Conrad Theodore Seitz

Michele Bachman, one of our “Tea Party” congresspeople, visited Cairo with a Republican congressional delegation this week.  She gave remarks supporting the current government and telling them, “We are with you, and we encourage you.”  She cited the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, and referred to the attack on 9/11/2001, blaming them for that incident.  Apparently, to her, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, regardless of its legitimacy and its brutality.

Clearly, an endorsement from Ms. Bachman is not a good thing.  It puts you in the same category as her fantasies of what the USA should be like, not a pleasant thought at all.

This reminds me that two recent books have shown that Hollywood, in the 1930’s, suppressed movies that referred to Nazi brutality, and even managed to avoid using the word “Jew” entirely.  A review of the books can be found in last week’s New Yorker.  There were two personalities primarily responsible for this censorship, which was enabled by the timidity of the heads of the major studies, almost all of whom were Jewish(except for Fox studios).  They were first generation immigrants from Eastern Europe who had made a foresighted investment in the nickelodeon in 1905, and feared that their gains could be taken away easily by hostile companies or the government.  They feared that any reference to their plight would rebound into general disapproval of them.

So they toughed it out, allowing a man named Breen, a vicious anti-semite, to run the board that censored all Hollywood movies.  Breen was able to distort the rules of censorship, which required that “all countries be represented fairly”, to allow him to cut out any references to incidents or allegories of Nazi brutality.  At the same time, married couples slept in twin beds,  no one could profit in the long run from committing a crime, and there was always a happy ending to every movie.

What is even more incredible is that the Nazis had a consular official (a low level diplomat) in Los Angeles from 1934 to the late 30’s, who was able to insinuate himself into Hollywood society.  He was able to view advance copies of new movies and even look at scripts before production.  He made a number of demands for changes and cuts in scripts and finished movies, and some of them were followed.  He was helped by Breen, who had considerable power in Hollywood as the main censor.

It was not until the outbreak of general war that any anti-Nazi movies were made (other than a couple of allegories.)  We all remember “Casablanca”, but that didn’t come out until 1942.  Other movies, including a sequel to “All Quiet on the Western Front”, never got made.  There was no mention of Jews after “The Jazz Singer.”

It is sad that the Jews generally took a policy of trying to keep quiet about their problems for fear of annoying Gentiles.  The Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Defense League officially had keep-mum policies.  They seemed to hope that some one else would discover their plight and come to their aid spontaneously.  This did not happen, in most cases.  The Holocaust has a lot to do with why Israel is the way it is now.  The government refuses to stop settlement in occupied territories, that is those captured in the 1967 war (which Israel started as a pre-emptive strike in the face of huge Arab military buildups and vocal threats of destruction.)

The fact that Israelis regard the occupied territories as belonging to them is related to what was done to them in the 1930’s and 1940’s.  The refusal of many countries to accept Jewish refugees in the 1930’s was responsible for some of them being caught up in the SS meatgrinder.  Twelve million people were murdered in the concentration camps, only half of them Jewish.  The Nazis didn’t discriminate in choosing their victims, a fact which many people don’t realize.  Gypsies, homosexuals, mental patients, Polish intellectuals, Russian prisoners of war, Slavs generally, all were tossed into the ovens.

The Arab refusal to live with Jewish immigration in Palestine has led to the Jewish adoption of an aggressive policy of retaining land which is useful to them in making defensible borders for Israel and taking control of Jerusalem.  This policy is directly related to the over-the-top hostility of the Arabs towards anything Jewish, including sworn compacts to work towards the destruction of Israel.  Israelis have become so paranoid that they see nothing wrong with building a high wall around their settlements and cutting down all the Palestinian olive trees.

There is one non-negotiable term for a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians: the renunciation by Hamas of those elements in their charter which call for the complete destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jews.   That seems like a small thing to ask.  In return, the Palestinians might get nominal control of the Arab quarter of Jerusalem, as Clinton offered in 2000 and Arafat walked out on.

I have just recently become fully aware (yes, I was asleep at the switch) of WordPress.com advertising policy.   When you read it, you realize that it is only fair that they run ads on my site because I’m too cheap to upgrade to the no ad version.  And by cheap, I mean really cheap… it was eighteen dollars a year, which is less than a quarter of what I pay for my New Yorker subscription… so go figure.  The problem for me, and I emphasize that this is my *only* problem with the advertising policy, is that I can’t see what the ads will be beforehand because they are tailored to the user’s preferences and thus could be different for different people.

