Gladwell has a new article and I'm well glad

Gladwell has a new article and I'm well glad: There's nothing like a Malcolm Gladwell essay in The New Yorker to provide me with an easy punching bag. His latest takes the familiar concept of "dependency ratio" and tries to derive some vast new implications from it:

THE RISK POOL
What’s behind Ireland’s economic miracle—and G.M.’s financial crisis?
by MALCOLM GLADWELL

... This relation between the number of people who aren’t of working age and the number of people who are is captured in the dependency ratio. In Ireland during the sixties, when contraception was illegal, there were ten people who were too old or too young to work for every fourteen people in a position to earn a paycheck. That meant that the country was spending a large percentage of its resources on caring for the young and the old. Last year, Ireland’s dependency ratio hit an all-time low: for every ten dependents, it had twenty-two people of working age. That change coincides precisely with the country’s extraordinary economic surge.

So, that must explain why Ukraine, with a total fertility rate of 1.17 babies per woman, is so prosperous these days! Ukraine has a higher percentage of its population in the age 15-64 bracket (69.3% according to the CIA World Factbook) than Ireland (67.6%).Yet, Ukraine's per capita income is barely 1/6th of Ireland's.

Similarly, Tunisia's population is more clustered in the working years "sweet spot" (68.6%) than Ireland's, yet Tunisia is not an economic hot spot. It's per capita income is only 1/5th of Ireland's.

Contraceptives were legalized in Ireland in 1979. (Ireland's birthrate was not all that high before then, though, due to its extraordinarily high first marriage ages: 31 for men and 26 for women. Because of the sexual shenanigans of the Kennedy clan, we Americans forget the old and valid stereotype of Irish sexual restraint). But when I visited Ireland in 1987, it was still economically stagnant. When I came back in 1994, it was not yet noticeably wealthier. No, it was the economic reforms of the 1990s, more than anything else, that liberated Ireland from its traditional poverty.

(Keep in mind, however, that Ireland's current lofty per capita GDP -- now as high as America's on paper -- is exaggerated by its low corporate income taxes, which induce multinational corporations to contort their accounting in order to take their profits in little Ireland. Still, Ireland is truly much better off than in the past, and that should be a source of satisfaction.)

Gladwell goes on:

"The introduction of demographics has reduced the need for the argument that there was something exceptional about East Asia or idiosyncratic to Africa,” Bloom and Canning write, in their study of the Irish economic miracle. “Once age-structure dynamics are introduced into an economic growth model, these regions are much closer to obeying common principles of economic growth.”

This is an important point. People have talked endlessly of Africa’s political and social and economic shortcomings and simultaneously of some magical cultural ingredient possessed by South Korea and Japan and Taiwan that has brought them success. But the truth is that sub-Saharan Africa has been mired in a debilitating 1-to-1 ratio for decades, and that proportion of dependency would frustrate and complicate economic development anywhere. Asia, meanwhile, has seen its demographic load lighten overwhelmingly in the past thirty years.

This is a good example of missing the point. If you go down to Wal-Mart or Costco and pick out the most sophisticated product made in China, you'd probably find, say, a laptop computer. And if you picked out the most sophisticated product in the store made in West Africa, you'd probably find, say, a shirt. That the worker's income from making the shirt has to be spread over more dependents than the income from making the laptop computer is, indeed, a problem for African economies relative to China's economy, as Gladwell points out, but it's hardly the main problem. The big problem is that while China is now internationally competitive in the same products that Japan was competitive in during the 1990s, West African countries are now competitive only in the same manufactured products that England was globally competitive in during the 1770s.

Furthermore, which one is cause and which one is effect? Other parts of the world unmired themselves from huge birthrates by improving their agricultural productivity. Africa hasn't lowered its birthrate all that much (although it is falling) because it remains mired in poverty. Because African farm productivity is low, they need young girls to hoe the fields, so the girls can't go to school beyond a certain age, so they don't go through the demographic transition to lower birthrates.

If you are looking for a more insightful dependency ratio-related explanation for African poverty, you'd be better off looking at the lack of work effort put out by African men. African feminists complain not that men won't let women work, but that men won't work. One African feminist claimed in the Washington Post recently that women do 80% of the work in Africa. Unfortunately, that remains one of the many taboo topics in American discourse, so glib pseudo-explanations of African poverty like Gladwell's remain rampant.

Dependency ratios are useful within a country for discussing matters like the future solvency of Social Security. Between countries, however, while they are worth a look now and then, the truth is that the productivity of the workers differs more than, and far more importantly, than the ratio of workers to dependents.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Around the Web

Glaivester blogs:

Sorry for Light Posting: With a job, I have been a little more tired recently.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: Work is the curse of the blogging class.

At Mahalanobis, HedgeFundGuy considers the paradox of the poverty rate staying flat for over 30 years, while poor people have accumulated a remarkable amount of stuff.

The problem with being poor today is not so much that you don't own enough goods but that you have to live around other poor people.

Yes, the new edition of "Survivor" will have four teams composed of separate ethnic groups: blacks, whites, Asians, and Hispanics. Many high-minded people are upset, yet they are the same folks who want our public life to consist of competition among La Raza, the NAACP, the ADL, CAIR, and so forth.

With Jim Antle's help, Michael Brendan Dougherty comes up with the three words you can append to the end of any neocon foreign policy statement that will explain the idea's basic appeal to them.

For sheer ability to deliver truckloads of hits to my website just by listing one of my blog postings by name, Justin Raimondo's AntiWar.com is almost in a class by itself.

Pat Buchanan kindly sent me a copy of his new #1 bestseller on immigration, State of Emergency, with post-its marking the half-dozen pages where he quoted me. Mr. Buchanan now has a blog to promote his book.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Who exactly will Iran invade?

"Spengler" has been claiming for some time that because of Iran's rapidly falling birthrate (the number of babies per woman in Iran is now lower than in the U.S.), Iran must lash out at its neighbors in a string of conquests to secure its prosperity before it runs out of cannon fodder. (Of course, that raises the questions of why the mullahs began promoting birth control in the early 1990s if they were planning on a campaign of conquest, but never mind that for now ...)

I've been pointing out, however, that Iran doesn't seem to be doing much of anything to prepare itself for the military offensives that Spengler sees in its future. Instead, it's devoting itself to strengthening its defensive capabilities, which is what you would do too if your east and west neighbors had both been conquered in the last half decade.

Maybe I'm wrong and Spengler is right. But who exactly would Iran conquer?

