Tonight, let's look at some of the problems a modern civilization faces.

East

When looking at empires in decline, Russia is a prime example, mirroring many of the European problems with demographic collapse, economic crisis and invasion by radical forces. Sometimes, factors in a societal equation become apparent first when the problems have already grown too big:

— Russian authorities seized 2.4 metric tons of heroin in 2006, about three times the seizures in 2002, according to United Nations figures. That's a small fraction of the estimated 60 metric tons that are thought to arrive in Russia from Afghanistan each year.

Russian officials publicly blame America for the plague because almost all the heroin comes from U.S.-dominated Afghanistan , but they won't discuss in detail how drugs move through their country. They've yet to devise a comprehensive plan to address the issue. Trials of high-level traffickers are conducted in secret. Even midlevel police officials usually don't talk, and when they do, it's privately and away from their workplaces.

In Russia , it's much easier to blame a U.S. conspiracy than to bring up the subject of corrupt officials, the Russian mafia and their involvement in the drug trade.

As with most, if not all critical problems that can cause a civilization to collapse, the Russian health crisis is influenced by external factors like drug import, but really boils down to a decaying social culture and government/mafia-sponsored corruption. Not all health problems are related to corruption though; the good old vodka remains the miracle of Caucasus:

A new study by an international team of public health researchers documents the devastating impact of alcohol abuse on Russia — showing that drinking caused more than half of deaths among Russians aged 15 to 54 in the turbulent era following the Soviet collapse.

The 52 percent figure compares to estimates that less than 4 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by alcohol abuse, according to the study by Russian, British and French researchers published in Friday's edition of the British medical journal The Lancet.

Professor David Zaridze, head of the Russian Cancer Research Center and lead author of the study, estimated that the increase in alcohol consumption since 1987, the year when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's restrictions on alcohol sales collapsed, cost the lives of 3 million Russians who would otherwise be alive today. "This loss is similar to that of a war," Zaridze said.

Alcohol took the natural place a Soviet-dominated culture once had in the hearts of the Russian public; Putin may accordingly be right that the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great catastrophes of the 21st Century, but hardly for geopolitical reasons alone. As an interesting sidenote, the article actually suggests moderate drinking of alcohol has got a lot of positive health effects, including protection against stroke, Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. So, enjoy drinking in healthy amounts.

Yet, of course, corruption and post-Soviet totalitarianism remain key problems in modern day Russia. As a soon-to-be journalist, I would hesitate to migrate to Russia, unless I wanted my immediate death to be announced and then having it dismissed as an accident:

A local corruption reporter in Russia died of head injuries on Monday in what police said Tuesday was a drunken fall. Colleagues, on the other hand, are sure it was a revenge attack for muckraking journalism.

"I have no doubt that the attack was directly connected to Yaroshenko's writing and is payback for his journalistic work," said Sergei Slepzov, a close friend and colleague of Yaroshenko.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has called for an investigation, suggesting that Yaroshenko was targeted because he had written about corruption in the local law enforcement agencies, government office and the prosecutor's office.

Of course, the police is not interested in continuing the investigation; that could reveal some nasty inside work. So why is this a civilization problem? Well, when the tentacles of government secretly order the death of oppositional and inconvenient critics, it's rendering itself godlike and indisputable. At that point, loyalty to government becomes more important than loyalty to community, culture and truth. And so we breed a nasty Nanny State á la Europe, where we're free to have sex on television but not point out that Europeans are being replaced by third world immigrants to finance out-of-control government spending.

Therefore, let's look at some of the issues the European Nanny State believes are important to handle:

West

Teachers at St Sidwells Primary school, Exeter, Devon, have told parents of pupils goggles can now only be worn by children who have an 'adverse reaction to chemicals in water'.

"Wet plastic is very slippery and frequent, incorrect or unnecessary adjustment or removal of them, by pulling them away from the eyes instead of sliding them over the forehead, can lead to them slipping from the pupil's grasp with the hard plastic causing severe injury."

The school said in a statement: "In the present culture we need to make sure we are legally covered in the event of a problem or injury.

In this cute little story we see two main factors at work:

• The government is blindly dedicated to securing the safety of the public, to the point where it doesn't trust the judgement of its citizens anymore and wants to take responsibility that otherwise would be individual by nature. This means we all have to pay for morons to feel safe from moronic things most of us would otherwise learn to cope with. Sure, some kids may actually hurt themselves with these googles, but instead of letting them learn a lesson from that and move on, we end up nannying everyone at the expense of those who just want to control their own lives. In fact, the more the government nannies people, the more impotent and stupid they get (Sweden, anyone?!).
• There's a second part to this story, which is cleverly revealed in the statement issued by the school: "In the present culture we need to make sure we are legally covered in the event of a problem or injury." Translation: We're trying to avoid getting sued thanks to bureaucratic safety regulations that wouldn't allow a fly to scare a child, so we're taking the safe path and banning all that is possibly horrible, scary, dangerous and uncertain. A nice recipe to doom, because the government in all Nanny States end up regulating more and controling more. At the end of it, we're all robots serving a system we no longer control.

