For a brief analysis of the connection between some bizarre events in the Middle East and in the West, I invite readers to see my article “Intertwined Insanities” on my personal blog www.georgereisman.com/blog/.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/5621/intertwined-insanities/
Intertwined Insanities
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Prof. Reisman, your doctor has called. He
has your medication.
Has anyone else noticed that global warming and kyoto have gotten to the point of hysteria lately. At first I couldn’t understand what was really driving this. It sure as hell wasn’t the environment, then it hit me. Foriegn interests are desperate to make sure that the US doesn’t make more practical use of its massive coal reserves. I’ve herd that coal gasification technologies can be competitive at $30/barrel.
Dan Mahoney,
While I agree that this is most definitely NOT one of Reisman’s better articles, such snide remarks as the one you made above are uncalled for.
Strictly speaking, Reisman’s article is correct, as long as one concentrates soley on what I call the “lunatic fringe” of environmentalism, that is the environmentalists who do believe that nature holds intrinsic value. After reading many of Reisman’s articles, it seems as though Reisman believes that all environmentalists fit into this category, in which case Reisman is correct in despising environmentalism as he does. (I am sometimes tempted to share Reismans view; almost every person I know who considers themselves an environmentalist, will uphold an “intrinsic value of nature” position if pushed hard enough.)
As for the Muslims, Reisman is correct to some extent about this also. Many sects of Islam believe that capitalism and trade are immoral, that in fact, Western culture is inherently immoral, and are willing to kill those who engage in such activities. (Don’t believe me? Listen to their rhetoric and read the Koran; both will back up my claim.) Although it is true that it is only a small minority of Muslims who are this way, they do indeed represent an active threat.
Hence, given these considerations, Reisman is essentially correct. The primary problem with the article is that: 1.)It oversimplifies matters by lumping all enviromentalists, and in turn, all Muslims into one type, i.e “lunatics”; and 2.) It does not acknowledge that imperialistic American foreign policy provided motivation for the terror groups to attack us.
(Note: No, I do not support the Imperialist war in Iraq, but an realistic view must acknowledge that given a chance, the state sponsered Islamic terror groups will take innocent lives, American or otherwise. However, by the same token, if American, and the Western goevernments in general, would leave the Muslim world alone, much of the motivation to commit massive acts of terror would subside.)
Prof. Reisman.
In closing I would like to thank you for writing “Capitalism”, it is the most enlightining book on economics I have ever read, and quiet possibly the most brilliant economics text ever written.
“Foreign interests are desperate to make sure that the US doesn’t make more practical use of its massive coal reserves. I’ve herd that coal gasification technologies can be competitive at $30/barrel.”
David,
You may want to check out http://www.sasolchevron.com
or http://www.sasol.com (Ticker: SSL)
And, this: http://www.cogeneration.net/Coal-Gasification.htm
is an interesting discussion-piece.
“Clean”-Coal Technology is with us today, that we continue to import as much Oil as we do…you might want to start asking “cui bono?”.
Hint: DDE, brave he was, gave us a big clue.
The Economist had a couple of articles on the total monopolization of oil extraction in their mid-august issue. The Economist claims that over 90 percent of all oil is extracted by state-owned oil companies; the magazine states that the number may be even higher.
I would speculate that the price of oil would drop dramatically if these firms wre privatized (which The Economist advocates). Private firms would be far more efficient, extracting more oil for less.
Being an objectivist atheist prof. Reisman lumps all religion together as forms of mysticism, whether Islam or Christianity. It’s a pretty objective fact that the Islamic nations produce almost nothing of any worth and this is a result of their religious fanaticism. Kemal Ataturk realized this, Reza Pahlevi realized this, and countless murdered and exiled dissidents realized this. By dumb fortune they managed to be sitting on a resource that we in The West want. The money that we pay them for their resource they put into efforts at our destruction. Rather than actually doing some kind of economic battle with them by increasing our own supply of the precious resource, we are hindered by the insanity of environmentalist ideology. The Greens hold that nature has some intrinsic value separate and apart from human evaluation. Some of them even say that humanity is a virus, and they wish for something to come in and wipe us out by the billions.
Intertwined Insanities.
“In the Middle East, young men, inspired by religious fanaticism the likes of which have not been seen since the Dark Ages, blow themselves up in order to murder innocent victims.”
Robert Pape’s research contradicts this statement about suicide terrorism. See Michael Scheuer’s review of Pape’s book here and my comments here. Short version: suicide terrorism is a tactic used by a wide variety of groups, some atheist! It is almost 100% inspired by military occupation. When the military occupation ends, the suicide terrorism ends.
“However, by the same token, if American, and the Western goevernments in general, would leave the Muslim world alone, much of the motivation to commit massive acts of terror would subside.”
How can we leave them alone if they will not leave us alone?
The stress to the ordinary individual in the UK is now immense. Brought about by the assault on our way of life by an alien culture, many of whom are pressing for the imposition of sharia law!
