Shaken, not stirred?????

Most of the bars I've been in have been beer joints. The US makes the license for the sale of anything stronger than beer very expensive, so many bars only serve beer, and most Americans can only afford beer joints, where the owners get the cheap, beer license, rent a cheap place to place their bar, and sell beer at a price that normal Americans can afford.

In movies, I've seen tough guys order whiskey or rye. In the US, 'whiskey' means bourbon, a drink that must be made from maize in Kentucky. 'Rye' must, of course, be made with some rye grain.

Some sophisticates order Martinis, but most bars don't have Martinis, only those for the gentry.

So, when Bond said he wanted his Martinis 'shaken, not stirred,' in the movies, most Americans figured the sophisticates always want their Martinis 'shaken, not stirred.' Which is as far from the truth as any movie can go!!

For most drinks, a tough customer orders e,g., whiskey or rye. The spirit is poured into a measure, a small glass with two lines. Generous bartenders fill to the top line. Frugal bartenders fill to the bottom line. Then the spirit is poured into a large glass, and the customer (in an American bar) can ask for any mixer that's on tap at no extra cost.

A Martini is different. The Martini glass must be filled to the brim. Martini glasses vary in size, as do the contents.

In the US, there is a very heavy tax on gin. So a cheap Martini has as little gin as possible. Olives, lemon, and Vermouth take the place of as much of the gin as the bar owners think they can get away with.

The ingredients must be poured into a shaker with ice. If shaken, the contents of the Martini glass will be mostly melted ice, i.e., water. If the ice is made in a commercial ice-maker and is 0F, and the gin and vermouth are 60F, the result is 30F, below freezing, and if the time in the shaker is short, and there is absolutely no shaking, the Martini will be mostly gin and vermouth. Or, if the buyer says so, a spoonful of vermouth is poured into the shaker and then poured out, and the shaker filled with gin. So the contents of the Martini glass is almost 100% ice cold gin. And that's how sophisticated Martini drinkers demand their Martinis: barely stirred, never shaken (shaking 'bruises the gin').

I read the novel by Fleming with the 'shaken, not stirred.' It was NOT a Martini. Cocktails are like hash, some ingredients must always be the same, but hash is different from one diner to the next (hash can be different in the same diner from one meal to the next, but cocktails are usually the same every time in the same bar, since the owners tell the bartenders how each cocktail must be made).

The Martini, as I said, is gin and French vermouth (or an Italian imitation of French vermouth).

In the first Bond book, Bond orders a mixture of 4 shots of gin and one shot of vodka, shaken, not stirred, and poured into a large glass (since, with the large amount of gin, vodka, and melted ice, it would never fit into a Martini glass). The movies then had Bond order an ordinary Martini, served in a normal Martini glass, 'shaken, not stirred,' so it would have been a very weak Martini. And, not knowing anything about Martinis, most Americans thought the rich sophisticates who could afford Martinis always ordered them 'shaken, not stirred'.

From Candidate Trump to President Trump

Candidate Trump said he'd bring back coal jobs and remove job-killing regulations and build a big wall on the Mexican border, none of which will bring back the jobs of those Americans who went from well paid jobs to living off savings and what part time, minimum wage work they can get.

Back in the '70s, there were tens of millions of jobs mining coal, jobs that didn't really require a secondary education. But then all those jobs were replaced by a few thousand engineers with tertiary education who could mine far more coal by programming coal mining robots. Providing great subsidies for coal won't bring those jobs back, it will just mean more money for Mr Peabody.

But Secretary Clinton promised war on Day 1, she said the US must force regime change on Syria. Putin said he would not allow that, so Secretary Clinton promised, that if Putin didn't back down, the US would also force regime change on the Soviet Union. Putin, she said, was still an evil KGB agent and she'd transform Russia from a brutal, impoverished dictatorship into a peaceful and prosperous democracy, and every Russian would be eternally grateful.

Candidate Trump promised to work with the legitimate governments of Syria and Russia to fight terrorism.

Given that Candidate Trump promised more global warming, a disaster, that wasn't good, but better than WWIII.

Silly me.

President Trump submitted a resolution to the UN Security Council to force regime change in Syria, a resolution vetoed by Russia and China.