Here's another pack of gems from Nanny Europe:

Banning welcome mats…

Families living in a flat block have been told to remove welcome mats from their porches because they are a health and safety risk.

…and implementing Castro-style block watches

In partnership with regional chapters of the charity group Crimestoppers U.K., multiple local police forces have launched a program called “Too Much Bling? Give Us a Ring.” The object of the program is to encourage people who suspect that a neighbor or acquaintance is living off the proceeds of crime to anonymously provide information about that person to the police…

Not very surprising; I'm sure we'll have to ban pets, stairs, cars, tobacco and kitchen knives soon, because they all cause harm to a lot of people who behave like idiots. A better way would of course be to let people take some individual responsibility and then face the consequences of their actions, to learn what works and what doesn't. But wait, that's offensive, because then who are we going to nanny to feel good? The public are the incentive behind nannying, because they cry out for safety. Don't listen to them, or you end up with a civilization in decline and crowdism as culture.

I earlier talked about Lydia McGrew's conjecture about Conservative parties, and how to win the cultural war against Western leftism. But why is it that Conservatives either feel the need to radicalize or water down their beliefs? What is the mechanism behind McGrew's conjecture? The answer, I think, is simple, and can be described in one word: Opposition. Which brings me to...

Alex Birch maxim no 1: All political groups without real power who identify themselves as an opposition to the established order will emphasize ideology over practicality and therefore radicalize their views.

The Far Right and Left best signify this group, in that they are not willing to compromise on ideology to help them achieve their goals, and in many cases use violent and militant opposition as ways of getting their message across. They are very careful not to agree with any of the official policies of the establishment, and this is what perpetuates the process of radicalization, until they finally become extremists. This is the far end of McGrew's conjecture.

The other end is of course populism, which is what happens to most of these groups whenever they miraculously increase their public support and realize they have a chance of getting some of their policies through. At this point they will eventually get sucked up into the process of compromise and pragmatism that defines the established parties of the Western democracies today. Liberals use Conservative policies, Conservatives borrow liberal policies etc. - all to enhance their power and popularity. Even once radical parties will here be willing to soften images, loosen up on ideology and compromise, or else they will lose out on the game.

That game is liberal democracy and this is the process by which it operates. Conservatives need to face it and try to avoid negative populism by softening their image instead of softening policies. If they, adding to this, can avoid radicalization by emphasizing common ground with oppositional groups and not view themselves as alienated from public discourse, we might be able to see a Conservative revolution in the foreseeable future.

Although we are living in an age of impotent egoism where people can't lift a finger for anyone else unless they're promised money or fame, there's plenty of evidence that suggests people are strengthening ties within their communities and families. How about these German senior citizens who got tired of being robbed on savings during the recession and hit back:

A group of well-to-do German senior citizens, who lost their savings in the credit crunch, staged a revenge attack and held their terrified financial advisor to ransom, according to several published reports Wednesday.

The alleged kidnapping is the latest example of what is being dubbed “silver crime” — the violent backlash of pensioners who feel cheated by the world, the Daily Telegraph said.

“As I was letting myself into my front door I was assaulted from behind and hit hard,” the financial adviser James Amburn, a 56-year-old German-American, told the Telegraph. “Then they bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. I thought I was a dead man.”

I guess no financial advisors and speculators thought of this: The Nanny State may bail your companies out, but who is going to save your sorry asses from the angry public? But it's not just soft crooks like financial players who get caught up in trouble. Real criminals like the Japanese Yakuza are starting to feel the wrath of organized communities:

Having one Japanese gang headquartered in their neighborhood was bad enough. When a rival mob tried to move in, the neighbors did something that was once almost unthinkable.

They organized, called the cops, went to court to evict the newcomers, and won.

"Civil action is growing across the country," said Yasushi Murakami, a lawyer for 160 residents of Tokyo's Akasaka district who, after a months-long battle, won a court-mediated settlement in April to keep out the 4,800-member Inagawa-kai syndicate. "People are refusing to tolerate gangsters."

While the Yakuza might be pleasant on the movie screen, it's a serious problem in Japanese society. The public have figured it out though: If they don't give in to intimidation and threats, they can overpower those hoodlums and secure the safety of their communities. This is moral courage in action, folks. Learn from it and repeat at home.

The dead Iranian protestor Neda Agha Soltan is becoming a saint in the democratic West. The public go nuts over stories like these, because they link emotions to a great political event, which can easily be used to morally justify our own POV: The Iranian election is not following a Western model and protestors are being shot dead by thug police, so it's our divine duty as supporters of Freedom to spread more Liberty and Democracy in the world.

