German State Coerces Young Women into Prostitution

Now this will be an interesting topic to follow. The Telegraph reports that a German woman will loose her unemployment benefits if she does not accept work as a prostitute.

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit.

Apparently, the legalization of prostitution in Germany has some unintended consequences - the coercion of women into the sex trade.

Now I may be old fashioned, but state-sanctioned coercion like this sounds criminal. This is what happens when the state tries to move away from a moral foundation for law.

Faith-Based Theatrics of the Left

An interesting idea is floating around in the blogosphere. There is a refinement of something that I toyed with a few months back, but failed to articulate fully.

At the time, I saw the leftist ideology as a form of religion – based on a faith that was more reliant on internal feelings than on any physical reality. Communism has consistently failed, yet there are still ardent communists, etc.

Well the argument has recently been articulated a bit more clearly now. Joe Katzman in his piece entitled “ACTIVISM'S ONANIST FANTASY IDEOLOGY” makes some very interesting points. (By the way, I had to look up one word in the title of his article in a dictionary to understand exactly what he was saying. But now I get it…)

Al Qaeda may not be the only ones out there with a fantasy ideology (pace, Lee Harris), and another version of same may explain quite a bit about modern American politics and the decline of the Democratic Party. If you see activism as the default mode of politics, goes this thesis, you shouldn't be surprised when it leads to anti-intellectualism, tolerance of extremists, retreat into fantasy, and a self-defeating kind of partisanship designed to make people feel better about themselves rather than produce meaningful change.

This rather interesting thesis links modern ultra-left politics with terrorism on a very surprising dimension. As Katzman’s arguments (and those of Harris he cites) point out, the ultra-left tactics of in-your-face activism, and the oft-times bizarre combinations of disparate ideas linked together in “hate-Bush” rallies – these acts of “theatre” usually have less to do with convincing the un-persuaded or with making converts to a cause (which would be a legitimate political objective) than they have to do with the theatrical nature of the acts themselves.

The activist is less concerned with persuasion and making convincing arguments than with demonstrating the extremity of their own conviction. Katzman and Harris argue that these theatrics are acts of fantasy – that the doers of these theatrical deeds are doing them to satisfy a need, a need to act out a fantasy within the doers themselves. They argue that a fantasy of self-importance is enhanced when an extremist demonstrates in a disruptive way.

I think that there is a bit more to it than this. I see these activist disruptions (or acts of self-immolation by terrorists) more as testimonials than just fantasy. The more extreme the action, or the more self-destructive the result, the more the doer of the act highlights the depth of their belief in that thing they are proclaiming. The protester that is arrested says, “See, I am willing to be arrested for my belief.” The terrorist says, “See, I am willing to die for my belief.” These are just various degrees of proclaiming a deeply held belief.

But, that is all that they are doing – expressing a belief. There is no argument of logic that can be digested or considered – only faith. Activism is not a way of arguing rationally, it is only a way of expressing extreme belief.

That is precisely why politics of the extreme left are exactly like a religion. These politics are not arguable in the dimension of logic or reason – they are simply felt to be true.

These “extreme testaments” of the activist and the terrorist are similar. They inevitably rail against the status quo, against the system that exists, and testify of an alternative path to happiness.

Those that believe most fiercely that there is another way, that the status quo is evil or wrong, are naturally drawn together. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The extremist lover of trees and forests that sees modern industrialized society as the enemy to his garden utopia assails the status quo. At the same time, the terrorist who seeks a totalitarian religious state where modern industrialized society is the enemy – he also assails the status quo. These two, the extremist and the terrorist, share a common foe – the status quo. They are linked in their fight against a common enemy.

In there inability to argue and persuade by logic, both the extremist and the terrorist resort to testimony. “Please believe as I do,” they scream with their audacious acts of theatre. “See how deeply I feel,” they proclaim with their actions.

The less able they are to persuade with logic, and the more helpless they become in effecting changes in the status quo, the more dramatically they resort to testimony. That becomes the only outlet for their zealous beliefs.

