic disease that ruined her Honeymoon.”

“This female celebs’ makeup artist, who spent five years living with a woman, now lives with a man.”

3.9.2018

“Using the holidays to save your romance.”

“As I got divorced, I found out that everyone is cheating.”

“During my period of parental leave, I turned from a princess into Cinderella.”
Both categories rely on one thing, levitra on line and that is backlinks – its just how those links are aquired and how they are used that help in regaining your erection. From time to time the marketing world is taken aback by the fact that commander viagra there are millions of viruses, malware programs available on the internet and many more are in the making. Research has revealed a reduction in fertility in men and improving the health order cialis of his reproductive organs. This becomes even easier when you are not able to satisfy your wife online viagra pills during an intercourse.
“Why should you eat bitter chocolate and drink cherry juice before kissing?”

“The holidays are coming, the married one is with his wife, and I am lonely.”

4.9.2018

“Nothing like friendship between [female] models.”

“Don’t ask me how many men I slept with.”

5.9.2018

“Women, stop avoiding divorced men.”

6.9.2018

“Experts: This is how you keep your marriage intact during the holidays.”

7.9.2018

“I insisted that my partner and his [female] ex should get along.”

8.9.2018

“While in synagogue, don’t forget to feel pity for the matriarchs.”

“Holiday’s eve: Are you a host, or are you a guest: This is how a few easy steps can add to your glamor.”

“Amazing: This is how you can remove body hair with the aid of a spice everyone has at home.”

“Examine yourself: Wat do you know about sex”?

 

Amidst all this drivel, the editors’ contempt for their readers comes through in every word. Yet some of it is considered good enough to figure not once but repeatedly, day after day. More likely those who wrote it ran out of inspiration. Or else those in charge of the website refused to pay them for more of the same. Supposing it is representative of what today’s “emancipated” women care about, and the fact that Laisha has thousands of sisters all over the world suggests that it is, no wonder feminism, women’s lib, or whatever it is called is getting nowhere.

To be fair, though, men’s magazines, with their endless potpourri of cars, muscle, and tits, tits, tits, are hardly any better.

Autumn

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Here in Jerusalem, summers are hard to bear. Some 2,200 feet above sea level, the sunlight is harsh. The more so because it is reflected by the ubiquitous rocks and walls. Standing on Mount Scopus at mid-day and facing west towards the city below, one urgently needs sunglasses to prevent one’s eyes from being dazzled. At other times it is hard to keep one’s eyes open.

Autumn tends to be a welcome relief from that. And from the heat, of course. To be sure, there may still take place the occasional hamsin, an Arabic word that stands for days on which a hot, dry wind blows from the deserts to the east, filling the air with dust and sometimes making it hard to breath. Thank God, though, temperatures are falling. If, like me, you are fortunate enough to have a garden, using it during the evenings you may well want to put on some kind of light sweater.

Come autumn and people return to work or school, causing traffic to become much heavier and the ubiquitous traffic jams, much worse. However, autumn is also the season of the Jewish High Holidays. First comes the New Year, a two—in practice, since in Jewish law each day starts in the evening preceding it, two and a half—day festival of more or less incessant prayer, mutual visits, eating and drinking. And carousing because, by Jewish law, men are obliged to make their wives happy on feast days of this kind; the opposite, incidentally, does not apply. Either at home, or away from it in one of the countless hotels and suits-for-rent or beaches or parks or nature reservations.

“Head (Rosh) of the Year,” as it is called, is followed by ten days in which those who believe in those things repent of all the bad things they have done during the year that has just passed. Next comes Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The one day on which all synagogues are absolutely certain to be overcrowded. And on which a great many people, and by no means only orthodox ones either, “torment their souls” as the Pentateuch puts it, by fasting. My ex-wife, bless her, used to say that the reason she fasted was in order to atone for my sins. Which always made me wonder whether she did not have any of her own.

Famously, all work comes to an end—the religious injunction against it is observed more strictly than on an ordinary Shabbat—broadcasting services fall silent, and both public and private traffic comes to a halt. The system has the advantage that the roads empty themselves. Not only does blessed silence prevail, but droves of children of non-orthodox families in non-orthodox neighborhoods emerge from their homes, take out their bicycles, and ride them wherever they like. Year in year out, I and many other people find their happiness a joy to watch. So much so that I sometimes think we should have not one Yom Kippur but two, or three, or four. And why not?

Four days later, at the time of the full moon, it is time for the Feast of Tabernacles which lasts an entire week. For orthodox people it is time spent living and eating in a more or less makeshift structure erected in a garden or on a balcony constructed especially for the purpose. For unorthodox ones like myself, to operate in low gear, so to speak. The entire season lasts almost a month during which all activity is more or less muted. Trying to get anything done, especially but not exclusively where the public services are involved, the response one is most likely to get is, “after the Holidays.”
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But this is the Middle East. Year in- year out, celebration is tinged with more than a hint of fear. And not only because, as I just said, these are the days when God is supposed to decide one’s fate for the coming year. But because of the rains which may or may not come. And because, to recall a World War-II guide issued by His Majesty’s Army for visiting British soldiers I once saw, “the first thing you’ll notice is how arid the country is.” As the book of Genesis testifies, throughout the centuries famine was never far away.