It shares a border with nuclear-armed Pakistan, but the only reason for fighting a war over the Baluchi Desert would be to force the loser to take more of it. West Asia is full of horrible places, but Baluchistan, I hear, is special even in that league. And that's just the landscape, climate, and scorpions. The Baluchis themselves are worse.

Iran has a long border with Afghanistan, but, folks, while the Iranians might be crazy, they aren't so crazy that they want to try to occupy that place. Afghanistan is a fun setting for a few of your less-housebroken countrymen to wage the Great Game, as Kipling called the British-Russian rivalry centered over Afghanistan, but there's nothing worth the cost of occupying the godforsaken place. Afghanistan appears to be the last foreign country that a Persian Army went deep into, but that was over 150 years ago, and they may have been invited in.

And then there's Turkmenistan. Verily, it is written: "The nation that rules Turkmenistan shall rule the world!" Verily, it is wrong.

Moving counterclockwise along Iran's borders, we come to little Azerbaijan, which has oil. It also has a nasty post-Communist hereditary dictatorship, so I guess the Iranians could announce that they were invading to spread democracy to Azerbaijan. But big oil brings big friends, like the U.S., and the Iranians remember what happened to the last guy in the region who invaded a small oil country.

Iran has a 20 mile border with Armenia, which has an important natural resource: Armenians. For poorly understood reasons, Armenians can make money anywhere in the world ... except Armenia (although Armenia's economy is finally taking off, and Armenia should soon reach half of Mexico's per capita income).

Iran borders Turkey, but, trust me, Iran will not invade Turkey. (See the Mel Gibson movie "Gallipoli" for details.)

Then there's Iraq, where Iran has close ties with influential members of the Shi'ite majority that was recently installed in power, to the joy of the Iranian mullahs, by ... America.

Iraq has oil, but it is also full of American troops, who would much more enjoy a mission of obliterating an Iranian tank assault than their current mission. I'm not sure quite what the current mission is, but it's definitely less fun than would be squaring off in open country against a shooting gallery full of Shah-era tanks and planes.

Finally, beyond Sunni-dominated and American-garrisoned Kuwait, there's a real prize: the oil field region of Saudi Arabia, which is heavily populated by Shi'ites.

One advantage of being an old coot like me is that when the latest worries come along, after awhile you remember that you already worried about it long ago ... and got bored. Folks, I was worrying about Iran taking over the Shi'ite oil zone of Saudi Arabia in 1979. Despite all the complex theories I constructed at the time about how this was about to happen, it didn't. And it didn't happen over the last 27 years. Will it happen over the next 27 years?

The basic problem, as far as I can tell, is that Arab and Persian Shi'ites are Arabs and Persians. They speak different languages, have different cultures outside of religion, and have different relatives.

Then there's the changing economics of oil.

Obviously, the best thing is to own the oil, because then you can be rich, like President Bongo of oil-exporting Gabon, plus enjoy other perks, like renaming your hometown Bongoville, which would be fun to do even if you were not named Bongo.

If you grabbed ownership of an oil country, you could, presumably, use the proceeds to buy weapons to take over another country, and so on. That's what we theorized Saddam was intending in 1990 after seizing Kuwait (although I haven't seen much evidence merge recently that he really intended to keep going on a chain of conquests).

From America's economic standpoint, however, it doesn't particularly matter who owns the oil because oil is fairly fungible and the price is determined, more or less, by the global balance of supply and demand.

However, we don't want any one government owning too large a fraction of the oil because that makes monopoly price hikes more feasible. Saudi Arabia's huge share of the world's reserves and low population made OPEC's oil price rise feasible in the 1970s -- OPEC was less a true cartel than Saudi Arabia and a bunch of hanger-ons. If Saudi Arabia was willing to cut production radically, the world price went up, even if Iran and other countries pumped more than they agreed. Likewise, Saudi Arabia could singlehandedly cut the price of oil to $10 in 1986 at the Reagan Administration's behest to strangle the Soviet economy.

Theoretically, you wouldn't need ownership to exercise this kind of pumping restraint to drive up prices -- if Tehran could put the word out to the new Shi'ite oil regimes that they were all going to cut back, a Shi'ite consortium might be able to have sufficient market power to boost prices.

But, that all seems terribly theoretical. I strongly doubt that separate Shi'ite states could or would coordinate that much, sacrificing their own sales because they trust the others to cut back too. There are good reasons people in that part of the world aren't very trusting.

Of course, the most likely outcome of instability in the Gulf is simply more chaos, more vandalism and corruption, fewer repairs, and lower production for all concerned, as we've seen in Iraq.

This could drive the world price of oil into 3 digits, but as a strategic or economic weapon, an oil boycott, in these days of large populations in the OPEC countries, is akin to holding their breath until they turn blue.

A reader writes:

You wrote that American GDP is about 20 times higher than Iranian GDP. This is true if we use purchasing power parity, but if we use exchange rates, then the American GDP is about 68 times bigger, 12300 billion / 180 billion. The question is, what should we use for comparing military spending? GDP at PPP or GDP at exchange rates? Iran's military spending, being 3.3% of GDP, would be 6 billion if we use exchange rates and 18.5 billion if we use PPP.

I suggest that we use the average of the two. Military spending consists of personnel costs and hardware purchases. Iran's personnel costs are determined by Iran's wages, which are low, but Iran's weapons expenditures have to made at international prices. If we assume that personnel costs are about half of Iran's budget, then using the average of miltary spending at PPPand that at exchange rates makes sense. Anyway, the average of the figures is about 12 billion, which is less than 3% of American military spending. Obviously, the neo-con warmongers have cause to be worried.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Why baseball fans are more rational than foreign policy mavens

In these days during the apparent run-up to a war with Iran, foreign policy commentary appears to be largely the obsession of men with the irrational emotional instincts of baseball fans. So, why aren't they spending their time thinking about baseball rather than promoting war? It appears they are just too innumerate to be baseball fans. For example, anti-NY Yankee baseball fans rightly feared George Steinbrenner's acquisition of Bobby Abreu, which has helped spark the Yankees' surge into first place. They knew roughly how much money Steinbrenner can spend due to the Yankee's enormous market, and they knew Abreu's impressive career on-base percentage (he's one of the newer generation of Latin ballplayers who show excellent plate discipline and get a lot of walks).