President Trump says, unless Russia returns the Crimea, stops supporting the ethnic Russians in the eastern Ukraine, and pulls out of Syria and returns those military bases where the Soviet military is squatting to their rightful owners, NATO, he will force regime change on Russia. (The US MSM complains that, if only we'd elected Secretary Clinton, she'd have started on Day 1, while Trump hasn't started regime change in Syria and Russia, and it's already past Day 50.)

Plus, since China vetoed his resolution and is building islands in the East and South China seas, he'll also need to force regime change in China.

President Trump is trying (with limited success so far) to achieve all the disastrous promises that Candidate Trump made about domestic policy, and is also promising to keep all of Secretary Clinton's promises about foreign policy.

But Secretary Clinton was only promising regime change in Russia and a trade war with China, while Trump & Co are promising a much more exciting military conflict with both Russia and China.

What could possibly go wrong?

Trump??? Shaken not stirred???

In October, 2016, I wrote that there was no way Trump could be president. I stand by that prediction. Every single indicator said Trump could NOT be president. And every single indicator was completely wrong. The best said Trump had a 25% chance. Most said 0%. I accepted the 25% as the best, but still remote.

No one knows if Secretary Clinton lost or Trump won (or a bit of both). Trump should not have won the nomination. But he did. He didn't win the vote, but US rules says that New York and California don't get as many votes as they think they deserve, and that goes back to the 18th century: when 13 colonies agreed to join in a single polity, the small colonies wanted some protections from the big colonies. And they got them.

The Senate heavily favours small states and is not proportional. The Electoral College favours small states and is not proportional. And Secretary Clinton's Ada artificial intelligence programme that told her how to win the election proved to be artificially intelligent, not really intelligent.

And now we all have to see if Trump will be a disaster, or just another typical US President (i.e., a disaster).

US Election

I was writing about the US election until March, when it all went haywire.

The Republicans said their rule was proportional allocation of delegates to the nominating convention; however, with about 35% of the vote, Trump had 48% of the delegates. Then all his opponents dropped out, and Trump ended up with more than 50% of the delegates and the nomination, even though less than 40% of the voters voted for him.

As people like the author of Dilbert point out, the first task of any politician is to win the nomination, and Trump did that perfectly, saying exactly what needed to be said to win a majority of the delegates and thereby win the nomination.

But then, the politician needs to appeal to those who are not such rabid party members and who vehemently reject the platform planks that appealed to primary and caucus voters. And everything Trump does seems tailored to offend women and Hispanics.

Is Trump running as a favour to Billary, who would have lost to any other candidate?

From Grade School to Heresy

As an American, I learned in school that Washington never told a lie and that the US of A was the Greatest Force for Good in the World, always fighting evil and protecting the innocent.

The US of A was the only force that could stop the evil Kaiser from enslaving the continent and then maybe the entire world. Likewise, the Nazis, just as evil as the Kaiser, could only be stopped by the US of A after the Nazi Army had completely defeated every other power in all of Eurasia.

Then came Vietnam. The innocent Vietnamese were being attacked by evil Communists, and if the US failed to stop the Communists in Vietnam, it would be worse than Chamberlain at Munich. As Churchill wrote, Chamberlain could easily have defeated the Nazis in '38. Churchill said, 'You had to choose between war and dishonour. You have chosen dishonour, but you will have war.' Sure enough, after Britain and France declared war on Germany in '39, in '40 the Nazi's easily crushed the combined Anglo-French force in just a few weeks. And if the US acted like Chamberlain in Munich, there would be no US of A to step in and save us the way we saved Europe. Twice.

I watched the cartoon Blitz Wolf. President Chamberlain promised the 3 little pigs they could build their houses of straw or sticks, since he'd signed a treaty with Adolph Wolf. Two did so, but the third little pig, Sgt. Pork, built a fortress with anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and an airfield with fighters and bombers, and so he was able to save the other two little pigs and their country.

All the US media confirmed that the Vietnam war was absolutely essential.

And then Johnson quit. And in '73, Nixon managed to destroy his own presidency. And the US media suddenly discovered that almost everything they'd said about the war being justified and necessary had become inoperative.

And then I began reading books NOT on the list of books we were to read in school. Kafka, who made the German Empire under the Kaiser sound more humane and better run than the rest of Europe. Graham Green and Orwell, who reported, with ample facts, proof, and evidence supporting their conclusions, that the British Empire was bad, and the American neo-Empire was much worse.

