I don’t write much about the economy and various remedies for its present ills. That is for two reasons: First, I believe economics, especially on the macro side, is so far from being science that it is closer to being a conventicle of witches, with multiple schools promoting various spells and potions. And second, because I don’t really understand it all (despite having taken my Masters degree in economics.)
Anyway, I stumbled across the following passage in Gulliver’s Travels, which I think sums it up.
When Gulliver visited Laputa, the land of the philosophers, he complained of “cholick”. He was introduced to “a great physician who was famous for curing that disease by contrary operations of the same instrument, a pair of bellows with a slender muzzle of ivory; this he conveyed 8 inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows was full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient…
“I saw him try both experiments upon a dog; but could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter, the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was very offensive to me and my companions. The dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor trying to recover him by the same operation.”
Thus Dean Swift’s eighteenth century view of stimulus and other remedies for financial cholick.
Iran’s Underground Weapons Program Moves Underground
Published August 22, 2011 Iran 3 CommentsTags: appeasement, Commentary, Frankie Sturm, Holocaust, Iran, isolationism, Israel, Jonathan Tobin, Truman Democrats
Lost in the (certainly justifiable, if premature) celebration of the imminent fall of the monster Gaddafi, the world seems to be underreacting to this disturbing AP news story from the Middle East:
Iran moves centrifuges to underground site
“Islamic Republic transfers some of its uranium enrichment machines to subterranean facility
offering better protection from possible airstrikes: Associated Press”
“Iran has moved some of its centrifuge machines to an underground enrichment site that offers better protection from possible airstrikes, the country’s vice president said Monday.”
“Engineers are “hard at work” preparing the facility in Fordo, which is carved into a mountain to protect it against possible attacks, to house the centrifuges, Fereidoun Abbasi was quoted as saying by state TV.”
What makes this puzzling is that authoratative-sounding media pundits and prestigious national security experts have been assuring us for years that Iran’s nuclear program could not be stopped by airstrikes, since it was buried in deep subterranean facilities. This was all patiently explained to neocon hotheads who called for air action similar to the successful attacks that ended both Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs in past decades. As the “wise men” made clear, the only alternative to diplomacy and sanctions was a horrendous nightmare of “boots on the ground”; and nobody wants that now, do they?
So now it turns out that the uranium centrifuges, the biggest and most vulnerable part of the program, were sitting around in the open air? Oops.
This whole debate had settled down somewhat in recent years, as both the Administration and the news media (but I repeat myself?) took their eye off the Iranian ball. If you want a refresher course in this denialism, take a look back at my dialogue with Frankie Sturm, then Communications Director of the Truman Democrats (a misnamed organization trying to resurrect national security credibility for the Democratic Party). The title was “A Perfect Storm of Appeasement”, and it was written in February of 2009 – two and a half years ago.
Here is Mr. Sturm, expressing the left’s conventional wisdom at the time (and since):
“There’s a lot out there on the futility of air strikes. Here is one article from the Atlantic and another link to a study by the Oxford Research Group. It was easy to take out Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1983 because the entire program was contained in that single, above ground installation. The suspected nuclear site in Syria that Israel took out recently is a similar story – it was just one above ground building. Iran learned from the Israeli airstrike against Iraq in 1983. That’s why they’re so thoroughly buried underground.“
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