In contrast, most of the Iranian fear-mongering takes place in a mental world devoid of numbers. That Iran's GDP is about 1/20th of ours, that their installed base of post-1978 aircraft and tanks is paltry, that they have virtually no offensive capability to seize territory where the local population doesn't support them, and that they have been spending a no higher percentage of that paltry sum on their military than we spend, and they probably spend a lower percentage, suggests Iran is not a major threat to conquer the Middle East. This is as if bored New York sportswriters, following, say, a collapse by the large market Boston Red Sox, got into a frenzy over the long term threat to Yankee dominance posed by the small-market Kansas City Royals. Well, it wouldn't happen on the sports pages, because baseball fans know the numbers and the pundits would get laughed at by their own readers.

Much of what we read these days about the Iran threat is is driven by boredom because of a lack of more credible challenges. The tedious truth is that the Great Game of nations is going through a dull patch of relative global peace right now because American military dominance (about 49% of the human race's military spending) is so overwhelming that there isn't too much organized slaughter going on right now by historical standards. So, a lot of foreign policy pundits are puffing up Iran as a threat to America with all the zeal and imagination that Don King brought to puffing up Chuck Wepner, a full liquor time salesman and part time boxer known as "The Bayonne Bleeder," as a threat to Muhammad Ali in their 1975 fight.

To carry on the baseball analogy, the current foreign policy punditry situation would be as if the New York sportswriters spent half their time writing not about the Yankees but about how their beloved San Francisco Giants are in danger from the San Diego Padres now that the Giants' Barry Bonds has returned to mortal human statistics, and how the Yankees ought to forfeit their own American League games so they can instead fly down to San Diego and beat the Padres for the Giants in the National League.

By the way, having somehow survived the May Day Day-Without-a-Mexican threat, Dennis Dale at Untethered Live-Blogged the August 22nd Iranian Apocalypse.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Iranian War Machine

I did some Google searches for "Iran" and "military build-up" and found lots of documents ... almost all from the mid-1990s.

If Iran is really out to conquer the region, it would need tanks, lots and lots of tanks, plus air cover, since tank armadas are dead ducks in the open desert. So, is Iran building up its tank fleet and air force preparatory to its upcoming blitzkriegs? Here's what the Center for Strategic and International Studies says about Iran:

"Most of Iran's military equipment is aging or second rate and much of it is worn. Iran lost some 50-60% of its land order of battle in the climatic battles of the Iran-Iraq War, and it has never had large-scale access to the modern weapons and military technology necessary to replace them. It also has lacked the ability to find a stable source of parts and supplies for most of its Western-supplied equipment, and has not have access to upgrades and modernization programs since the fall of the Shah in 1979."

Here is Iran's tank fleet, according to a site called MILNET:

Tank Type	Count	Manufacturer
M-47/48	150	U.S. (*)
M-60A1	150-160	U.S. (*)
Chieftain Mark 3/5s	100	U.K. (*)
T-54/55	250	Russia/Soviet
T-59	150-250 (35-?)	Russia/Soviet
T-72/S	480	Russia/Soviet
T-69II	150-250 ?	Russia/Soviet
Zulfiqar	100	Iranian made from T-72 and M48 pieces
Total Estimate	1600
* delivered prior to the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979

A reader comments:

I believe the name of the Iranian-made main battle tank, the Zuliqfar, literally means "burning torment" and is perhaps best rendered colloquially as "flaming coffin" or "death trap."

And here are other regional powers:

Country	Main Battle Tanks	Comments
Israel	4300	Modernized, well maintained
Egypt	4300	Fairly Modernized, maintained
Syria	4600	Fair maintained but much older technology
Iran	1565 (1000) *	Mostly older technology, maybe one to three full divisions of modern equipped
Jordan	1217	Fair maintenance, old technology
Saudi Arabia	1055	Well Maintained, modernized regularly
Lebanon	315 (100)*	Well aged, poorly maintained, single battle ready only

So, it looks like Iran would match up pretty well with mighty Jordan.

And then there's the Iranian Air Force, which resembles the raw materials for a nostalgic air show more than a war-winning military arm:

Aircraft	Made in	Count	Mission	Comments
F-14	U.S.	50	Air Defense	Poorly maintained, Little/no AAM, gun only
MiG-29	Russia	6	Air Defense	Highly capable, heavy maintenance costs, fuel hungry
F-7M	China	35	Air Defense	Fairly modern and capable
F-4D/E	U.S.	260	Attack/Defense	Very poorly maintained, parts not available to Iran some in ME market
F-5E/FII	U.S.	260	Attack/Defense	Very poorly maintained, parts not available from U.S., some in ME market
Su-24	Soviet	30	Attack	Some parts purchases with Russia have taken place, these may be the best maintained of all Iranian aircraft
Su-25K	Soviet	7	Attack	Seized during Gulf War (Iraq inexplicably flew them out) May be operational but doubtful
Mir F-1	France	24	Attack/Defense	Seized during Gulf War (Iraq inexplicably flew them out) May be operational but doubtful

The theoretical bulk of the Iranian air force (520 planes) is made up of F4s, which first flew in 1958, and F5s, which first flew in 1959. If any are still flying, the rest must be used as sources for the cannibalizing of of parts.

As for the F-14s, which were the pride of the Shah's air force:

"One report suggested that the IRIAF can get no more than seven F-14s airborne at any one time"

So they've got 6 good MiG-29s, 30 Soviet Su-24s, and 35 pretty good Chinese planes.

In contrast, Israel, for example, has "555 combat aircraft (90 probably stored)."

And, of course, Iran is missing most of the components of post-1979 air supremacy, such as AWACS-style flying command posts and stealth planes.

Look, Iran was deterred, fairly successfully, by Saddam Hussein's post-1991 House of Cards regime. That's one of the reasons the President's better-informed father and the younger, more sensible Dick Cheney left it stand in 1991.

What the Iranians have been investing in are, intelligently enough, missiles and, presumably, nuclear weapons development, which makes a lot of sense if their military strategy is to deter attack. Iran hasn't started a war with anybody since, at least, the middle of the 19th Century.

Or, as many theorize, they might be intending to attack the world so suicidally that they get nuked so they can get their hands on those 72 virgins faster. I wouldn't know.

Why baseball fans are more rational than foreign policy mavens: In these days during the apparent run-up to a war with Iran, foreign policy commentary appears to be largely the obsession of men with the irrational team-loving emotional instincts of baseball fans. So, why aren't they spending their time thinking about baseball rather than promoting war? It appears they are just too innumerate to be baseball fans.

For example, anti-NY Yankee baseball fans rightly feared George Steinbrenner's acquisition of Bobby Abreu, which has helped spark the Yankees' surge into first place. They knew roughly how much money Steinbrenner can spend due to the Yankee's enormous market, and they knew Abreu's impressive career on-base percentage.