And  in '69, Seymour Hersh had interviewed a lieutenant who'd been court-martialled, and got all the details of a massacre by US forces of a Vietnamese village with no soldiers, only the women, children and elderly left behind. His report was rejected by every major newspaper, but was accepted by a few minor newspapers and won the Pulitzer Prize, after which the details were news that the major newspapers had to report. It took time for this to spread, but in '73, it was finally part of the accepted narrative of Vietnam: a war started based on a lie, and in which the US forces committed many atrocities.

In 2003, the US media said that the public must NOT hold Bush, jr responsible for Johnson's lies. The Vietnam war had been a mistake, but Saddam had a vast, nuclear arsenal, and if the US did not go in, it would be far worse than Chamberlain at Munich, it would mean a disaster that would make 9/11 seem like a minor fender-bender.

After Bush, jr was out of office, the WMD became a lie, except for the rabid right-wingers who still say many soldiers saw them, but they were classified, since the paternal Bush, jr didn't want to terrify the American public with horrors that were his and his alone.

Now, of course, the US has liberated Iraq and Libya from terrible, impoverished tyrannies and made both peaceful and prosperous. Any problems cannot be blamed on the US, but on the incompetent and corrupt Iraqis and Libyans. The US did as much as could be done, but that was not enough to eliminate every single problem because of the Iraqis and Libyans.

And the US must liberate Syria, Iran, Russia, and China from their evil dictators and make them just as peaceful and prosperous and free as Iraq and Libya.

Every US/UK/European newspaper agrees that the evil Syrian dictator has murdered 300,000 innocent, peaceful protestors.

Before, the UK had an unpatriotic newspaper that did NOT support policies that were in the best interests of the ruling party and its supporters. The old, unpatriotic Guardian.uk wrote that, of the 200,000 people that had been killed in Syria, almost all had been killed by the 'innocent, peaceful protestors,' NOT by the Syrian Government. Fortunately, the Guardian.uk was shut down and replaced with the Guardian.com that says the evil Syrian dictator murdered all but a few hundred of the 300,000 who have been killed. A very few evil persons who infiltrated the Daesh killed those few hundred, but the Daesh was created by the evil Syrian dictator, so he's really responsible for all 300,000.

The fact that I've spoken to MANY Syrians, who say it's foreign jihadists who killed the 300,000 can easily be dismissed: What do the Syrians know? The US has a free press that always tells the truth. Those Syrians only have the Syrian press, which prints the lies of the evil dictator. And of what they saw for themselves? Read about the psychological experiment where a gorilla crossed the field during a football game and no one saw it. The US has absolutely reliable facts, NOT the Syrians who were eyewitnesses who missed seeing the gorilla.

Ted Rall accepts the Hersh versions of the assassination of Osama, and the fact that the US Ambassador to Libya was asked to work with al-Qaeda to get weapons (including sarin gas) to al-Nusrah in Syria to overthrow the evil dictator. Rall and I are about the only two Americans who accept the Hersh versions.

The US press says Hersh is a racist, sexist, tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, and most Americans accept that. After all, the US press is free and always tells the truth.

And so I see no way the US will not go to war with Syria in early '17 (it's already at war, but covertly, but in '17, the war effort will cease to be covert). Followed by wars with Iran, Russia, and China.

Just to keep the world safe from evil dictators who want to establish their terrible tyrannies and expand them to the entire world, of course.

A breif history of Zionism

Friday, 22 April, Passover began at sunset. And every Jew prayed, 'Next year in Jerusalem.' But, after being evicted from Palestine by the Romans, and the Jewish Temple destroyed, the prayer was NOT for the Ottoman city of al-Quds, but for the eschatological Jerusalem, the City of Peace (which is what Jerusalem means).

***

The Zionists would like to have a Jew as the instigator of Zionism, and quite a few people have suggested various Jews, but the first influential person to advocate Zionism was the British WASP Lord Keith.

In the first half of the 19th century, the British discovered mercantilism: raw materials (including food) would be imported from colonies (at below world market prices) and paid for by selling finished products to the colonials (at above world market prices).

If one reads British novels from the 19th and early 20th century, they wanted young WASPs to volunteer as Imperial Officers to supervise the colonies, ensuring that plenty of raw materials flowed into the UK and the colonials bought all their finished products from the UK.