It was famine which drove the patriarch Jacob and his sons to migrate to Egypt, where they were later enslaved and from where it took God fully four centuries to liberate them. That is why people prayed for rain to fall—and why, as they wrap up Tabernacles, they continue to do so ever year.

Today Israel is world champion in the kind of technology needed to distribute, recycle and desalinate water. That is why actual famine is all but inconceivable. Drought, however, is doing bad things to Israeli agriculture whose allocated supply of water—in Israel, all water is allocated by the state—has been decreasing for years. And also to Israeli customers who are being made to pay through the nose. The possibility that one may have to stop watering one’s garden and cut down on one’s laundering is always in the air.

Above all, people listen to the news and shudder. Going down again, the level of water in the Sea of Galilee has reached the “upper red line.” It has reached “the lower red line.” It has reached “the black line” So shallow has the sea become that an “island” has appeared in it. The island is linking up with the shore, creating a “peninsula.” And the water is getting saltier.

Relief on one hand, fear on the other. What will the coming year bring?

Seven Things that Will Not Change

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Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution during the last decades of the eighteenth century, humanity has become obsessed with change. First in Europe, where the revolution originated. Then in Europe’s overseas offshoots, and finally in other places as well. By the middle of the nineteenth century, at the latest, it was clear that the world was being transformed at an unprecedented pace and would continue to do so in the future. As change accelerated there appeared a whole genre of visionaries who made it their job to try and look into that future—starting with Jules Verne and passing through H. G. Wells all the way to Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Harari.

Today it pleases me to try to put the idea on its head. Meaning, I am going to focus on some of the things I think are not going to change. Certainly not any time soon. Perhaps, not ever.

1. A world without war, meaning politically motivated and organized violence, is not in the cards. To be sure, starting in 1945 much of the planet has enjoyed what is sometimes known as the Long Peace. Meaning that, relative to the size of the earth’s population, fewer people have died in war than was the case during any other period from which figures are available. But let there be no illusions: the most important, if not the only, reason behind the decline is not the kind of sudden wish for peace (“the better angels of our nature”) some authors have postulated. It is nuclear deterrence, which has prevented the most important countries from fighting each other in earnest.

Unfortunately experience has shown that, under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, there is still plenty of room left for smaller but no less bloody conflicts. Especially, but certainly not exclusively, of the intrastate, or nontrinitarian, kind as opposed to the interstate, trinitarian one. Such being the case, a world without war would require two things. First, a situation where every person and every collective is always sufficiently happy with his/or its lot to refrain from resorting to violence. Second, a world government capable of identifying and deterring those who would resort to it from doing so. Since war is to a large extent a product of the emotions, moreover, such a government would have to pry into the hearts of every single person on earth. For good or ill, though, there is no indication that either of those conditions, let alone both, are anywhere close to being met.

2. Poverty will not be eradicated. Taking 1800 as their starting point, economic historians have estimated that, world-wide, real per capital product has risen thirtyfold. Based on this, there have been countless confident predictions concerning a golden future in which everyone will be, if not exactly as rich as Jeff Bezos, at any rate comfortably off. However, these predictions have failed to tqake into account two factors. First, wealth, poverty and of course comfort itself are not absolute but relative. In many ways, what was once seen as fit for a king is now not considered suitable even for a beggar. Second, though the production of material goods has in fact increased, the way those good are distributed has not become more equal. If anything, taking 1970 as our starting point, to the contrary.

3. We shall not gain immortality. It is true that, starting in late eighteenth-century France and Sweden and spreading to other countries, global life expectancy has more than doubled. Moreover, the pace at which years are being added to our lives has been accelrating. This has led some people to reason that, if only we could increase it fast enough (meaning, by more than a year every year), death would be postponed to the point where we shall become immortal. The first person to live for a thousand years, it has been claimed, has already been born or is about to be born soon enough. However, the calculation is flawed on two counts First, most of the increase in longevity has resulted from a decline in the mortality of the very young. Second, while the percentage of old people has been growing rapidly, there is no indication that the life span granted to us by nature has been increasing or is capable of being increased.
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4. There is no reason to think the world in which we live is happier than previous ones. Not only is happiness the product of many different interacting factors, but its presence or absence depends on circumstances. Does it presuppose a minimum of physical comfort? Yes, of course, but the extent of that comfort, and even what counts as comfort, is largely dictated by what we expect and do not expect. Does it require a belief in God? Possibly so, but there is no proof that religious people are happier than unbelievers. Does it require leisure? Yes, of course, but the fact that, in Rome during the second century CE, almost half of the year consisted of feast days does not mean that the contemporaries of Marcus Aurelius were happier than their ancestors or their successors. Does it require good interaction with at least some other people? Yes, of course, but there is no reason to believe that such interaction was less common and less satisfying in previous generations than in our own. Does it require purposeful activity? Yes of course, but then what does and does not count as purposeful is almost entirely up to the individual.