This is a very unhealthy situation and I cannot see a solution.
Raul
Raul
re Leaving them alone
How about not invading their lands and impoverishing, injuring and killing them? How about not stationing armies in their countries? How about not exporting weapons? How about staying out of their local politics?
Simple enough surely.
Sione
At the moment, this is the only data point I have to evaluate Reisman’s work, and it’s not a flattering one. It’s easy to see why he doesn’t allow comments on his blog. I have issues with a couple of sentences from Reisman’s article.
“It was obvious to everyone with intelligence and education that such countries must throw off the shackles of religious superstition and enter the modern world.”
I find that sentence typical of the Randian Objectivist, in that it’s not really a statement so much as it is an insult.
“This was the knowledge on which modern Turkey was founded. It was the knowledge that guided the last Shah of Iran.”
I’m sorry, I thought the last Shah was guided by the knowledge that the U.S. supported his autocratic, torturing regime.
“At the moment, this is the only data point I have to evaluate Reisman’s work, and it’s not a flattering one. It’s easy to see why he doesn’t allow comments on his blog”
Really? To get to this posting, you would have to scroll past Reisman’s more recent, and indisputably better, posting “Betting California.” Did you bother to read it? Did you even see it?
Riesman is an excellent economist, although he is sometimes a little bit off the mark, as this article demonstrates (see my earlier posting). Then again, who isn’t? Mises was wrong sometimes, so was Rothbard, so is Hoppe, so is Block, …ect. It seems to me that you should famalirize yourself with a persons work before you make such snide remarks as “It’s easy to see why he doesn’t allow comments on his blog.”
(Besides, he submitted this posting to a blog that does allow comments…think about that.)
There are some good points in this article, although I am not convinced that governments based on religious ideologies are inherently worse than secular ones. It was the “rational” leaders of modern Turkey who committed the Armenian genocide, not their more “superstitious” predecessors.
The point about nationalization is particularly interesting. Not only does the act of nationalization constitute a crime, but nationalized industries become a sort of treasure chest available to those who control the government. Both the Shah of Iran and the mullahs who deposed him wished to control their nation’s wealth for what they saw as a higher moral purpose – the one wanted to create a secular nanny state, the others a religious nanny state. Neither the secularists nor the Islamists show any compunction about killing thousands of people in order to get their way. The same is true of the House of Saud versus Al Qaeda. Nationalized industries represent probably the world’s biggest moral hazard (after central banks).
Relating this back to the environmental movement, the entire Kyoto scam can be seen as a program initiated from within Western governments in order to achieve nationalization of their nations’ energy industries through the back door. As the scope for initiative and the profits are gradually squeezed out they will at first become de facto nationalized industries – then at some point, like the railroads in the early 20th century, some convenient crisis will allow our governments to take over the industries de jure.
Sam,
I don’t (gasp!) read every post on this site. Horrors!
I look over the material and realize that I probably have read some of his work on this site without it “clicking” that it was his. This is a problem with aggregation sites – one typically tends to identify the work with the site rather than the author, especially so if that one doesn’t read every post on the site every day. Reading his post on his blog made me identify it more with the author and not with the site. It definitely was the first time I’ve been to his blog.
I did spend some time on his blog, and I was not impressed. Your mileage may vary. Perhaps he typically reserves his better work for submissions to Mises or for his other site (capitalism.net).
Sam Wrote:
“capitalism and trade are immoral, that in fact, Western culture is inherently immoral, and are willing to kill those who engage in such activities. (Don’t believe me? Listen to their rhetoric and read the Koran; both will back up my claim.)”
***
Sam can you cite the Koran where it says to kill those who involve in trade and capitalism or similar?
Stephen W. Carson quoted professor Reisman and also wrote:
“In the Middle East, young men, inspired by religious fanaticism the likes of which have not been seen since the Dark Ages, blow themselves up in order to murder innocent victims.”
Robert Pape’s research contradicts this statement about suicide terrorism. See Michael Scheuer’s review of Pape’s book here and my comments here. Short version: suicide terrorism is a tactic used by a wide variety of groups, some atheist! It is almost 100% inspired by military occupation. When the military occupation ends, the suicide terrorism ends.
So are you disputing the factual accuracy of the statement you quoted? What he said was entirely accurate.
Which Islamic nation was being militarily occupied by US Armed Forces on 9/11? And October of 2000 when the USS Cole was attacked? And the 1998 Embassy bombings? Was Indonesia militarily occupying some place on October of 2002 or 2005?
The suicide bombing aspect isn’t the most significant part of the Jihad. Islamic groups have been attacking and killing for a very long time now. Islam is their inspiration. Victory over dar-ul harb is their motivation. The money that the world’s nations are paying for oil and gas is (at least in part) going to fund these nutbags.
The environmentalist ideology keeps the US from effectively increasing world supply and shrinking the amount of profit gained by the Islamic terror masters. Be as “anti-war” as you like, I’m sure the mujahadin will promise to make the knife that beheads you the smoothest one.
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