Consequently, there is only one direction ahead as I see it. As capitalism and conservatism march forward as a ideologies based on empirical success in government and based on logical arguments of what is philosophically justifiable, the loony left will be increasingly marginalized and will abandon all pretense of civil discourse. In turn, the more the extreme elements of the left are marginalized, the more audacious they will become in their “acts of testimony,” the more virulent they will become in acts against the status quo, and the more linked that these groups will become with the other “anti-status quo” players such as the terrorists. The extreme left and the terrorists will merge into a single force seeking the destruction of the current capitalist system.

As the Democrats swing to the left to include these fringe groups that hate the current capitalist system, they will embrace with more open arms the enemies of our state. Just wait and see – this war on terrorism will be more and more openly opposed by the left.

And yes, I still think that modern liberalism is nothing more than a religion – it can only thrive where a deep faith in its principles pushes out logic and invites acts of testimony, acts of desperate theatrical desperation.

A Crowded Pipe

Yes, even Pipe draws a crowd...

Note the crowd at Pipe...

There is nothing that will draw a crowd like an announcement on Surfline that says:

High Surf Advisory is posted. New WNW Swell built overnight and should peak later today near the Triple Overhead range. Conditions are improving - still kinda bumpy & lumpy - but definitely rideable now.

You would think that a surfcam shot of a crowd like this would keep them away - but it doesn't.


It looks like LA...

For some reason shots like this remind me of some L.A. beach. (I count somewhere near 30 people out at one break.) This shouldn't happen in paradise- but then again it is Saturday and all of the town crowd wants to surf. Oh well, the weekend will soon be over.

Ivasov's Revelations

There have been precious few articles covering the Hague trial of Slobodan Milosevic. One reason for that may be that it is not going well for the prosecution (and for the mainstream media who it turns out were puppets of the Clinton administration).

I have tried to keep up with the transcripts of testimony and follow some of the arguments of the case (these can be accessed here).

For an example of the problems faced by the prosecution, on 23 November, 2004 Judge Robinson noted that the facts presented in the testimony of Russian General Leonid Gregori Ivasov (the “top” of the Russian military pyramid overseeing Yugoslavia, intelligence activities relating to the Kosovo uprising, and the U.S./NATO negotiations and response) suggest that much of the prosecution’s case is based on information that is “not objective” (see page 33734).

Apparently, there are evidence and testimony to the fact that overt U.S. support for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which was a known mafia-like terrorist organization with links to al Qaeda (see page 33710) began as early as 1997(see page 33690). The U.S. was actively preparing for the destruction of Yugoslavia with the build up of military capability and materiel. Furthermore, the testimony points to early development (1997) of an information war (i.e., psychological and media war) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by the U.S. well in advance of the outright NATO attack in March of 1999 (see page 33712).

In fact, the evidence and testimony suggest that the human rights abuses touted by the western media were more a product of KLA and NATO actions than by Serbian actions, and that these “planned” human rights abuses (i.e., the massive refugee flows) were part of the intended pre-combat activities that would legitimize the long-planned actions of the U.S. under the Clinton administration. The Verification Mission which was ostensibly designed to monitor the situation between the Serbs and the Kosovars apparently ended up as a biased propaganda tool used to provide a “smokescreen” for the U.S. preparations for aggression (see page 33719).


The disturbing aspects of these revelations are 1) Under the last Democratic administration we strategized with, trained and fought on the side of a Muslim terrorist/mafia organization (an ally of al Qaeda) and facilitated their overthrow of a sovereign (although pariah) government; 2) The mainstream media were 100% complicit in promoting the administration’s false characterization of the human rights abuses taking place; 3) The U.N. sanctions, the Rambouillet negotiations and its associated agreements were intended by the U.N. and the U.S. to be confrontational and unacceptable to the Yugoslavian government; and 4) The intended outcome all along (as negotiated by Madeline Albright with the KLA) was the establishment of an independent Kosovo leading to a “greater Albania” – just as warned against by the Yugoslav government.


If these revelations are anywhere near true, then it is no wonder that the Democrats, the U.N. and “Old Europe” are incensed at the Bush administration; for Bush changed sides in the middle of a war.

