Four Topics: Air Travail; Britain and Us; Ending the War — or Widening It?; Bicoastal Cooling. (Long post; read at your leisure. I probably won't have time to post anything over the next couple of days anyway because of prior commitments.)
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(1) Air Travail. The English word "travel" derives from French "travail". As my Random House Unabridged Electronic Dictionary puts it:

1325–75; ME (north and Scots) , orig. the same word as TRAVAIL (by shift "to toil, labor" > "to make a laborious journey"

"Travail" is defined as:

1. painfully difficult or burdensome work; toil. 2. pain, anguish or suffering resulting from mental or physical hardship.

In the 14th Century, when "travail" mutated to "travel", travel was indeed extremely difficult in England, as in most of the rest of the world, especially if there were no water route available. Roads were few and cruddy, rut-ridden and dusty in dry weather, almost impassable in wet weather. That remained the pattern for most of human history. I have seen ruts of the Oregon Trail still in existence near a museum somewhere in eastern Oregon (Baker?). That's right: ruts from the Oregon Trail were still visible 140 years later.
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We have forgotten how recent most of the major improvements in quality of life really are. Vintage movies show Tin Lizzies navigating rough offroad terrain — because as late as the 1930s, good, paved roads were in short supply even in much of the United States. Passenger air travel as an industry dates back only to the late 1920s, and it still took a very long time on cramped, noisy planes to get anywhere distant. Domestic air travel up to the 1950s was as difficult and time-consuming as transoceanic air travel in 2005.
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Now, with the (apparent) exposure of an international terrorist plot to blow up airliners mid-Atlantic by combining various innocuous liquid chemicals mid-flite, the world has taken a huge step backwards, making international air travel, at least across the Atlantic, extremely arduous and inconvenient. And you can't just switch to the train.
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Is this the way it's going to be for the rest of human history? Is the modern world to collapse into fearful mutual suspicion in which no one can be trusted and no one can travel freely unless they strip down to their underwear and travel without luggage?
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This is what Israel has done to us, in roiling the Moslem world against us. This is what Israel will continue to do to us as long as it exists. The "Hundred Years War" lasted 116 years, with occasional periods of 'peace'. The wars produced by the Protestant Reformation lasted over a century. The Crusades were an on-again-off-again series of wars that lasted 190 years. The wars that created the Arab Empire (Caliphate) lasted 120 years. The Spanish and Portuguese wars to free themselves from the Arab Empire lasted 770 years! The wars produced by Zionism have, so far, lasted almost 60 years, and there's no end in sight. Is this what we face, "permanent war"? For what? For Israel? Is the world insane?
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Why on Earth would three and a half billion people allow themselves to be manipulated into fiting each other so that a cult of less than 16 million — on the entire planet — can control a piece of dirt in a desert? I'd rather nuke Jerusalem and have done with it.
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In the alternative, how about a final Crusade? Christian countries (but especially the United States) are the most powerful on Earth. Palestine is supposed to be our Holy Land. Why on Earth do we let Jews control the Christian Holy Land? Why not just reconquer it ourselves and let others visit their shrines but take political control into our own hands? Usama bin Laden calls us "Crusaders", but Crusaders conquered the Holy Land for Christendom, not for the Jews.
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Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's Daily Show last week said he'd like to see Jerusalem created into an international city open to all. I'll go him one better: let's make unified Palestine into a State of the United States, in which civil-rights laws end religious and ethnic discrimination, and economic-development programs create universal prosperity.
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Moslems, Christians, and Jews all get along fine here. They can do so in Palestine too, but perhaps only as a State of the Union — not the "State" of Israel, but the State of Palestine, USA. Sure beats the hell out of World War III.
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Odd little thing. In searching for a correction I made to this blog entry, I chose what I thought would be a unique combination, "usa", and found that it appears in "Crusade", "Jerusalem", and "Usama". Coincidence? Well, yeah, I suppose. (As a TV satire show might handle this, "Or is it?" — loud music thunders: Duhn, duhn, DUHNN!)
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(2) Britain and US. Some rightwing commentators have trumpeted the triumph of British intelligence in exposing an (apparent) grave plot and said they were able to do so only because British intelligence has greater leeway than American intelligence services, implying that there might be plots here that we won't discover because of our (excessive) concern for civil liberties. The argument is fatuous and vicious.
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We have had no home-grown terror plot of consequence, and intelligence operations respectful of the Bill of Rights have sufficed, along with various international events, to prevent a recurrence of a major terrorist attack for almost five years. The last one before that was eight years earlier. In lite of these facts, while we need to be vigilant, we don't need to sacrifice our liberties on the altar of security. Trading freedom for security is a fool's bargain. Where does it stop?
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The pretense of those rightwing commentators is that Britain is no less free than we are, but that is false. Britain is less free than we, and always has been. That's why we broke away! And that's why British-born, British-raised Moslems are resorting to violence, even to the point of committing suicide, to get even with British society for unfair treatment.
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Britain has 1.6 million Moslems (I heard on some news channel a few hours ago). The U.S. has perhaps 6 million. How many American-born Moslem terrorists do we have? How many American Moslems are eager to become suicide bombers? Damned few. Jose Padilla is a famous exception to the rule that American Moslems understand that they can succeed in society and be accepted as long as they abide by the peaceful and tolerant teachings of classical Islam, the Islam of the Baghdad Caliphate which ruled from Afghanistan to Morocco over populations diverse in race, language, and, yes, religion.
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I have known people from minorities who left old British colonies for London and then, appalled by the way they were treated, left for New York, where they found freedom and acceptance. One was a young Chinese woman from Singapore, another a Goan (Indian) man from Uganda. They thought the "Mother Country" would welcome them home. Boy, were they in for a shock.
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Tho Britain has changed somewhat under the impact of relatively massive recent immigration, mainly from former colonies, Britain's self-conception as a white, Christian country hasn't budged an inch, and in much of the country nonconformists — even Catholics, who are legally barred from becoming monarch — are only grudgingly tolerated. People know when they are accepted as against when only barely tolerated.
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Britain has had race riots, Indo-Pak riots, and Protestant-Catholic "troubles" that have killed thousands in the past several decades. No, it is not for the U.S. to emulate Britain, but for Britain to emulate the U.S.
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Our Revolution, which is now 230 years old, rose from Enlightenment principles that educated Americans encountered in the writings of British intellectuals. Their revolutionary principles failed at home, but succeeded here. Some Brits understand that. British author Jonathan Freedland, in his book Bring Home the Revolution: The Case for a British Republic summarizes this theme thus:

[T]he spirit that inspires the American secret is actually our own — a British revolutionary fervour mislaid across the Atlantic. This what has made America the diverse, freedom-loving, self-sufficient, independent icon to the world: the place where socialism never took hold because it is inherent in the founding vision, where capitalism at the same time has reached its apogee; where many cultures contribute to the national fabric and yet the sense of belonging to the nation and reverence for its symbols is unmatched across the globe. It's time Britain shared the vitality: time to reclaim the revolution and bring it home.

One has to wonder if a revolution 230 years delayed can ever arise within Britain if it remains independent. For the first 120 years or so after the Declaration of Independence, Britain was our worst enemy, doing everything in its power to hem us in (as for instance by creating Canada against us), even break us up in the Civil War. Then the British ruling class accepted that the U.S. had already passed Britain in population and would soon surpass it in power too, and not long thereafter pose a serious challenge to the Empire as world power. So they started to cozy up to our ruling class, which shared similar names, religion, etc.
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When World War I broke out, the British ruling class yelled for help, and the WASP ruling class of the United States bailed them out, if belatedly.
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Some tension remained, as long as Britain retained an Empire, but after the Empire largely vanished (some colonies remain), the British made sure they became our best buddy (replacing their creation, Canada), in hopes of becoming the tail that wags the dog. So intimate has this relatively new partnership become that the U.S. allowed a British company, BP, to take control of the Alaska Pipeline, which it has now shut down! How on Earth did we allow so vitally important a part of our national economy to be alienated to a foreign company, from any foreign country whatsoever?
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A trans-Atlantic conspiracy of WASPs has emerged in which the most retrograde, not progressive, elements of the two societies have reinforced each other, and the United States Government has moved in the direction of the imperial, arrogant, authoritarian kingdom our ancestors fought against.
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It doesn't have to be that way, but will be as long as a border remains between us.
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The peoples of the United States and Britain are far more progressive than their governments. Odd but true. These two democracies have become so ossified that a self-interested ruling class has emerged against the dynamics of democratization and that periodic revolution at the ballot box that is supposed to keep turning out the old and bringing in the new.
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Britain has universal healthcare, which we are just a few dozen votes short of getting thru Congress. Were Britain part of the United States, we would pass universal healthcare legislation within a year and see it in force within two. The stranglehold the regressive U.S. South holds upon American politics would be broken by the liberalism of Southern England, and the forces of cultural democratization in the United States would expand opportunities for Britons in all the new states.
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Together, our societies would meld into a brilliant, progressive, humane force in the world, using Britain's old colonial ties to increase our influence in the Third World. But apart, the dynamics of the last few decades threaten to make the Anglo-American alliance a force of violent aggressiveness and imperious interventionism in an ever-widening arc outward from our two centers.
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An article in my 1973 Encyclopaedia Britannica speculated that if the Thirteen Colonies had not left the Empire but the Empire had accommodated to their demands, in time the center of gravity of the Empire, and even the capital, would have migrated to North America, as indeed did the Encyclopaedia Britannica itself! Alternate history can be diverting, but is hardly useful. The future is only speculation too, of course, but at least we have some control over that.
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We can set reasonable conditions for accession to our Union, such as abolition of the make-believe "monarchy" — that bunch of pompous popinjays preening for the cameras and pretending to be better than everybody else — and leaving the European Union. In exchange, Brits would have huge representation in Congress, the right to run for President, access to government contracts, automatic defense by the U.S. military, completely free flow of capital, labor, and goods with richer consumers than the EU affords, Cabinet positions and other access to the halls of world power, and on, and on. It would be a supremely good deal for both sides. By contrast, the present relationship is destructive to both countries within it and to the world outside it.
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(3) Ending the War — or Widening It? Israel is making noises about 'unusual activity' on the Syrian border, mere hours before a ceasefire is set to go into effect. The claim is that Syria is removing mines from and massing tanks on the border. Well, what could that mean, and what would it 'justify'? Surely Syria has every reason in the world to mass defensive forces on its border when its long-time, bitter enemy has invaded Lebanon. But removing mines? That suggests an aggressive intent, as Israel wants us all to believe. But why would Syria want to broaden the war and open itself to the kind of devastation Lebanon has suffered, mere hours before a ceasefire is to go into effect? An impending Syrian attack makes no sense, so cannot be believed.
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Far more likely, Israel has tired of waiting for the United States to destroy Syria (and then Iran) for it, so is trying to prepare the American public for a mass attack upon Syria — in "self-defense" of course, as all Israel's aggressions are always "self-defense". Israel would use U.S. armaments with names like "Apache" and "Blackhawk" so all the world is clear on who is 'behind' these attacks: the United States. That would guarantee that the Moslem world continues to seethe with a burning and ineradicable hatred for the United States, as will guarantee that the U.S. public will feel compelled to side with Israel, and thus continue to make things ever worse.
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Israel wants, everyone acknowledges, to seize as much territory as it can before the ceasefire, so that the "facts on the ground" will be frozen in time, and an international force will make that buffer zone permanent. Will Israel gladly consent to have areas of Israel remain within range of Syrian-based missiles? Or does it want to drive as far into Syria before the ceasefire as it has driven into Lebanon? — and then have the UN save its ass from retaliation, by cutting short the war before both Syria and Hezbollah together can rain down serious destruction upon Israel?
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If Israel cannot slip this invasion into the window before tomorrow-morning's deadline, that is no guarantee it won't launch a separate incursion into Syria, after having ordered Washington to make sure to put a protective UN force into place before Syria can retaliate. And then, if that does not produce World War III (a possibility Israel dismisses but no one else should), the next target will be Iran, which it will hope to attack with impunity just as it attacked Iraq's nuclear research facility at Osirak in 1981, then let the UN, at Bush's ostensible instigation (but really Israel's), step in to prevent Iranian retaliation. Hit and run, hit and run; hide behind the UN and U.S. so there is only one-sided attack, never prolonged counterattack, which Israel could not sustain.
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Will Israel dare to follow thru on its apparent intent? Or will Washington say, "Whoa, buddy! That's too far. Back off."? We'll see, but not necessarily before 1am Newark time tomorrow.
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Finally, (4) Bicoastal Cooling. I noticed on the national weather map that New York and Los Angeles were both to have a high temperature of 79 degrees (Fahrenheit) today, August 13th. Two cities, on opposite sides of an enormous continent, 79 degrees? On August 13th. This is global warming? The past two nites have been cold here in Newark. I have had to close my windows most of the way and cover myself with two topsheets to stay warm. In the middle of August.
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We have had two heat waves this summer, but are now starkly below normal. Spring was cold. Last autumn was cold. Early winter was mild but late winter just went on and on, as temperatures 10 and more degrees below normal went on for weeks beyond the start of spring. And all the while the air around them was subnormally cold, the media headquartered in New York kept talking about "global warming". Then came the heat waves, and the media said, in effect, "See? We told you so." Now that we're subnormally cold again, however, the media are completely silent about it. Why is there no skepticism as to "global warming"? Why do our own senses count for nothing? Why are our own, local weather patterns irrelevant? The media say, in effect, "Believe what we say, not what you feel with your own skin." That's not the way I work. To me, "global" warming means all areas get warmer, not that some areas get warmer while others get colder.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,601 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:39 PM