I think that the advertising makes perfect sense, because it’s not intrusive (I think–but maybe it looks different on the receiving end?) and Google made a ton of money that way.  It’s all in the clicks.  If it is tailored to produce twenty or thirty bucks a year on clicks, on the average, then the ads could be very intrusive indeed… considering only three people ever read anything I write here.  I’m guessing the ads don’t make up more than ninety five percent of the screen.  If you consider this a problem, feel free to drop me a comment, and I will commiserate with you but probably do nothing about it.

The chances of my upgrading are slim at the moment.  But we shall see, perhaps if I can insert a few photographs.

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad has announced its agreement to a proposal to sign the treaty banning chemical weapons and to allow destruction of its stocks of nerve gas and mustard gas.  This proposal, advanced by the Russians at the last minute based on an apparently offhand remark by Secretary of State Kerry, has turned the situation in Syria on its head.

The opposition movement in Syria is sorely disappointed by the delay in American military strikes on the government.  They view the proposal as a delaying tactic that will allow the government to avoid punishment for the deaths of over 1,000 innocent people.  Outsiders, however, are mostly relieved that the prospect of more violence has been belayed.

On close examination, the actual work of identifying, isolating, and eventually destroying these weapons is daunting, especially during a civil war.  Who will step forward to do this work and who will protect the workers with military force?  The thought of Russian soldiers doing the protecting suggests a subtle double cross that could be worked if the Russians themselves are not supervised.

It is clear that the proposal is a stalling tactic, but it is such a welcome alternative to violence that it cannot be rejected at this time.  Military action can always be prepared at a later time if needed.

An opinion piece in the New York Times online from August 30 explains that increasing heat in the near future will probably stimulate more conflict, such as civil wars.  In the next 50 years, the average estimated increase in temperature will be 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit; this will increase the likelihood of war by 50 per cent.  The writers of the opinion piece did a meta-analysis of heat and conflict related research, and found that of 27 studies directly testing the hypothesis that increased heat leads to increased conflict, all 27 were positive.  This type of confidence in a hypothesis only occurs very rarely, so there is little to argue that heat doesn’t irritate people.

What is more, the heat will increase no matter what we do, because carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise and may persist for as long as three centuries given its unknown half life in the atmosphere.  All indications are that climate changes related to the increase in carbon dioxide have only just begun.

Therefore, there will be an increase in violent conflict throughout the world, perhaps varying with location as temperatures rise unevenly.  It is not hard to imagine the stress that could occur related to the heat, with crop failure and drought alternating with more powerful storms.  The question is how to prepare for and minimize the impact of the heat.

One resource that will be much appreciated in this situation is a plentiful supply of cheap electrical power.  There is much to be gained by intensive research into sources of power that are more efficient, cheaper, and don’t release carbon dioxide.  Naturally, nuclear sources are very attractive but also present significant risks.  Development of better wind and solar power resources has the added attraction of local production (reducing transmission line problems) which will be especially useful in isolated rural areas.

It is ironic that, prior to the passage of federal legislation establishing a rural electrification policy in the 1930’s, well-to-do farmers obtained their electricity from windmills that could produce as much as ten kilowatts of electric power, more than sufficient to run an entire modern home. Windmill generators were tried and true power sources for expeditions to the Antarctic.

Therefore, aggressive research into such power sources is likely to produce dramatic improvements in cost, efficiency, and power production.  At the same time, research into new battery technologies will be equally useful.  There is no time like the present for investment of research dollars to avert or adapt to the potentially catastrophic changes that are occurring in our atmosphere right now; otherwise there may be famine, civil war, pestilence, and a massive die off of the human species.

We can speculate as to the horrible alternatives facing us in the near future.  The death of more than half the human population will be an opportunity for evolution to pick out changes in the human genome, adaptive changes that may or may not be felicitous.  The average person’s appearance may change dramatically.  Hair, skin, nails, eyes, all may change in adaptive ways that may not be pretty.  Just a thought.