In contrast, most of the Iranian fear-mongering takes place in a mental world devoid of numbers. That Iran's GDP is about 1/20th of ours, that their installed base of post-1978 aircraft and tanks is paltry, that they have virtually no offensive capability to seize territory where the local population doesn't support them, and that they have been spending a no higher percentage of their limited GDP on their military than we spend (and possibly less), suggests Iran is not a major threat to conquer the Middle East. This is as if bored New York sportswriters, following, say, a collapse by the large market Boston Red Sox, got into a frenzy over the long term threat to Yankee dominance posed by the small-market Kansas City Royals. Well, it wouldn't happen on the sports pages, because baseball fans know the numbers and the pundits would get laughed at by their own readers.

Much of what we read these days about the Iran threat is is driven by boredom because of a lack of more credible challenges. The tedious truth is that the Great Game of nations is going through a dull patch of relative global peace right now because American military dominance (about 49% of the human race's military spending) is so overwhelming, and most of the great empires are gone, that there isn't too much organized slaughter going on right now by historical standards. So, a lot of foreign policy pundits are puffing up Iran as a threat to America with all the zeal and imagination that Don King brought to puffing up Chuck Wepner, a full liquor time salesman and part time boxer known as "The Bayonne Bleeder," as a threat to Muhammad Ali in their 1975 fight.

To carry on the baseball analogy, the current foreign policy punditry situation would be as if the New York sportswriters spent half their time writing not about the Yankees but about how their beloved San Francisco Giants are in danger from the San Diego Padres now that the Giants' Barry Bonds has returned to mortal human statistics, and how the Yankees ought to forfeit their own American League games so they can instead fly down to San Diego and beat the Padres for the Giants in the National League.

Also by Steve Sailer:

The Middle-Eastern Powder Thimble

The Decline in the Need for Global Force Projection

Why doesn't the Kurdish "state-within-a-state" justify war too?

The Logic of Nuclear Genocide

Hezbollah's Schmutzkrieg!

War: The Human Race Just Isn't Trying Very Hard Anymore

How many aircraft carriers does the Islamic World have?

The small size of the Iranian economy and military

By the way, having somehow survived the May Day Day-Without-a-Mexican threat, Dennis Dale at Untethered Live-Blogged the August 22nd Iranian Apocalypse.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Interesting new book out this week

Breeding Between the Lines: Why Interracial People are Healthier and More Attractive

by Alon Ziv

Book Description This book combines sex, race, health and genetics in a daring new theory. Written with accessible, direct prose, anecdotes, analogies, and examples from human and animal studies, it is sure to spark debate in a massive way.

Jay Phelan, Author of Mean Genes: Breeding Between the Lines is that rare book that is insightful and revolutionary, while remaining compulsively readable and downright fun.

And here's Zvi's website on the book

By the way, Zvi tells me he's probably not related to Sabbetai Zevi, much as he would enjoy being related to a self-proclaimed messiah.

I've read it and it's an extremely lively book. Plus, it's got a great quote from me, and my influence is evident on a lot of pages.

On the other hand, I'm not fully convinced by the evidence for much additional hybrid vigor from marrying intercontinentally. Clearly, if all your ancestors came from one little valley up in the mountains, you'd be well advised to marry somebody from outside the valley. Still, it's not clear that marrying somebody from the other side of the ocean adds much hybrid vigor over marrying somebody from a couple of valleys away. Interracial marriage is a sure way to eliminate inbreeding in your offspring, but I'm not sure that significant inbred depression is much of a problem in American life these days.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Uh, I think you are forgetting something, Professor

In the Wall Street Journal today, Professor Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse writes:

The Fertility Gap
Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply.

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

So far, so good. But then, he writes:

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.

No, California will not tip dramatically conservative for demographic reasons over the next 14 years. That's because there is a huge number of immigrants and their children who are in the pipeline to become voters. In California, Hispanics and Asians vote about 70-30 Democratic. Furthermore, GOP family values issues won't pay off in California because not enough young people can afford to have a family.

I've explained all this in my essays on "Affordable Family Formation."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Dread 22nd of August

Well, I guess Iran hasn't dropped a Nova Bomb into the Sun today, or whatever impossible-to-deter apocalyptic terrorist plot it was that Professor Bernard Lewis claimed in the WSJ that they were going to perpetrate on August 22 for obscure Shi'ite religious reasons.

Remind me again, who exactly are the dangerous lunatics?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Five Billion, Updated

I pointed out last summer that almost five billion people (4,976,000,000) live in countries with lower per capita GDPs (purchasing power parity) than Mexico. That has implications for immigration that almost nobody is thinking about as of yet.

In the long run, the OTM (Other-than Mexican) immigration problem will dwarf the Mexican immigration problem.

I reran the numbers using the latest figures on the CIA World Factbook, and this year the total population of people living in countries poorer than Mexico is up to 5,043,000,000. That's 77% of the world's 6,525,000,000 population.

Almost three billion people (2,965,000,000), or 45% of the world, live in countries with less than half of Mexico's $10,000 per capita GDP.

An extraordinary 85% of the world's children ages 0-14 live in countries poorer than Mexico (1,528,000,000 out of 1,789,000).

Compared to Mexico's 33 million children ages 0-14, countries poorer than Mexico have 47 times as many children.

India has ten times as many children, China eight times as many, and Pakistan three times as many. Indonesia has almost twice as many children, Nigeria 1.7 times as many, and Bangladesh and Brazil 1.7 times as many. Ethiopia, the Congo, and the Philippines have almost exactly the same number as Mexico.

It's likely that you have to be fairly close to as rich as Mexico to get a big flow of illegal immigrants going, as Brazil has begun recently. Of course, if the Senate's guest worker program passes, we'll start seeing a big influx from places like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, followed by illegal immigrants coming to stay with their legal relatives.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

You can always count on the New York Sun

The money-hemorrhaging neocon newspaper runs an editorial on the Andrew Young brouhaha (the subject of my VDARE column) that trots out just about every conceivable neocon obsession of the moment: Young's meeting with the PLO 27 years ago, Joe Lieberman's defeat, the war in Lebanon, Mearsheimer & Walt's paper on the Israel Lobby, Natan Sharansky, the wonderfulness of immigrant entrepreneurs, and on and on. I'm hoping that the end of Israel's war in Lebanon will eventually cool the hysteria that has swept the punditariat over the last 6 weeks, but I haven't seen much evidence of that yet.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

In Israel, however, the analysis is less hysterical:

Edward N. Luttwak writes in the Jerusalem Post that the Israeli performance wasn't as bad as it seemed because Hezbollah wasn't much of a threat:

There was a fully developed plan, of course, in the contingency folders - a sophisticated blend of amphibious, airborne and ground penetrations to swiftly reach deep behind the front, before rolling back, so as to destroy Hizbullah positions one by one from the rear, all the way to the Israeli border.