I don't really care if anyone here thinks America should bomb Iran (Neocons), establish peaceful diplomacy (Democrats), or join the international community in denouncing its election (Republicans). The only thing I ask of my readers is to recognize the truth: This is obviously not about supporting freedom in Iran, but to destabilize the regime and silently overthrow it. Since the end of WWII, America has supported both tyranny and freedom abroad, according to its own interests. What does that tell you?

As I mentioned yesterday, it's obvious that Iran is not a democracy in the Western sense. In fact, we may not want to call it a democracy at all. The non-interventionists who claim this is not our issue, although they've got their facts straight, are missing the point. The CIA is not infiltrating the regime and Iranian media because it believes in democratic freedom for everyone on the planet. It's there because it's expanding the US empire and building a network of international collaborators dependent upon Western force. Pax Americana may indeed be a naive dream, but whether we like it or not, the West has got Roman-style ambitions and will never give them up until it falls. At that point, someone else will lead the way, most likely the Chinese.

Remember: It's not about freedom, it's about power.

The chaos in Iran is far from over. Protestors are continuing to mobilize against a possibly rigged election that came out in favor of Ahmadinejad. American Conservatives are complaining that Obama isn't doing more to support the "pursuit of freedom" for which protesters are sacrificing their lives. What do they mean by this? Always insightful, Brett Stevens over at Amerika.org elaborates:

Americans, and others who have followed the path of individual desire to democracy, consumerism and the nanny state, have no idea why they are loathed.

I’d suggest it’s from the reasons we interfere. Because our society is based in the revolutions of 1789 and 1968, we [see] a dichotomy between “free” and “not-free” with no shades of gray.

Even more, it seems as if we’re trying to draw them into our system of civilization — even with its vast problems — so that they cannot have a competing style of government that might prove better. If this modernity thing is going to kill us, we want everyone else to go down, too, or someone [might get] ahead and — and that’s unfair!

We're ahead of the game, so we assume all other nations will bow down before us to satisfy out imperial interests. People who get lost in dogma forget the obvious: America is really reacting to the Irani situation not because it's playing universal citizen, but because it’s trying to maintain its empire status in an age where it's currently losing power to other empires. That Israel happens to be caught up in this war makes the whole thing even more complex and demanding: It wants to render Iran impotent without blowing itself up in the process.

But voters don't see reality, only emotions and rhetoric. Let's spell out three simple facts about the Iranian election that everyone needs to be aware of before they start bloviating:

1. We've been here before: Engaging in a US-supported revolution, disguised as "freedom" for the people, to overthrow an Evil dictator (e.g. someone who doesn't play along with our empire rules, especially if we helped him into power in the first place).

2. The CIA is doing it again: Attempting to destabilize the Iranian regime, while the whole West accuses Iran of rigged elections and totalitarian measures.

3. Mousavi is a reformist, not a revolutionary. He's not pro-West simply because his opponent is a critic of the West.

Okay, so the election is clearly not following the rule of law as in the West and the results, whatever they may be, are obviously influenced by both totalitarian bias and Western intervention. Many people are reacting to the protesters shot to death by thug police.

Very unpleasant indeed, but maybe we need to consider what Brett Stevens is trying to say: This is not our election following our democratic model. It's a country trying to maintain its independence from Western-led foreign politics--something it has been doing for the last 20 years. We can cry over dead protestors, but when we claim we support "freedom," we only prove to our Empire-leaders that we really are the moron voters they take us for.

Half-Sigma throws out this question:

Affirmative action, to the extent that it's tolerated, should only apply to people who can trace their ancestry back to slavery within the 50 states, or to American Indians (because we stole their land).

People whose ancestors moved to the United States voluntarily, no matter their race, should not be entitled to any affirmative action.

Discuss.

My comment:

Affirmative Action should be ignored, because it's negative logic that creates a feeling of victimhood. As we can see with the Jewish community in Europe, this doesn't work. Farrakhan was right: black people need to believe in themselves and rebuild their communities. Affirmative Action is bureaucratic fake-altruism from people who sit at the top.

What do you think?

With the debate around my post on American religiosity in mind, I just stumbled across this article on reason vs. faith:

In 1802 Georg W.F. Hegel wrote an impassioned treatise on faith and reason, articulating the major philosophical conflict of the day. Among European intellectual circles, the Enlightenment credo, which celebrated the "sovereignty of reason," had recently triumphed. From that standpoint, human intellect was a self-sufficient measure of the true, the just, and the good. The outlook's real target, of course, was religion, which the philosophers viewed as the last redoubt of delusion and superstition. Theological claims, they held, could only lead mankind astray. Once the last ramparts of unreason were breached — our mental Bastilles, as it were — sovereign reason would take command and, presumably, human perfection would not be long in coming.