But the UK did not want Jews (or Roman Catholics for that matter) as Imperial officers; however, Lord Keith came up with the idea that all the Jews in the UK should go to Palestine and sell corn and tropical fruits to the UK at below world market prices, and use the money to buy finished products from the UK.

***

The Ottoman Empire had the notion of property ownership, and the state could not take it away.

In Palestine, most people were tenant farmers. The families stayed on the same plot of land, eating 1/3 of what they grew and giving 2/3 to the owners of the land as rent. The owners sometimes sold the land, but the tenant farmers remained, and just sent the 2/3 they owed as rent to the new owners.

But a very few British Jews took Lord Keith's admonition that they had enjoyed British hospitality long enough, and bought land in Palestine. They evicted the tenant farmers and began farming with modern equipment, producing lots of corn and tropical fruits to sell to the UK. The evicted tenants were annoyed, but no one cared. The Ottomans figured the Jews had purchased the land legally, and could do whatever they wanted with it.

Another feature of the 19th century were some Jews who wanted to change the way Judaism was practised.  Judaism required all practising Jews to be bilingual. The Hebrew language was sacred, the language of the Torah and prayer, and was not to be used to haggle with the greengrocer. For secular use, Jews were supposed to use a language that was not Hebrew. But some Zionists wanted all Jews to be monolingual Hebrew speakers.

***

In 1918, the Ottomans lost WWI, and their empire was split between the UK and France. The US President Wilson said the US had gone into the war to end all Imperial Empires (except for the tiny US Imperial possessions, of course) but he was ignored by everyone, including the US Congress.

So Britain got Palestine, and, as a colony, they sent British WASPs as Imperial Officers. They also strongly encouraged all British Jews to go there, but they didn't get many takers. The idea was to get a mix of Jews and Palestinians who hated each other, so both would prefer to have Britain keep the peace. In practice, both Jews and Palestinians set off bombs to kill the British Imperial officers, but Britain was too strong, and remained.

***

In 1933 the German voters gave Adolph Hitler's party a plurality, and the German leadership made him Chancellor. Hitler's platform had been anti-Semitic. At first, this meant that, if a Nazi assaulted a Jew, the law wouldn't do much, if anything, but Jews who could see that things were getting worse and worse, and who had a little money, tried to leave. The ship St Louis tried the countries it could reach that were not in Europe, but all refused to admit them.

In 1938 came Kristallnacht, after which it was perfectly legal to kill Jews in Germany. But no one would allow the Jews to leave. Britain, the US, and many Latin American countries refused to admit them. Britain said Palestine was ONLY for British Jews. So 6 million out of 11 million Jews in Europe were killed by the Nazis, when many could have been saved had the world not been anti-Semitic. The only innocents were the Jews (of course) and the colonials who were subjugated by the Imperial powers, since they could not allow Jews in, even if they wanted to do the right thing, since the Imperial powers banned Jews from entering.

When Europe was liberated in '45 by the Soviets and the Americans, the Concentration Camps became Refugee Camps. Jews were not allowed to return to the properties they'd owned before the war. There still wasn't enough food, but at least, when Jews in the Refugee camps died, they got a proper Jewish funeral instead of cremation.

President Roosevelt had told the British and French they would have to give up their empires after the war. They tried to convince him that that this would be a disaster, but Roosevelt was not convinced, nor was President Truman.

In '47, every poll showed that Truman could not possibly be elected president in '48 (he had been elected vice-president, then became president when Roosevelt died, so it wasn't a re-election).

The British agreed to end the colonies in the Raj and Palestine (they gradually got rid of most of the rest in the '60s, '70s, and '90s, but in '47 they freed Palestine and the Raj).

And Truman ordered every Jew in every Refugee camp in Western Europe, 2 million of them, sent to Palestine (whether they wanted to go or not). And Truman got almost all the Jewish vote in the US, which led to his totally unexpected victory in the '48 election.

The King of Jordan, who had become King of both the Transjordan and Palestine, said he could take 500,000 or so Jews, but not 2 million. But Truman didn't listen to the King of Jordan, and 2 million Jews were sent to Palestine, and they displaced many Palestinians.

Fearing the heavily armed Zionist army, many Palestinians fled Palestine, hoping the Arab armies would defeat the Zionists and give them their homes back. This never happened.