That plan was not implemented because of the lack of casualties among Israeli civilians. It had been a fair assumption that thousands of Hizbullah rockets fired in concentrated barrages would kill many civilians, perhaps hundreds of them each day. Barrages cancel out the inaccuracy of unguided rockets, and powerfully compound blast effects. That would make a large-scale offensive by more than 45,000 soldiers a compelling necessity, politically justifying the hundreds of casualties that it would certainly have cost.

Hizbullah, however, distributed its rockets to village militias that were very good at hiding them from air attacks, sheltering them from artillery and from probing Israeli unmanned air vehicles, but quite incapable of launching them effectively, in simultaneous launches against the same targets.

Instead of hundreds of dead civilians, the Israelis were therefore losing one or two a day, and even after three weeks, the grand total was less than in some one-man suicide bombings.

That made it politically unacceptable to launch the planned offensive that would kill young soldiers and family men, while not eradicating Hizbullah anyway, because it is a political movement in arms, and not just an army or a bunch of gunmen.

For that very reason, the outcome of the war is likely to be more satisfactory than many now seem to believe. Hassan Nasrallah is not another Yasser Arafat, who was fighting for eternal Palestine and not for actually living Palestinians, whose prosperity and safety he was always willing to sacrifice for the cause.

Nasrallah has a political constituency, and it happens to be centered in southern Lebanon. Implicitly accepting responsibility for having started the war, Nasrallah has directed his Hizbullah to focus on rapid reconstruction in villages and towns, right up to the Israeli border.

He cannot start another round of fighting that would quickly destroy everything again. Yet another unexpected result of the war is that Nasrallah's power-base in southern Lebanon is more than ever a hostage for Hizbullah's good behavior.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Old fogeys sound off about radio

Mickey Kaus laments:

Why does the music they play in clothing stores sound so much better than the music they play on the radio? My guess: Clothing store music is designed to put you in a good mood so you'll buy stuff. In practice, this monolithic, insidious commercial motive translates into simply playing good music. ... The song you hear on the radio, in contrast is likely to be something some record company promoter has bugged (or bribed) the station to play. It will probably be an artist with current commercial potential--not a one-hit wonder, or singer who's died or quit the business, but an "act" of non-trivial potential future earning power. ... Or it will be someone who knows someone who knows the DJ. ... And it likely won't be a two-year-old song of proven appeal, but an iffy new song from whatever CD is about to come out. (Let's give this struggling new singer-songwriter a break!) Or it will be an older song from a band that's appearing in town that week. (Perhaps the station happens to have tickets to give away!) ... Or it will be an act the station is trying to "break," in order to get bragging rights within the industry (the way LA's KCRW boasts about breaking Norah Jones). ... All of these hidden, ulterior motives corrupt the simple goal of playing music you will enjoy hearing. Give me honest clothing store songs any day.

Music you haven't invested your hopes in often sounds better. Low expectations for overheard music mean everything you hear that you like is a pure plus, while if you choose a radio station you are investing some of your self-image in it, so you start thinking self-critical things like, "Man, I'm waaaaay too old to listen to KROQ" or "I can't believe I like the 1980s synth-pop songs on Jack FM" or whatever.

The same thing happens with going to a movie: You have to use your advertising and critic reading skills to pick out one you think you'll like, then convince your wife that she'll like it too, then pay money to see it. So you wind up with a lot riding on it emotionally, and it's easy to be disappointed. In contrast, there's flipping through the dials and pausing on some unknown film to listen to a few lines of dialogue:

Walter Sobchak: You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me.
The Dude: Yeah, but Walter...
Walter Sobchak: Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.

Now, that's pure gravy.

Another issue is one you see on classical music stations with the difference between 18th and 19th century music. The Chicago classical station specializes in heavy 19th Century masterpieces, while the more commercial LA classical station KMZT (it even has a morning man who tells classical music jokes -- and, no, they don't involve Beethoven sitting up in his grave and saying, "Can't you see I'm decomposing!") focuses on sprightly 18th Century works. Most 18th century music, whether Baroque or early Classical was probably originally presented with the introduction, "Here's a little something to brighten your day, Archduke," while most 19th century music comes with the message, "Take a spiritual journey deep into the profundities of my soul."

Well, sounds swell, but can you give me a raincheck on the spiritual journey because I've had kind of a rough day, so maybe you could play a little Vivaldi for me?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The other iSteve has a blog, too

I particularly liked this posting in which that other iSteve discusses a private meeting with Jerry York, a member of the Apple Board of Directors, following the revelation of the backdating options scandal:

He sits for a while more, saying nothing, tapping his foot on the table. Then he goes, Kid, you keep your passport up to date? You must, right? With all the traveling you do. Sure, I say, I keep it up to date. And you keep it with you? he says. I go, Yeah, most of the time. Or my assistant has it. Huh, he says, your assistant. Huh. See, me, I keep it right in my briefcase, always with me, never let it out of my sight. You know what else I do? I keep about a million in cash with me too. Right on my jet, in a safe. And I spread some money around the world, different places, like Switzerland, and South Africa. Places like that. Just cash money. Money I can get my hands on. A few million here and there. Rainy day money is what I call it. And nobody knows about it, not even my family. And I got friends in those places, lot of old friends that I stay in touch with. And some friends in D.C., too, guys I grew up with, the kind of guys who don't tell you where they work. Guys like that come in handy at some point. You see where I'm going with all this, kid?

I'm like, Jerry, dude, I have no idea where you're going. Are you going to South Africa? Or Switzerland or something? Why are you being all weird and mysterious? [More]

Later, after mulling over Mr. York's advice, he posts:

For various reasons that aren't worth going into, the folks at Apple are looking around for a few people who could step into my shoes at various events. For example, if for some reason I want to be on vacation, but I also need to give a keynote speech or open a retail store or something, my stand-in could take my place. Provided we give him some decent training on the voice and so forth. Frankly I was not very happy with the skinny dude we hired for the WWDC. Too thin, too gray, and the vocal energy just wasn't there. Now we're battling off all these bloggers who are bombarding our PR department, thinking I'm frigin sick. Who can blame them? The guy looked like crap. Dudes, I'm not sick. I swear. I was in friggin Polynesia, okay? Obtain a clue.