Taylor contrives a new "faith based" lexicon of social criticism to indict the multifarious shortcomings of a secular age. In his view, modernity's "crisis of meaning" has reached grave and epidemic proportions. As denizens of a fallen world, we systematically lack commitments and allegiances that transcend the narrow confines of our own monadic egos. Our social existence has withered to the point where we have become a mass of atomized, "buffered" selves — living caricatures of Descartes's shallow, epistemological solipsism, ego cogito sum. As social beings we are incapable of creating cohesive and lasting bonds. For this reason, we have become incapable of community.

But from a narrowly neo-Darwinian perspective, it is impossible to account for religion's indispensable role in forming the higher ideals that, as a species, help to make us genuinely civilized. Historically, religious ideals have inspired agape, compassion, selflessness, brotherly and sisterly love, community, and numerous good works. They have spurred political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Desmond Tutu to oppose oppression and champion the cause of social equality. Religious conviction provided the moral suasion behind the 19th-century antislavery movement and has been a spur to numerous instances of humanitarian intervention.

This debate is mostly nonsense and here is why: science is not a metaphysical or ethical discipline. A scientist doesn't develop ethical guidelines or speak about the fundamental metaphysical nature of reality. These are academically the fields of moral and theoretical philosophy. Both disciplines have historically embraced both scientific and religious ideas, and continue to do so. In other words, the people who debate this issue don't seem to have any idea what they're talking about.

The ancients knew better: science has got one role, religion has got another. No, science didn't give us affirmative action or the Egyptian pyramids, because scientists don't work with racism or build with stone blocks. Similarly, priests haven't brought us electricity or computers. Science advances our empirical understanding of reality. Religion offers spirituality, moral guidelines, and community services. Comprende?

Looking at it from this perspective you quickly come to realize that this so called "reason vs. faith" debate is a confused idea about the role of science and religion in society. Only in a progressive world dominated by crowdism could we commit such a mistake, and pretend it's the biggest problem since the Enlightenment.

What should best be seen as a cultural reaction in Europe to the leftist-dominated politics of the 70's up till today, Moderate and Far Right parties advanced during the recent elections, winning several seats in the European Parliament. This development made political establishments all across Europe nervous, realizing the recent anti-EU and anti-leftist sentiment is growing beyond their Nanny State control.

Confusingly, one of the groups who claims to feel threatened by this trend is the Jewish community in Europe:

The Paris-based European Jewish Congress (EJC), an umbrella organization for Jewish communities in Europe, said: “As we assess the results of this week’s elections, one disturbing trend has already crystallized; the gains made by extreme-right groups is a Europe-wide phenomenon. The success of the far-right and nationalistic parties that won seats in the elections on the basis of racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic platforms points to a clear erosion of tolerance and a clarion call to European officials to immediately engage in intercultural dialogue. The success of such rabid groups as The Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party in Austria (FPO), the Danish People’s Party, the British National Party, and Jobbik in Hungary, among others, will sadly only serve to embolden those who espouse the dangerous concepts of extreme nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.”

Although these and other Jewish groups are not alone in their concerns about rising anti-Semitism in Europe, their fear of the far right often obscures the indisputable fact that some of the greatest threats to Jews (and Israel) in contemporary Europe stem from the left side of the political aisle. Indeed, it is no big secret that all across the European continent, left-wing intellectuals are playing a crucial role in making anti-Semitism seem respectable. Of course, they are (usually) careful to promote their hatred of Jews only indirectly. Instead, modern anti-Semitism is typically disguised as anti-Zionism and an obsession with Palestinian victimhood.

In any case, right-wing groups such as Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and the Danish People’s Party, far from being the purveyors of “rabid” racism and anti-Semitism that the EJC claims, are some of the best allies that Jews (and Israel) will find in Europe today. In fact, the Danish People’s Party is a strong supporter of Israel as well as the US-led War on Terrorism, of which Israel is a major beneficiary. It has called for stronger sanctions against totalitarian regimes and dictatorships, especially those in the Islamic world. It has also supported academic grants for specific research into terrorism and Islamism. For his part, Wilders calls himself a true friend of Israel. During a recent visit to Jerusalem, Wilders said: “We see Christians and Jews as part of one culture. When I’m here I’m with my people, my country, my values. I feel more at home here than in many other European countries. Israel’s a democracy – it’s everything we stand for.”

As Jews in the multicultural metropol of Malmö in Sweden are experiencing every day, the Far Left is allying with Muslim Arabs in an effort to mobilize anti-Israeli and, occasionally, anti-Semitic rage. Most Jews in Europe have been caught off-guard and the reason to this is that they've failed to understand leftist psychology. Leftists began turning against Israel shortly after the war in Iraq, making the Palestinian cause their own, after "realizing" that the advantages of the US-backed Israeli military left the Palestinians in an underdog position. Add to this that Israel is a pro-American, capitalist-industrial nation, and you have all the ingredients for a traditional leftist enemy.