Instead of supporting the Muslim revolutionaries in their expansion into Europe (i.e., the Islamic “greater Albanian state”), Bush lashed out. The allies of the Clinton administration (who would occasionally blow up one of our embassies or attack our interests to rally Arab support for their cause) stepped too far over the line. And instead of the Neville Chamberlain-like appeasement of the Democrats, Bush disrupted the tenuous alliances between the U.S., the Arab/Muslim-sympathetic majority in the U.N. and the pseudo-state of Islam.

Just like the young fraternity boy who says, “Whoa! This party is getting a bit too wild for me. I’m leaving!” Bush walked out of the room declaring the Islamic movement just a bit too wild for his taste. This left the compliant Europeans, who had been appeasing the Islamic immigration wave (perhaps to maintain their access to oil), as the only “boys who should have known better” still left at the party with the real rough and rowdy Islamists.

No wonder the Democrats hate Bush. Not only has he had them kicked out of office, but he has disrupted their blind partying with Europe and called their naughty friends on their nasty behavior. He might ruin their whole party.

Religions don't Commit Crimes

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Jersey City slaying of Hossam Armanious, the 47-year-old Coptic Christian, his 37-year-old wife, Amal Garas, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8. See, for example, the article from
New York Newsday.

The headline to that Newsday article is: "Jersey City slaying spurs new wave of anti-Islam bias" - which strikes me as curious for the apparent slant - which slant was almost the subject of this post. However, something even more interesting caught my eye farther down in that article:

Suzanne Loutfy, a Muslim leader of the Egyptian-American Group, asked people not to blame Islam if the killers are found to be Muslim.

"People are so willing to condemn an entire religion," she said. "That's what the big problem is. People commit crimes; religions don't. I hope we can be intelligent enough to separate those two."

(The emphasis in this quote is mine.) I read this final quote and wonder at the hope expressed in the final sentence. It is a very interesting test of intelligence, separating "people" that act from "religion" that encourages people to act in particular ways.

I see the meaning of this as being better examined if we play with the structure of Suzanne Loutfy's key phrase, the one I emphasized. In this particular case it means:

People commit murder, religions don't.

While this statement may be true in a superficial sense (in that religions are a set of intangible ideas that lack the capability of accomplishing anything without the assistance of a human actor), it is at its root false. Many intangible ideas (like hatred, like racial bigotry, like the Nazi political philosophy) impel an actor to do deeds. If those deeds are crimes like murder, then it is pretty clear that we, in fact, do not hold the philosophy blameless. History says that we allocate the blame to both the doer and the impelling philosophy.

So to me, Suzanne Loutfy's hope expressed above, that we can be intelligent enough to separate the people from the philosophy, appears to be in vain. We cannot nor should we totally separate the two.

I hope instead that we can be intelligent enough to examine the motivating philosophy carefully and determine if, in fact, it does share the blame. For centuries certain types of muslims were able to live peaceably with their non-muslim neighbors. But certain versions of this religion, like various sects within the historical Christian community, may have become corrupted.

If the philosophy is not blameless, let us be intelligent enough to recognize so. Let us also be intelligent enough to discern between the poisonous viper and the harmless.

Fox Leans Left

I am very surprised at the lurch to the left by Fox News. Once the election results came in, Fox seems to have begun trying to cover at least some of the news with much more of the same slant as the rest of the MSM.

Of particular note is the coverage of the war in Iraq and the preparations for elections. While there may be simply a new set of editorial standards, the range of articles now featured by Fox seems to reach squarely into the territory owned by the NYTimes. One recent article about a soldier refusing to return to combat carries the title "Soldier Won't Return to Iraq" and focuses on the concientious objector status claimed by the 10 year veteran. The article is very friendly to the anti-war objections raised by a former combat soldier.

Granted, Fox has had its share of balance in the past - but it has been fairly obvious (at least to its left-most leaning critics) that Fox has traditionally leaned toward support for the Iraqi war and toward support for more conservative issues. (This has been part of Murdoch's genius - attempting to fill a void left gaping by the rest of the MSM.) Fox seems to have recently adopted a new strategy, however.

With the election safely over, Fox has started selecting several articles a week that clearly step over into the typical NYTimes areas of interest that are critical of the U.S. war effort. These left-leaning articles rarely contain earth-shaking or important, breaking news, but rather contain more human interest coverage of individual or world opinion that paints the U.S. in an unfavorable light. There may have been an occasional pander to the left prior to the election - but rarely would Fox choose to run with articles with so much raw, individual opinion against the war effort. Well, those days appear to be gone now.

It would seem that Fox has started to believe that its credo "fair and balanced" means that an occasional below-the-belt cheap shot is essential. And here I thought that fair and balance had to do with analysis of facts. I fear that this pandering will never earn it the respect of the major networks (if that is what they are trying to achieve) - and it will only alienate its base.

There are better ways to show fairness and balance. Those ways usually begin with calling a spade a spade.

Gratitude and the Unexpected

Gratitude is something often felt in Hawaii. We often give or receive a lei - and we often exchange other gifts - with just the smallest provocation. For each little gift we share a wonderful sensation that we call gratitude. But imagine the feelings that came to Ray K. Yoshioka of the 1957 class at McKinley High School after his class ring was recently returned to him. Apparently, Ray had lost his ring in 1958 at Ala Moana Beach and that is where Capt. Jim Steff of Hickam Air Force Base found it - in the sand out in about 3 feet of water.

"Wow, what a gift," said Yoshioka. "And on Thanksgiving Day!"

Can you imagine how grateful you would feel for such a gift? Can you imagine how you would feel if someone did something this nice and this unexpected for you?

I keep thinking of gratitude and how difficult it is for some people to have that sensation. If you recall, several people have called the U.S. response to the tsunami disaster as stingy. That phrase has been bounced around in the media ever since as some attempt to "beat up" the current administration for their gifts and aid to the ravaged Indian Ocean area.

Why would any gift be regarded as a "stingy" gift? Since a gift is given freely, one might think that any gift would be appreciated. But as I consider the class ring mentioned above - I see that that what makes people most grateful is not just a gift, but an unexpected gift.

I can remember feeling less than grateful, and almost disappointed, once when I received a Christmas gift. I really had expected something else. So, when the gift came, I compared what I received with what I thought I was going to receive. The difference was disappointing. The gift was still a really nice and thoughtful gift, but because I expected something different I didn't feel gratitude. I am truly sorry that the giver saw that in me.

This is the lesson that we can learn when others call our country's gifts "stingy." Their expectations are for something different - larger perhaps, or more grand.

Should we therefore give less - in order to reduce expectations? Should we make it easier for others to see "unexpected" gifts?

I actually think not. The problem is not with the giver of a gift - but with the recipient (or observer) who comes to expect largesse of a certain degree. Just as I am ashamed of my own feelings of ingratitude, those who do not feel grateful for the freely given gifts of others should cringe.

When those who benefit from the largesse of another are ungrateful - and even betray that benefactor - we see the most heinous side of human nature. Dante characterized this sin as the most vile, reserving it for the ninth circle of hell, the deepest and darkest in the pit. (Canto XXXIV of The Inferno)

For now, I am just glad that the expressions of ingratitude were not mine...

By the way, has anyone seen MY high-school class ring? I lost it about a year after I graduated at the beach in California...

Another Giant Swell

I have no photos, but trust me, this last giant swell has been - well - giant. The west facing beaches (Sunset - Waimea) have been enormous - but too sloppy to ride. As a consequence there has been a lot of activity on the east where these Kona winds are off-shore.

It is really rare to see waves 3+ times overhead at PCCs and Chevrons. Middles was blasted by some really big sets as well- they were clean but unpredictable. There were 5 - 7 people out at virtually every one of the breaks between Hauula and Kahuku - a real crowded scene for this east side. Waves were breaking way out past Goat Island. This was pure wrap surf from the NW swell pummeling the North Shore.

There is a really good photo of last month's Eddie at the Honolulu Advertiser. (Thanks Sherri for the tip!) This has really been a great winter so far for surf. But since we know big waves, we really feel for the thousands that were caught unprepared for the Indian Ocean tsunami. There are few things as terrifying as being whacked around by powerful waves.

Classess begin tomorrow for the new semester. I've gotta get focused!