Anyway, we think it might be cool to get a bunch of Steves so we could field me out to multiple appointments at the same time. Or have some stand-ins to take some dangerous duty, like Saddam used to do. Or to throw people off the trail if I ever need to get lost, as a certain member of my board of directors has suggested.

Having more than one also might help create a little bit of confusion, like at the end of V for Vendetta where there's like thousands of people all wearing that same freako goofball mask and the cops don't know which one to shoot. We'll set loose a handful of "Steves" in black mock turtlenecks and wireless round glasses in the hallways at Apple. Hell, we could get a hundred people and put them in Jobs masks.

The goal is to buy the real El Jobso a little extra time. Hours are everything in these situations. Trust me, I ain't gonna pull an OJ, heading for Mexico in a friggin white Bronco with a wig and fake mustache on the back seat and some moron steroid case behind the wheel. When I disappear, believe me, you won't even know I'm gone.

Like a lot of guys who have led a pretty blameless life, I'm still fascinated by the mechanics of how to make a break for the border. That was the source of my frustration with "Thelma & Louise:" Susan Sarandon shoots a man in Arkansas, so she and Geena Davis light out for the Mexican border, but they do it so incompetently that they end up falling into the Grand Canyon. I mean, that's like 1500 miles out of their way. Clearly, women just aren't serious about this hugely important topic.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The War Nerd is crowing that his July 23rd column about how Hezbollah was winning was right. Here are some lessons Gary Brecher draws in his new column:

The IDF hasn't been a real underdog for a long time. Amateurs look at the map of the Middle East, see poor li'l Israel in the middle of all that Arab real estate and think the IDF is still the underdog. Nope--Israel was set up by a bunch of smart, educated Europeans, and when you match an army of those guys, backed by billions in US military aid, against peasant conscripts, only a fool bets on the peasants. Doesn't matter how much real estate they have, peasants in uniform are useless in conventional warfare against smart, motivated Western troops.

Till now -- till Hezbollah. Hezbollah chose when and where and how they were going to fight Israel. Here are the lessons they learned. Read'em and weep, because they work just as good against US armed forces and tactics as they do against the IDF:

First, most important lesson: take the defense tactically, the offense strategically. This ought to be a familiar doctrine to any American war buff because it was the policy behind most of our great victories, like Bunker Hill, New Orleans, and it's what kept Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on top against bigger and better-equipped Federal forces until Gettysburg -- and the only reason Lee lost there was because he abandoned the policy like a fool. Hezbollah took the offensive strategically by prepping the ground, Southern Lebanon, with a network of underground bunkers, then picking its moment to attack Israel while the IDF was busy kicking ass down in Gaza. The IDF, already under pressure for not rescuing that soldier kidnapped by Hamas in Gaza, charged over the border right into the trap.

Once they'd provoked the massive attack they hoped for, Hezbollah assumed the defensive, sticking to their bunkers and launching an incredible number of guided and unguided missiles against the Israelis. The most devastating weapon they have is the Rocket Propelled Grenade 29, the newest Russian version of our old friend the RPG 7. The RPG 29 seems to be able to knock out the IDF's main battle tank, the Merkava 4. That's a big, big blow to the IDF, because the newer Merkavas are supposed to be invulnerable to anything but huge shaped charges laid as mines... By sticking to their bunkers, where they could fire from safety at the Merkavas, the Hezbollah antitank teams destroyed the Merkava 4's rep in a few weeks.

At sea Hezbollah used the same strategy: use guided missiles against high-value targets. Israel has been used to having control of the Mediterranean, and using its navy as low-cost, mobile artillery to blast enemy positions (and picnics). Hezbollah served notice that them days are over by hitting an Israeli gunboat with a guided weapon of some kind...

Second Lesson: When you're fighting a force that depends on firepower and air power, DIG IN. Hezbollah has been tunneling out Southern Lebanon like those Caddyshack gophers from the first day the IDF vacated the area. They built reinforced bunkers, some with AC, designed to withstand air strikes and be used as firing positions for those new-generation anti-tank weapons. Just think for a second and you'll see that if you don't need to move, and stay underground like the Cong in Cu Chi, airpower can't touch you. The IDF kept waiting for Hezbollah to move aboveground but got nowhere, because the Hezzies had what the Germans call "fire discipline," the special kind of guts you need to stay still and not fire till the enemy's real close. The hotheads in Hamas have the more obvious kind of guts, attacking the IDF with small arms and old RPGs from the back of a pickup, but that kind of courage don't cut it no more.

Remember, in military terms, courage changes with the technology. When the Greeks fought one-on-one, courage was Achilles strutting up and saying, "I'll take the best guy you punks got." When the phalanx came into its own, courage meant NOT jumping out of formation on your lonesome but keeping rank, with your shield protecting your neighbor (or your bayonet, if you're talking the Redcoats' squares at Culloden in 1745). To fight and win the way Hezbollah did, courage is waiting...waiting...waiting for that Merkava to roll into the kill zone, not jumping up and firing your AK at Chobham armor.

And speaking of AKs, another lesson of this war is that the era of the automatic rifle as basic small arm may be ending. We may be heading back to some kind of shoulder-fired cannon (just like Champlain's!). Most of the IDF casualties in this war were inflicted by RPGs, just like most of our casualties in Iraq. The Chechen guerrillas have gone to a new formation, with three-man teams consisting of two RPG gunners with one AK man whose only job is to protect the RPGers. That may be the wave of the future.

Of course all these moves would've been wasted if the Israelis had caught on to what Hezbollah was up to, which leads to another lesson, one I'm always preaching: in asymmetrical warfare, Intelligence is everything. Or in this case, counterintelligence. Israeli intel, Shin Bet and Mossad, has been the real strength of the IDF for a long time. They're the best and most ruthless intelligence agencies since the USSR went bankrupt. But they had no idea what was waiting for them over the border. That's incredible, the most shocking news of all.

Remember, the IDF has instant access to all US military satellite intel, so this means that our tech intel was just as ineffective as Mossad's more traditional infiltration methods. That means Hezbollah, a huge organization with branches in every street in South Beirut and South Lebanon, has a scary effective counterintelligence branch. We all know the CIA is useless, but when Mossad and Shin Beth can't even penetrate the lower levels of a mass movement like Hezbollah, then the world has turned upside down.