While it is true that the "Far Right" (read: National Socialists/White Nationalists/Fascists) shares the criticism of Israel with the Far Left, the parties that advanced in Western Europe don't belong to this group. They are radical Conservative parties, many of them socialist, and, as noted by the Brussels Journal, pro-Israel and pro-Jewish in general. Whether or not this is a populist move by soft nationalists is besides the point. Compare this with any moderate leftist party in Europe, which is typically strongly critical of American-Israeli foreign policy.

So, my Jewish and right-wing friends, let's face it: right now you are each other's best friends in a political climate where leftism is mobilizing anarchist tendencies in society to cause chaos for its own sake. The GOP is stranded, Obama is going increasingly soft on issues in the Middle East to score populist points, the European media suffers from leftist bias, and even the most radical Conservatives in the West barely dare to touch the issue of radical Islam and third world immigration. How about this new meme: Western Conservatism becomes a Jewish cause?

Although the opposition seemed strong in Iran, Mousavi lost the election to Ahmadinejad, and protests around election fraud are already running rampant in the Islamic republic:

Iran's government announced an overwhelming re-election victory Saturday for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , but his chief opponent called the results a fraud and confrontations broke out between students and security forces.

A McClatchy reporter saw groups of armored, baton-wielding special forces units charge and disperse groups of students along central Vali Asr Street in Tehran , occasionally striking civilians with their batons. A few students threw rocks, some from the windows of buildings above.

"Democracy is dead in Iran , by these elections. ... It is some kind of catastrophe, by this large fraud," said journalist Tahere Eibodi, as she stood outside the campaign headquarters of Ahmadinjeda's principal opponent, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi , a relative moderate who attracted intense support from many young people.

Of course, we're unlikely ever to find out whether Ahmadinejad actually pulled a fast one on Mousavi. Politics rhymes ill with honesty, especially in an ultra-conservative, authoritarian regime like Iran, where practical outcome means more than abiding the law. So what now? Well, for starters, these protests are simply the beginning of a larger public distrust that is likely to grow stronger over time against the newly elected President. Ahmadinejad will in other words have problems trying to maintain his popularity. The Brussels Journal notes:

If Ahmadinejad can cling to power, his position will be weakened. This, in itself, will compel him to show strength -especially in areas were it is lacking. Additionally, his campaign made the country‘s nuclear rise into the center piece of his policy. If he wins, it will be the work on the bomb that had distinguished him from his otherwise more persuasive opposition. This, too, will make concessions difficult and confrontation into a consequence of internal political considerations.

The scenario very much resembles that of North Korea. Kim Jong is flexing missile muscle in the face of the international community to boost his mojo, just like a kid from the block buys himself a BMW and speeds through the city all day to prove he's hot. It's a statement: look what I can do, and no one dares to stop me. If poverty and other nationwide problems are not going away, you have to divert the attention over to other things, like standing up against the world's super power and getting away with it.

Ahmadinejad, who in the coming months will need to boost his own damaged mojo, may consider doing something similar. This leaves room for speculation around what the Israeli-American response would be in case such an attack actually became reality:

Israel's alternative is that Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs reach fruition, leaving its very existence at the whim of its staunchest adversary. Israel has not previously accepted such risks. It destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor being built by North Koreans in 2007. One major new element in Israel's calculus is the Obama administration's growing distance (especially in contrast to its predecessor).

Risks to its civilian population will weigh heavily in any Israeli decision to use force, and might well argue for simultaneous, pre-emptive attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas in conjunction with a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Obviously, Israel will have to measure the current risks to its safety and survival against the longer-term threat to its very existence once Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

Many argue that Israeli military action will cause Iranians to rally in support of the mullahs' regime and plunge the region into political chaos. To the contrary, a strike accompanied by effective public diplomacy could well turn Iran's diverse population against an oppressive regime. Most of the Arab world's leaders would welcome Israel solving the Iran nuclear problem, although they certainly won't say so publicly and will rhetorically embrace Iran if Israel strikes. But rhetoric from its Arab neighbors is the only quantum of solace Iran will get.

Make sure you read the six different scenarios outlined in that article. They highlight the complex dynamics in the relationship between Iran and Western powers. Before you dismiss the idea of Israel ever committing itself to such aggression, consider the recent growth of radicalism, nationalism and pragmatism seen in Israel this year. When the Israeli military decides to strike back against Hamas in Gaza, and doesn't really care whether or not it breaks international laws, that is a reflection of the current mentality in office. Add an unstable Iranian regime to the equation, with a President desperate to increase his public support by doing some muscle flexing on his own, this conflict between mini-empires will not go away anytime soon.

America will back Israel in case of war (no, not even Obama will cop out on that one), but where does Russia stand, a key player in helping the US to dismantle Iran's nuclear program?

Moscow's stance on sanctions matters because no matter who wins Friday's election, both the frontrunners made clear that they had no intention of giving in to Western demands that Iran halt uranium enrichment. The real decisions about Iran's nuclear future will be made by the clerical Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who continues to defy the U.S., Europe and the International Atomic Energy Agency. So, Washington believes that coordinated international pressure is the only chance the West has to talk Iran back from the nuclear brink. And Russia, which is helping Iran build its nuclear reactor at Bushehr and which is one of Tehran's key arms suppliers - as well as holding veto power at the U.N. Security Council - may hold the key to making tougher sanctions work.

Russia is certainly well placed to put the squeeze on Tehran because of its extensive business ties with Iran, including in the energy sector. For all its oil reserves, Iran's energy infrastructure is old and failing, and it is forced to import a large proportion of its gasoline needs. Washington believes the regime will be responsive to moves by the outside world to blocks improvements and investment in its energy sector. Russian support is also key to achieving an international consensus for raising the pressure on Iran - if it signs on for new sanctions, the chances are much higher of achieving broad agreement at the U.N. in September.

The Russians appreciate all this. "We clearly value this very intense and in-depth dialogue on non-proliferation," says Ryabkov. But will it buy any help on Iran? When it comes to the missile-defense program, he answers, "We do not think that this linkage is fair," because Russia believes the anti-missile system Washington had planned to station in Poland and the Czech Republic would not help defend against a potential Iranian threat. Russia loves the revival of arms-control talks with the new Administration, but it sees Iran's nuclear program as a separate issue - on which it's holding its cards close.

The Russians play their cards strategically, because they're walking a fine line between becoming a puppy to American-Israeli interests and keeping their few geopolitical allies to boost their own power on the world chart. That means they will advance slowly, knowing they hold a key position in important matters down in the Middle East. As he’s already shown, Medvedev is likely to continue embracing Obama's softer approach in foreign policy, but sit tight. For Ahmadinejad, though, the case is different: he's currently blamed for election fraud, his nation is in turmoil, and his enemy is further radicalizing itself for each day that goes by. As I always say: things are likely to blow up.

I often hear from people that I generalize too much. In fact, generalizations today are becoming somewhat taboo; we're no longer allowed to point out that some people are never going to be able to rise out of poverty, that most men are attracted to curvy women with big breasts, that people who sing well are often also beautiful (Susan Boyle doesn't count because she's not really that great a singer), or that most black men have a lot of testosterone. If you mention any of these things in public, you are most likely going to upset at least one person, and the only real argument will be: "You're generalizing too much."

In truth, this whining over generalization is a fear of grouping people together. Today we only want to see the unique individual. There is no room for gender differences, racial differences, or class differences, because that suggests we're not all the same, and thus the endless path to worldwide equality is a lot further away than what we think. Well, the raw truth is that we're not all the same, and that there are substantial differences between human groups of gender, race and class. Generalizations are simply watered-down, simplified descriptions of these differences.

There is usually truth to most generalizations, even if they offend us. Economic success corresponds roughly with genetics, most men do like big-breasted women for evolutionary reasons, people who sing well are indeed often beautiful, and black men have more testosterone than white men.

People who insist we put an end to all generalizations obviously don't know what they're talking about. Science is based upon the very principle of generalization, e.g. induction: "All 9999 crows we've studied so far were black, thus, all crows are black." Of course, this doesn't grant us an absolute truth: some poor crow, somewhere, might be born albino. Still, it doesn't change the general truth that crows as a group are predominantly black, and thanks to science we also know why some crows inevitably will be exceptions. Without inductive logic we'd never get anything done in real life. People who are against making generalizations are pacifiers.

Today everyone wants to be bailed out as soon as things get rough. If you cannot succeed honestly in life, you can always justify your own lack of success by pretending to be morally superior. I've collected a list of groups that often commit themselves to this behavior, so that we more easily can spot self-proclaimed victims wherever they hide:

• Psychoanalysts: Freud's nutty theory might be buried and dead in today's psychological practices, but the public use it all the time to justify their own miserable behavior. If you're ever happy, people think you're secretly depressed. If you want to become the best, you're secretly a bully. If you have got a beautiful wife, you're secretly a rich bastard. And so it goes on. Most of these assumptions are pure nonsense and are not based upon any evidence whatsoever. It's jealousy and bitterness, camouflaged as "insight" into other people's secret motives.
• Conspiracy theorists: I've explained before why these people are crazy. Think about it: if you actually believe there is a secret power controlling all of us, the question becomes how we should deal with it. Answer: you cannot, because all of these conspiracy powers are way too powerful for the typically stupid, ignorant and blind public, who cannot see the Ultimate Truth. So what do we do? We lie down and become victims. Conspiracy theorists preach from an underdog perspective and suggest there's nothing we can do but to whine. And as we all know, such people are the easiest to manipulate...
• Extremists: Sure, we've all been there. Sometimes, you gotta be radical. But extremists in general are impotent people because they believe dogma and ideology are more important than getting things done. This disease inflicts even the most intelligent of thinkers. The Unabomber was an exceptionally intelligent individual, but chose to blow up a few random targets and then go to prison for life, instead of at least setting a biochemical industry on fire. He was a thinker, not an activist. But despite the fact that extremists always pride themselves on being activists, they rarely achieve anything of substantial value, besides scaring the same public they hope to persuade.
• Determinists: When we fail at something, we can always point to an external factor and blame that instead. Genes, upbringing, bad friends, rainy weather etc. There's no end to the excuses people make up, when the case is often really simple: you didn't try hard enough. The raw truth of almost every success is hard work, hard work, and endless hard work. It's true that external factors influence and often limit our work, but those are not excuses - they are conditions. You don't blame conditions; you learn to accept them and use them to reach your goals.
• Consequentialists: A consequentialist believes that moral judgement should be based upon the consequences of a particular action. I'm not going to play moral philosopher here, because it's not my field (I'm a theoretical philosopher), but people often use this as an argument against anyone trying to get ahead. People who say you shouldn't build muscles because it will eventually turn to fat when you stop training (which btw is not true), belong to this category. Or how about those who claim you shouldn't get involved in politics because you "might create enemies." The end point is that success requires sacrifice. Consequentialism is an excuse for many people to point to those sacrifices, shun them, and suggest you shouldn't strive to improve yourself in the first place.
• Doubters: If you really want to advance in a field, you need to have strong belief in what you do. It's really that simple. There should be room for critical self-reflection, but when that grows into serious doubt, it becomes destructive. Doubters are the kind of people who build muscles for 1.5 years, then realize they need to radically improve their diet, and say: "No, I can't do this, it's not going to work." 95 % of the people I've worked with over the years have dropped out because they had to move, their girlfriends left them, they felt spiritually weak etc. To the surprise of no one, bailing out of a game doesn't let you win. It guarantees losing it all.

Learn to spot these behavioral patterns and point them out to the people who display them, including yourself. If you worry about the ethical aspects of doing so, don't worry. We have already provided you with the moral justification for picking on losers (argument 1, argument 2).

Ever wondered what really made us human? Most evolutionary anthropologists will point to the social culture of hunter-gatherers and eventually the advent of agricultural domestication. Richard Wrangham proposes an entirely different perspective: thanks to the discovery of cooking, we saved time otherwise spent on hunting, gathering and chewing raw food and spent on other, intellectually challenging activities, instead. This gradually increased our cognitive abilities until we began organizing social culture around cooking. And so human culture was founded.

Apparently, the idea that cooking was the crucial difference between their diet and ours came to Wrangham as he stared into the fire at home. Though there's no archaeological evidence of controlled fire before 800,000 years ago, he realized that a cluster of changes in the human face, brain, and gut 1.8 million years ago could be explained by only one thing—regular cooked meals. His argument begins with the odd spend-money-to-make-money aspect of digestion: You must burn calories in order to release calories from food (a fact deeply cherished by celery-chewing teenage girls). Because raw food is harder to digest, it takes more calories to get the calories out of it, and you get fewer calories from it anyway.

Wrangham illustrates this with an array of observations and experimental evidence. He cites a BBC TV show about an "Evo Diet Experiment" that followed nine volunteers who gave up processed food for 12 days and ate only the kinds of food that humans are supposedly wired to eat, mostly raw nuts, fruits, and vegetables. At the end of the experiment, the volunteers had improved cholesterol and blood pressure, and they also lost a lot of weight, despite the fact that the food was chosen to give them the required amount of calories per day. Wrangham even meets with some modern-day raw foodists, who are all very slim. He finds ample evidence that people who eat mostly raw food "thrive only in rich modern environments," and they usually feel very, very hungry. An actual "evo" diet, Wrangham notes, would deliver even fewer calories; require some actual hunting and gathering; and, being more like the diet of chimps, need to be chewed for hours and hours every day.

Cooked food, by contrast, is easier to digest, gives you more energy, and takes no time to eat. Cooking also kills bacteria and renders many natural poisons inactive. So the simple expedient of heating food gave us access to many more safe calories every day, which was a survival jackpot. Once we started to eat soft, cooked food, our jaws and teeth were no longer required to munch ceaselessly, and they became smaller and more delicate. That is why we don't look like apes anymore. Similarly, the more cooked food we ate, the less industrial-strength digestion we had to do, and the smaller our guts became. In the same way that our bodies evolved to better walk on two legs, our bellies changed to better handle well-done over rare. This had two enormous payoffs. First, as our guts got smaller, this freed up energy for our brains to operate on a larger and larger scale. (Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler first discovered the relationship between gut size and brain size, dubbing it the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis.) Second, as we spent less time eating, we had more time to do other things with those rapidly expanding brains.

The real issue here is of course the cause-effect dilemma; Wrangham needs to find solid evidence that we began cooking much earlier on in human history than previously believed. The fact that we are hardwired to mostly survive on a paleo-diet is already known and doesn't necessarily support his thesis. So what can we possibly learn from his theory?