The eastern part of Palestine, including the city al-Quds (the Old City of Jerusalem to the West) remained part of Jordan. The western part of Palestine became the new country of Israel, recognised by the UN (and the US, of course, and many other states).

Every Muslim country, most of which had many, many Jews, up to 1/3 of the population, ordered all their Jews to leave. Or else. And most went to Israel, because no other country would take them.

So Israel had a huge number of Jews, and needed more land. Any Palestinian accused of harbouring anti-Zionist feelings had his house destroyed, and a new house erected on the spot and given to a Jew. Many of the Jews forced to travel to Israel did NOT want to go, they had no choice in the matter. But the ones forced into Israel needed a place to live, and sending the Palestinians to other countries, ANY other countries, seemed like the only choice.

The Palestinians want their old homes back, and some tried to fight (without any success).

Except for Jordan, most Muslims countries say the Palestinians must never be given citizenship, the world must return Palestine to them.

In '67, saying they knew the Arabs were about to attack, the Zionists took over the third of Palestine that had been part of Jordan and Egypt. Those Palestinians are all colonials, to this day, with almost no rights. Those in the part of Palestine that formed Israel in '47 are citizens, but only second class citizens, and are (officially) banned from entering any Muslim country (since they have Israeli passports).

With support, first from France and later from the US, the Zionists have made life terrible for the Palestinians.

Of course, the Zionists ask, 'What choice did we have?' and that is a VERY good question. The world said Jews were not welcome, and the Nazis wanted to exterminate every single Jew. The only place the world would let the Jews go was Palestine.

And the Palestinians still resent losing their land, and only Jordan allows them to become citizens (but second class citizens, with limited rights). So what can they do?

Much of the world is guilty, but it's hard to fault the Zionists OR the Palestinians, since the rest of the world won't give either the Zionists or the Palestinians any other choice.

***

Passover started last Friday at sunset. Every Passover, every Jew must read from the PASSOVER HAGGADAH. And one of the prayers is:

As our Passover meal draws to an end, we take up our cups one last time.
The redemption is not yet complete. Not everyone in our world is yet free.
This fourth cup reminds us of our responsibility to be G_d's partners in
bringing freedom to all those enslaved, peace to all those at war, food to all those
who hunger. This is our purpose as Jews. May we live to fulfil it.

This prayer was written by a very Reform Rabbi, but it encompasses what the Passover should be: a conviction that, since G_d freed the Jews from Pharonic slavery, all Jews must strive to bring peace and freedom for everyone, including freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from oppression.

It's not at all clear to me how the Zionists can make the required Passover prayers.

The New York Times Magazine on how Hawkish Secretary Clinton Is

The official New York Times policy is that:

a) The evil Syrian dictator has single-handedly murdered 300,000 innocent, peaceful, unarmed protesters, thousands with poison gas, and must be removed; and
b) Secretary Clinton is the only one running for a nomination in this campaign who is qualified to be President of the US of A.

Over and over the 'stories' and columnists and editorials support these two points.

But sometimes the New York Times Magazine runs articles that don't quite fit.

Theo Padnos went to Syria to interview the peaceful, unarmed protestors. He was planning to interview them for a week or two, but was 'invited' to stay for a year or so, during which time the Free Syrian Army he had gone to interview all turned out to be al-Qaeda, and they kept teasing him, saying they planned to sell him to Daesh (ISIS in English) to be beheaded on YouTube. As it turned out, Mr Panos was lucky: al-Qaeda doesn't usually kill unarmed captives who have broken no Islamic law, they follow a less sanguinary version of Islam than the Daesh. So he finally managed to get out of Syria and write his report, and then, miraculously, it made it into the New York Times Magazine.

This week,  the New York Times Magazine has an article about Secretary Clinton, pointing out that she is the most hawkish candidate they have ever seen. Of course, being the New York Times Magazine, they conclude in the very last, short paragraph (of a very long article that is mostly scary) that, in our world with the Daesh threatening an attack on the US much worse than 9/11, with the Soviet Union trying to expand and overrun all of Europe, and with China trying to take control of all of East Asia, the US desperately NEEDS a very strong Hawk who will stand for no nonsense from the Daesh, Russia, or China, but will send as many divisions and fleets as necessary to keep us all safe, and the Republicans (and Sanders) aren't nearly as willing and able to send troops (or nukes, if necessary) to make the world safe for Democracy.