And it has, folks. That's why this is such a huge, huge war. No matter what the waterheads on CNN try to tell you, the IDF lost totally, and every force configured like it -- such as, oh, the US Army or Air Force -- lost too. ...

It's hard to say who gains in the long run. Short term, sure, Hezbollah wins big. But in the long run, maybe what's happened is that the day when genocide replaces the farce called "CI Warfare" just got a lot closer. [More]

That of course is the distant but grave danger -- that more and more influential Americans are slowly giving themselves over to the hysterical logic of pre-emptive nuclear genocide, even though America is in little danger. It would be a horrific irony if America's identification with Israel due to Jewish victimization in the Holocaust leads America to nuke 6 million (or 60 million) Muslims to protect Israel.

There's a simpler solution -- if you can't uproot a popular insurgency that is well dug-in, you go home.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The War Nerd is crowing

that his July 23rd column about how Hezbollah was winning was right. Here are some lessons Gary Brecher draws in his new column:

The IDF hasn't been a real underdog for a long time. Amateurs look at the map of the Middle East, see poor li'l Israel in the middle of all that Arab real estate and think the IDF is still the underdog. Nope--Israel was set up by a bunch of smart, educated Europeans, and when you match an army of those guys, backed by billions in US military aid, against peasant conscripts, only a fool bets on the peasants. Doesn't matter how much real estate they have, peasants in uniform are useless in conventional warfare against smart, motivated Western troops.

Till now -- till Hezbollah. Hezbollah chose when and where and how they were going to fight Israel. Here are the lessons they learned. Read'em and weep, because they work just as good against US armed forces and tactics as they do against the IDF:

First, most important lesson: take the defense tactically, the offense strategically. This ought to be a familiar doctrine to any American war buff because it was the policy behind most of our great victories, like Bunker Hill, New Orleans, and it's what kept Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on top against bigger and better-equipped Federal forces until Gettysburg -- and the only reason Lee lost there was because he abandoned the policy like a fool. Hezbollah took the offensive strategically by prepping the ground, Southern Lebanon, with a network of underground bunkers, then picking its moment to attack Israel while the IDF was busy kicking ass down in Gaza. The IDF, already under pressure for not rescuing that soldier kidnapped by Hamas in Gaza, charged over the border right into the trap.

Once they'd provoked the massive attack they hoped for, Hezbollah assumed the defensive, sticking to their bunkers and launching an incredible number of guided and unguided missiles against the Israelis. The most devastating weapon they have is the Rocket Propelled Grenade 29, the newest Russian version of our old friend the RPG 7. The RPG 29 seems to be able to knock out the IDF's main battle tank, the Merkava 4. That's a big, big blow to the IDF, because the newer Merkavas are supposed to be invulnerable to anything but huge shaped charges laid as mines... By sticking to their bunkers, where they could fire from safety at the Merkavas, the Hezbollah antitank teams destroyed the Merkava 4's rep in a few weeks.

At sea Hezbollah used the same strategy: use guided missiles against high-value targets. Israel has been used to having control of the Mediterranean, and using its navy as low-cost, mobile artillery to blast enemy positions (and picnics). Hezbollah served notice that them days are over by hitting an Israeli gunboat with a guided weapon of some kind...

Second Lesson: When you're fighting a force that depends on firepower and air power, DIG IN. Hezbollah has been tunneling out Southern Lebanon like those Caddyshack gophers from the first day the IDF vacated the area. They built reinforced bunkers, some with AC, designed to withstand air strikes and be used as firing positions for those new-generation anti-tank weapons. Just think for a second and you'll see that if you don't need to move, and stay underground like the Cong in Cu Chi, airpower can't touch you. The IDF kept waiting for Hezbollah to move aboveground but got nowhere, because the Hezzies had what the Germans call "fire discipline," the special kind of guts you need to stay still and not fire till the enemy's real close. The hotheads in Hamas have the more obvious kind of guts, attacking the IDF with small arms and old RPGs from the back of a pickup, but that kind of courage don't cut it no more.

Remember, in military terms, courage changes with the technology. When the Greeks fought one-on-one, courage was Achilles strutting up and saying, "I'll take the best guy you punks got." When the phalanx came into its own, courage meant NOT jumping out of formation on your lonesome but keeping rank, with your shield protecting your neighbor (or your bayonet, if you're talking the Redcoats' squares at Culloden in 1745). To fight and win the way Hezbollah did, courage is waiting...waiting...waiting for that Merkava to roll into the kill zone, not jumping up and firing your AK at Chobham armor.

And speaking of AKs, another lesson of this war is that the era of the automatic rifle as basic small arm may be ending. We may be heading back to some kind of shoulder-fired cannon (just like Champlain's!). Most of the IDF casualties in this war were inflicted by RPGs, just like most of our casualties in Iraq. The Chechen guerrillas have gone to a new formation, with three-man teams consisting of two RPG gunners with one AK man whose only job is to protect the RPGers. That may be the wave of the future.

Of course all these moves would've been wasted if the Israelis had caught on to what Hezbollah was up to, which leads to another lesson, one I'm always preaching: in asymmetrical warfare, Intelligence is everything. Or in this case, counterintelligence. Israeli intel, Shin Bet and Mossad, has been the real strength of the IDF for a long time. They're the best and most ruthless intelligence agencies since the USSR went bankrupt. But they had no idea what was waiting for them over the border. That's incredible, the most shocking news of all.

Remember, the IDF has instant access to all US military satellite intel, so this means that our tech intel was just as ineffective as Mossad's more traditional infiltration methods. That means Hezbollah, a huge organization with branches in every street in South Beirut and South Lebanon, has a scary effective counterintelligence branch. We all know the CIA is useless, but when Mossad and Shin Beth can't even penetrate the lower levels of a mass movement like Hezbollah, then the world has turned upside down.

And it has, folks. That's why this is such a huge, huge war. No matter what the waterheads on CNN try to tell you, the IDF lost totally, and every force configured like it -- such as, oh, the US Army or Air Force -- lost too. ...