5. Whatever feminists may say, men and women will not play the same role in society, let alone become the same That is partly because they are not the same—witness the biologically-determined differences between them in respect to size, physical strength, and the reproductive functions (some experts would add a tendency towards risk-taking, aggression, dominance, and a penchant for mathematical science, but that is moot). And partly because they do not want to be. “The more like us you become, mes dames,” said that incorrigible skirt chaser, Jean Jacques Rousseau, “the less we shall like you.” Conversely, the worst thing one can say about a man is that he is like a woman. It is the differences between men and women, as much as the similarities, that attract them to each other. So it has been, and so it will remain,

6. The question how consciousness could have arisen will not be answered. Starting at least as long ago as the Old Testament, people have always wondered how dead material could ever give birth to a living, sentient being. Especially to the brain as the most important organ in which thought, emotion and, not least, dreaming take place. To answer the question, they invented a God who, to speak with Genesis, blew “the spirit of life” into man’s nostrils. Recent advances in neurology, made possible by the most sophisticated modern techniques, are indeed astonishing. However, they cannot tell us how objective chemical and electric signals translate into subjective experiences; no more than our ancestors knew why certain substances led to increased awareness and others, to torpor. To that extent, the advances in question have not really got us any closer to solving the problem.

7. Our ability to predict the future, let alone control it, has not improved and will not improve one iota. There used to be a time when looking into the future was the province of shamans, prophets, oracles, and Sibyls, and even the dead who were raised specially for the purpose. Other people tried their luck with astrology, palmistry, augury (watching the flight of birds), haruspicy (interpreting the entrails of sacrificial animals), yarrow sticks, crystal balls, tarot cards, tea leaves, and patterns left by coffee in near-empty cups. Starting around 1800, at any rate among the better educated in Western countries, two techniques have dominated the field. One is extrapolating from history, i.e. the belief that what has been going up will continue to go up (until it doesn’t) and that what has gone down will continue to go down (ditto). The other is mathematical modelling, which consists of an attempt to identify the most important factors and link them together by means of algorithms. Of the two the second, especially as applied to very large numbers of people, has been the most successful. But only as long as conditions do not change in a radical way; and only at the cost of ignoring what to most people is the most important question of all, i.e. what will happen to them.

Is that enough to put change, that keynote of modernity about which everyone is talking all the time, into perspective?

More Definitions

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(See my post of 23.2.2017)

Abortion: Evil, but better than the alternative, which is being forced to be born as an unwanted child.

A bullshitter: A bulshitter is not the same as a liar. A liar knows he is lying; a bullshitter does not In fact he is not even aware that a difference between truth and falsehood exists. The question is not what is true, but what works for him (and for her). Examples: Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump.

“America first:” A clear, perhaps even panicky, symptom of decline.

Conscience: An uncommon word, meaning that which prevents us from stealing a wallet even though there is no chance of getting caught.

A conspiracy: Often, what people imagine when they do not understand what is going on.

Courage: That which is shown by anyone who, having heard a joke being told about him, does not immediately expire of grief but demands compensation instead.

Creationism: Should be regarded as a particularly vicious form of stupidity, but unfortunately isn’t always.

Diversity: The best way to combat and destroy talent and merit.

Divorce: When it is bad it is bad When it is not so bad, it is still pretty bad.

“Does not cooperate with the police:” A person who, how wicked of him, refrains from incriminating himself and others.

Education: What we call the process by which adults unload their complexes on their unfortunate children.

Equality; A quality which, in nature, does not exist and cannot exist.

Feminism: Another word for penis envy.

Food: Almost entirely bad for our health, but unfortunately we cannot do without it.

Greens: People and organizations that put frogs ahead of humans.
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Humor: What I like best in a woman, besides intelligence.

Life: a dangerous disease, to be cured by dieting.

Male chauvinism: What used to be known as male pride (and much sought after).

Marriage: The gate to both heaven and hell.

“Me too:” A bunch of bitches (“snakes in the grass,” as I have called them elsewhere) who want their fifteen seconds of fame.

A plea bargain: Very often, a method used by prosecutors to increase their own power by blackmailing and punishing the innocent.

A racist: Anyone who does not believe black equals white, and the other way around.

Religion: the opium of the masses.

Sex: The opposite from divorce. When it is good, it is good. When it is not so good, it is also quite good.

Sexual harassment: whatever a woman chooses to call by that name.

A spokesman (or woman): the hack who does your lying for you.

Terrorism: Anything someone else does that people do not like.

A survivor: see under courage.

A troll: Someone who thinks on his own and believes, mistakenly, that he has the right to do so.

Vox populi: Vox porci (look it up), not vox dei.