Cooking food has obviously saved us time, and still does. Yet, depending on how you prepare your food, there are both costs and benefits. Ordering home pizza might save you time compared to, say, preparing a chicken salad, but you will also spend more money on eating less healthy food. Today we lead busy lives, but I doubt the activities with which we replace cooking time amount to serious cognitive development. In fact, we're rapidly losing knowledge of how to clean fish, how to prepare meat, how to make salads etc. We're losing thousands of years of practical cultural wisdom.

Therefore I propose a cooking revolution, which suggests we need to spend more time in the kitchen, and preferably make it a social activity again like in ancient times. I know I'm not alone. Why not celebrate both the ancient art of cooking and the recent advent of beer by preparing this tasty-looking beer can chicken recipe by Wendy Cooper?

The more you dedicate your full energy towards the achievement of a goal, and the longer you proceed with your work, the more entropy you are bound to combat on your way. This is not rocket science for anyone who is an elite athlete, professional writer, or husband/wife. To name a few interesting examples:

• Francis Ford Coppola's arguably most ambitious movie project, Apocalypse Now, almost ruined him and sent his crew to the hospital.
• American empire building has never been more widespread than it is today, but the national economy is also falling apart thanks to runaway inflation and foreign debt. The age of Pax Americana is over.
• For the nerds: The second law of thermodynamics states that "the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium."

With this in mind, and my previous post on risk evaluation, I quote Half Sigma on the mortal dangers of marathon running: "[T]he unanswered question is why do people want to run 26 miles in the first place? It's not good for your health. It's some kind of stupid SWPL thing. See my post on marathon running, the sport that kills." His proof is a handful of news reports where people have died during marathons.

First, let's evaluate risks instead of appealing to dogma. Millions of Americans run marathons each year and maybe five people a year die while running. That doesn't seem like a great health risk to me. I bet more people die of diabetes or fast food during that time. Plus, we really don't know what caused these people to die in the first place. Yes, marathon running might have triggered something, but the real cause wasn't the trigger. It might have been a bad heart or some newbie on the road trying to be an athlete. Maybe he had expensive running shoes, which is often an indicator of someone new on the road but lacking in the experience department.

Second, are there health risks associated with marathon running which applies generally to all runners? Yes, of course. All sports involve risks. There's some truth to the fact that we are not designed to run marathons, but in essence that's a pretty weak argument. We're not "designed" to work with philosophy and deal with economics. So why do we do it? Because evolution has granted us abilities with which we can do fancy things. Like using cognitive brain power to solve logical puzzles, and using the amazing flexibility of our two-legged physique to run long distances. For some, it's too much. They reach their critical point. Sacrifice is an essential key in success. You will fall before you win it all, and isn't that the beauty of struggle in general?

You hate the world, but realize you're too weak to do anything about it--what do you do? You decide to hate yourself instead and acquire power by appealing to other people's sympathy. Sometimes this psychological deficiency becomes institutionalized. This man, for instance, didn't approve of the marriage his father arranged for him, so he decided to voice his opinion in a way no one could misunderstand:

A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.

After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.

The young man came from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt's poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor.

This man probably felt unable to revolt against his paternal authority, so he neutralized the situation by removing a symbolic part of himself and play the victim role. An extreme case, but it speaks for a whole lifestyle that's embodied in many parts of the world today. The West, of course, takes the lead:

In November 2008 a Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, was abducted by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. She was held captive, raped repeatedly, and released after six days for a ransom of 100,000 euros ($137,000). After her ordeal, she acknowledged that her captors “did horrible things to me,” but added in several media interviews “They also respected me,” and emphasized “They are not monsters.”

In a speech in the Dutch Parliament last Thursday, the Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders referred to Joanie de Rijke’s case.

“She was raped, but she was not angry. The journalist who went looking for the Taliban in Afghanistan saw her curiosity end in a cruel ordeal of multiple rape. While this would make others angry or sad, this journalist shows understanding. She says: ‘They also respected me.’ And she was given tea and biscuits.”

Here the self-loathing takes a different form. De Rijke is trying to excuse her perpetrators or at least tone down their actions, not to revolt against any authority in particular, but to process her experiences. Wilder's attempt of linking her behavior to the Stockholm syndrome is not that far-fetched; she knew she was powerless in her situation, so she found a way of dealing with it by trying to appeal to the sympathy and mercy of the authority. Now when she's come home, she repeats the behavioral pattern to herself in order to justify how she reacted.

While just about anyone can occasionally use self-loathing psychology to gain power or survive a situation, this behavior is clearly most prominent in the West, especially, as once noted by the Unabomber, among leftists. De Rijke was a leftist journalist and reacted accordingly: her powerlessness was apparent, so she flipped the coin and used her victim status to survive the situation, and defend herself at home. In one sense, it's a very clever survival strategy. As a public lifestyle and cultural psychological phenomena, it probably hints at a civilization in steady decline.