It's hard to say who gains in the long run. Short term, sure, Hezbollah wins big. But in the long run, maybe what's happened is that the day when genocide replaces the farce called "CI Warfare" just got a lot closer. [More]

That of course is the great danger -- that more and more influential Americans are slowly accommodating themselves to the hysterical logic of pre-emptive nuclear genocide, even though America is in little danger. It would be a horrific irony if America's identification with Israel due to Jewish victimization in the Holocaust leads America to nuke 6 or 60 million Muslims to protect Israel.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Kurdish "state-within-a-state"

Daniel Larison points out the ironic contradiction between the enthusiastic American support for Israel's failed attempt to crush the Hezbollah "state-within-a-state" in Lebanon and the long-term American support for the Kurdish "state-within-a-state" in northern Iraq, which engages in border provocations with its neighbors Turkey and Iran. He quotes first from The Guardian, then offers his own comment:

"Although fighting between Turkish security forces and PKK militants is nowhere near the scale of the 1980s and 90s - which accounted for the loss of more than 30,000 mostly Turkish Kurdish lives- at least 15 Turkish police officers have died in clashes. The PKK’s sister party in Iran, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Pejak), has stepped up activities against security targets in Kurdish regions. Yesterday, Kurdish media said eight Iranian troops were killed...

"Frustrated by the reluctance of the US and the government in Baghdad to crack down on the PKK bases inside Iraq, Turkish generals have hinted they are considering a large-scale military operation across the border. They are said to be sharing intelligence about Kurdish rebel movements with their Iranian counterparts. “We would not hesitate to take every kind of measures when our security is at stake,” Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, said last week." ~The Guardian

I assume that we will be bombarded by numerous articles and television appearances by pundits declaring Turkey and Iran’s right to defend themselves against terrorism and we will hear a lot of complaints about the “Kurdish state within a state,” right? Isn’t it obvious that their war is our war? In fact, I think we might be on the verge of WWVI against the united forces of “Kurdish fascism.” We certainly have to keep an eye on the Kurds’ state sponsors and the forces occupying Iraq. What choice will Iran have but to bombard Baghdad for allowing this sort of thing to go on in their own country? I mean, the Iraqis even have a Kurdish president, so that must mean Iraq is responsible for everything that is happening. Really, if you think about it, this is a golden opportunity for the region.

The Kurdish state-within-a-state is, in some ways, more dangerous to Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Iran, than Hezbollah is to Israel because there are about 14 million Kurds in Turkey and 5 million in Iran while there are very few Shi'ites in Israel. If the Iraqi Kurds were to wind up with oil fields of northern Iraq, they could finance a lot of trouble in Turkey or Iran. After all, even without oil money, the Kurdish rebellion of the 1980s and 1990s in Turkey killed dozens of times more than the recent Israel-Lebanon war.

With 12 aircraft carrier battle groups, submarine-launched cruise missiles, stealth technology, and so forth, the U.S. has little to fear from aggression by states, because they all have "return addresses" that we can blast to smithereens. Thus we could quickly drive the Taliban regime from power in Afghanistan for their crimes of negligence in hosting Osama bin Laden, providing a salutary lesson to the other 200 states in the world.

What countries with air supremacy like America and Israel have trouble with, however, are organizations that do not have return addresses. The hard core of the Taliban are now living in caves in the mountains, and we aren't making much progress against them. On the other hand, how important is that? That guerillas can hole up among civilians who support them and we can't do much about it without slaughtering civilians in vast numbers (the Soviets killed at least a million Afghans from 1979-1988 without achieving final victory) is a rough form of democracy. When we run into a situation where we can't eradicate popular guerillas, well, that's God's way of telling us to go home and find something better to do with our young men's lives.

Similarly, Hezbollah is, literally, a "low overhead" state-within-a-state. Even with a budget of apparently no more than $400 million for both its military and its social welfare programs, Hezbollah can get a lot of bang for its buck because its top operatives are content to live in holes in the ground or to shuttle from one safe house to another each night. If they were to start erecting above-ground monuments to their own majesty, they'd have a return address.

The good news is that these kind of organizations have virtually no offensive capabilities for seizing territory outside of areas where they are supported by the civilian population. Hezbollah can't fire up its chain of bunkers and send them rolling into Israel the way Israel can fire up its tanks and send them into Lebanon. What it can fire offensively are rockets, but they aren't all that dangerous without weapons-of-mass-destruction warheads. But the use of WMD missiles would set off a massive counterstrike with WMD by Israel, so deterrence should continue to work.

Now, many would argue that Hezbollah is completely irrational, with the implication being that we (whether "we" is Israel or America or both is usually kept vague) must commit genocide against them before they commit genocide against us. But if Hezbollah's leadership has looked crazy over the last 6 weeks, it's crazy like a fox, as they've outsmarted the Israelis.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Colby Cosh wants to know

Who is the tallest man to be famous in a profession where height is mostly irrelevant?

The most extreme profession would appear to be left-of-center economists with John Kenneth Galbraith at 6'9", John Maynard Keynes at 6'6", and Robert Reich at 4'10.5".

Among current pundits, Jim Pinkerton is 6'9" and Karl Zinsmeister is just a little shorter.

Perhaps the shortest famous man ever was the Rococo architect Cuvillies, designer of the Amalienburg, who got his start as a court dwarf.

I think the tallest world-historical figure was Czar Peter the Great at 6'7". Charles DeGaulle was approaching 6'6".

The tallest pretender to a throne is King Leka. Eric Margolis wrote in 1997:

"Last week, the majestic, 7 ft tall King Leka, Pretender to the crown of Albania, announced he was ready to return in 24 hours. I once spent enjoyable hours with Leka, who is also an arms dealer, planning an invasion of Albania. I urged Leka, as I also later did Serbia's Pretender, Crown Prince Alexander, to land on the coast at the head of royalist fighters, draw his sword, and march on the capital. This is what Balkan people understand."

Jerry Pournelle also told me that Leka, son of King Zog, was 7 feet tall.

Jerry should know because back in 1967, Jerry, Stefan Possony, and then-Crown Prince in Exile Leka (or Laika) organized an invasion of Albania by exiles to overthrow Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. King Hussein of Jordan agreed to provide air cover to wipe out the small Albanian air force to allow the invaders to cross the channel from Corfu, where they were training in the King Constantine of Greece's palace. Jerry spent a lot of time in Jordan training their pilots on how to pull off a sneak attack and wipe out the Albanian planes on the ground. Then, in June 1967, the Israelis pulled off their own sneak attack and wiped out the Jordanian air force on the ground, so the liberation of Albania had to be called off.

Decades later, Jerry met the President of Israel, Ezer Weizman, who had been in charge of the Israeli Air Force in 1967. Jerry explained how Weizman had wrecked his invasion of Albania. Weizman exclaimed to the effect that You were that foreigner who was training the Jordanians how to pull of a sneak attack? We thought you were a Russian training the Jordanians to attack us!

When is Jerry going to write his autobiography?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer