CHICAGO — The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other junior faculty dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.
At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.
Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between one of the country’s most elite law schools and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois State Senate.
John McCain, like all decent Americans, is concerned about the trouble on the Iraq-Pakistan border. Ali Frick, like a typical liberal, derides this on the grounds that there is no such border. But if she had McCain’s years of foreign policy expertise and extensive conversations with John McCain she would have access to this double super-secret map of the CENTCOM AOR:
It’s a Thursday night in January, and Le Petit Bistro, a pleasant, low-wattage French restaurant in West Hollywood is quietly empty ing out when a hearty cheer erupts from the large party in the dining room. The group is there to celebrate the 34th birthday of Jemaine Clement, the bespectacled and heavily sideburned half of the HBO musical-comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, who are in town to promote their self-titled new CD. When Clement’s order of profiteroles comes out (with 15 spoons), the assembled—including director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and screenwriter-actor Mike White (School of Rock)—launch into a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” But the cheer isn’t for him. That comes a few seconds later, when Clement rises to offer his toast:
“To Sir Edmund Hillary!”
So what does the first man to stand on the summit of Mount Everest have to do with a pair of hipster troubadours? Plenty. The Conchords, Clement and his partner, Bret McKenzie, 31, are, like Hillary, Kiwis—meaning they hail from New Zealand, an island nation halfway between Australia and God-knows-where. As fate would have it, Sir Edmund has embarked on his last great expedition to the afterworld this very morning. Later, as Clement recounts Hillary’s exploits, it becomes clear that the explorer was beloved not so much for what he did as what he didn’t do: ever once brag about it. “Even after he climbed Everest, he always considered himself a simple beekeeper,” Clement explains. His delivery is so flat it’s hard to tell if he’s joking or not, but in this case he’s sincere.
That sort of humility is nearly a competitive sport in New Zealand, and the charm of Flight of the Conchords—Clement and McKenzie’s deadpan musical sitcom about a pair of Kiwi rockers trying and utterly failing to find fame and fortune on New York’s Lower East Side— is the tension between that low-key New Zealand approach to life and the flash American alternative. (Viewers catch glimpses of the characters’ more inflated inner selves in droll music video send-ups.) It’s become one of the funniest, most unlikely hits on TV—one of the few bright spots in a bleak HBO landscape—but the show’s success threatens to test the actors’ Kiwi sense of modesty.
“People from New Zealand have a reputation for being boring, which we definitely play up on the show,” says Clement. “But really, everyone just watches rugby and drinks beer and beats their wives.” On-screen the Conchords are aided in their quest for success by band manager Murray Hewitt (fellow Kiwi Rhys Darby), who rarely lets a day job as a deputy cultural attaché for the New Zealand consulate interfere with his attempts to book gigs (though generally not after dark, because, as Murray puts it, “You could be murdered. Or even just ridiculed.”) Despite his best efforts, the band has just one fan, the mousy if sexually turbo-charged Mel, played by New York comedian Kristen Schaal.
Though Clement and McKenzie were until recently best known, respectively, as the sardonic pitchman for Outback Steakhouse and a mopey elf extra in the Lord of the Rings series, they’ve been performing comedy together since 1996: two slightly nerdy guitar-strumming buddies who seamlessly morph into Daft Punk–style techno-bots, Barry White–like lover men, or Dylanesque folkies. “They’ve raised the bar for musical parodies,” raves Daryl Hall, who made a cameo on one episode. “The songs are really intelligent, really advanced. It’s not like ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. What he does is bullshit. What they do is music.”
The series, set to return this fall for a second season, aired Sunday nights after Entour age, providing a hilariously sobering comedown after that show’s weekly bump of bad-boy euphoria. Basically, it’s the anti-Entourage: Whereas Vinnie Chase & Co. take on Hollywood with inflated self-regard and roguish swagger, Clement and McKenzie favor the defensive crouch. Wide-eyed, hapless, and utterly lost in a downtown New York full of strivers, they disarm our assumptions with a sort of comedic jujitsu. The pair share a bedroom in a shabby apartment, ineptly compete for female affection, and spontaneously break into song. It’s not for nothing that they bill themselves as “formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk-parody duo.”
That relentless self-deprecation belies the pair’s critical role in the HBO lineup. An unexpected cult hit among hip young viewers, the show has quickly become ground zero for the New York underground comedy circuit (Aziz Ansari, Eugene Mirman, Demetri Martin, Will Forte, Judah Friedlander, John Hodgman, and Arj Barker have all guest-starred). This kind of appeal has gone a long way toward helping the network maintain its cache now that The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and The Wire are fading into watercooler memory. While the program averages just a million viewers—a third of the Entourage audience—it is the first HBO series since The Sopranos to build its viewership with each episode. The New York Times gushingly compared it to Charlie Chaplin and This Is Spin¨al Tap, while Time called it the best new comedy of the year. That’s high praise for a show that at times looks like a DIY student movie.
Of course, amateurism is a major part of the duo’s appeal and the danger is that success may dry up their inspiration. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now, because our lives are becoming quite weird,” says McKenzie. “We probably have enough material for another season, but maybe we’ll have to make it about still being a loser, but in a world of minor celebrity.”
The Conchords has brought the pair both unexpected and unwanted recognition. With the new album released this month on indie powerhouse Sub Pop (their EP, The Distant Future, just won a Grammy) and a series of gigs in support, Clement and McKenzie get to exorcise some of their rock demons in songs that meld Prince, Ween, and Beck. The album features favorite tracks including “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous,” and the synth-pop pastiche “Inner City Pressure,” but with refined lyrics and enhanced arrangements. Of course, writing songs like rock stars is easy. Playing the part is something else entirely.
When you’re unemployed, there’s no vacation??/??No one cares, no one sympathizes??/??You just stay home and play synthesizers.
—“Inner City Pressure”
At the moment, the question for the Conchords is how to maintain their underdog appeal now that they’re bona fide stars. “Walking around with Bret and Jemaine is like walking around with Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp,” marvels comic Todd Barry, who plays the band’s aggressive new bongo player on one episode.
In person both band members—who split their time between New York, Wellington, and Los Angeles—are, much like their characters (though without the strangely homoerotic subtext that often shows up on-screen): extremely personable and understated, dressed in the same thift-store duds they wear on TV. “They’re exactly the same off-camera as they are on-camera,” says Hall. “Except they’re more talented and a whole lot smarter.”
The hysterical bit in which the Conchords embark on a tour of New Jersey and Murray scolds them for falling prey to the rock’n’roll lifestyle (splurging on a can of nuts from the mini-bar is treated as a gesture of punk defiance) sums up the duo’s off-screen demeanor. “Everyone thinks we do drugs ’cause we play music and do comedy!” says Clement, with a laugh. “We’re not really interested.”
Clement grew up in a small town outside Wellington. “My family were working-class,” he says. “My mom worked in a cheese factory, my dad worked in a slaughterhouse, my grandma worked in a clothes factory, and my granddad worked in a biscuit factory. So we always had biscuits and cheese and underpants.”
As for McKenzie, his experience as a heartthrob goes way back. Growing up in Wellington as one of three brothers, McKenzie’s dad was a horse trainer, his mom a ballet teacher. “We all had to do ballet so my mom wouldn’t need a baby- sitter,” he says. “It would be me and one other guy in a room full of girls. When I went to secon dary school, ballet became very uncool.”
* * *
Then on our next date?/?Well, you can bring your roommate?/?I don’t know if Stu is keen to?/?But if you want we could double team you.
—“If You’re Into It”
* * *
Though both Clement and McKenzie are, by all accounts, highly devoted to their respective fiancées (Clement is engaged to playwright and theater director Miranda Manasiadis; McKen zie to publicist Hannah Clarke), the pair have encountered their share of would-be groupies. Girls toss condoms onstage bearing phone numbers; breasts are bared for signings. And then there was the young lady who caught a performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and invited the guys over for a spit roast. Figuring on a bit of barbecue, Clement accepted. “And then she goes, ‘I wouldn’t usually ask because I’m a lesbian,’?” he recalls, “and I thought, Hmm, that’s weird. And suddenly I got this image of Bret and me standing facing one another with this girl impaled between us, you know?” The comics begged off.
One of FOTC’s running gags is the way women throw themselves at the duo, who are usually too timid, clueless, or uncomfortable to respond. When one eager blonde puts the moves on Bret, he dissuades her with an ethereal ballad, singing, “Just because we’ve been playing tonsil hockey?/?Doesn’t mean you get to score the goal that’s in my Jockeys.”
“It’s unusual to find something so funny, and so meek,” notes White, an expert on the funny?/?meek thing. “It proves that comedy can be flaccid and hilarious at the same time.”
Another episode finds Bret facing “body issues” after a band photo. Jemaine tries to boost his ego with a song: “Why can’t a heterosexual guy tell a heterosexual guy that his booty’s fly?” Evidently, there’s more than a germ of truth to this particular conceit: McKenzie appeared equally tormented during Maxim’s photo shoot. “I don’t really like getting naked,” he later admits, “but the mustache helped.”
* * *
Sometime it gets lonely?/?And I need a woman?/?And then I imagine you with some bosoms?/?In fact, one time when we were touring?/?And I was really lonely?/?And we were sharing that twin room in the hotel?/?I put a wig on you when you were sleeping?/?I put a wig on you?/?And I just laid there and spooned you.
—“Bret, You’ve Got It Goin’ On”
At the crowded Bar Marmont on Sunset, after the birthday dinner, Clement and McKenzie settle into a corner table to explain how success just might spoil the Conchords. Initially, as their fame grew in the States, they took heart in the fact they could always go home for a reality check. That plan fell apart when they wrapped the first season and returned home only to find that they’d won something called the Wellingtonian of the Year. “It’s run by the local paper (The Dominion Post), and people vote,” Clement explains, wincing at the memory. Ultimately, the Conchords beat out climatologist David Wratt (who did manage to snag a Nobel). “Somehow I don’t really feel that
deserving,” admits Clement.
The big fear now is that celebrity could short-circuit their comedy. “A lot of the incidents on the show are based on a seed of real-life experience,” says McKenzie, citing those aggressive groupies, awkward sexual encounters, and amateurish gigs. “Being a band that was useless was great for generating material. Now that our lives are warping into this other thing, playing these fools is tricky.”
Still, they’re doing their best to maintain perspective. “We still haven’t really lived it up,” Clement says. “I don’t think sitcoms pay what they used to, and HBO doesn’t pay what NBC does, or even a fraction of it. But I don’t know how to live the high life anyway. I live in Wellington in a modest apartment, and Bret here is living with his mom.”
“I feel like I’m 18,” McKenzie says. “You think you’ve finally made it, and suddenly you’re like, ‘Mom, can I borrow the car?’?”
Nonetheless, the show is the first truly steady gig for either one, and a considerable step up in security. The duo met at Victoria University, where McKenzie was studying music and engineering and Clement was majoring in theater and film. Eventually moving into an old Victorian house with a bunch of friends, they dropped out of school; the Conchords first took flight during casual living room jam sessions. “We’ve both got really broad musical tastes,” McKenzie says, “and we tended to write songs based on whatever we were listening to. The styles just cracked us up.”
After some local gigs, they took the act to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival just as McKenzie’s turn as an extra in the first Lord of the Rings film turned him into a Web phenom. His appearance, during the pivotal “Council of Elrond” scene, is extremely brief, just three glorious seconds. “The whole family was told what scene and whereabouts,” his fiancée Hannah Clarke recalls, “and no one saw him. That’s how minuscule it was!” But fans who appreciated his enigmatic brooding latched on, dubbing him Figwit (“Frodo is grea…Who is that?!?”) and starting a Web site, figwitlives.net in his honor. After uncovering the elf’s real-life identity, a handful of hardcore Middle-earthers heard about the Edinburgh performance and traveled to the show, many sporting pointed ear extensions. The Figwit fans succeeded in turning McKenzie into a veritable cult hero (the trilogy’s very own Boba Fett), landing a story in USA Today and persuading Peter Jackson to give him an actual line in the third installment—“Lady Arwen, we cannot delay! My Lady!”
* * *
All the money that we’re making is going to the man?/?What man, which man, who’s the man, when’s a man a man, what makes a man a man??/?Am I a man? Yes, technically I am.
—“Think About It”
* * *
The show itself evolved slowly. After creating a six-part radio series for the BBC (about a pair of Kiwi musicians trying to make it in London) and nabbing the award for Best Alternative Comedy Act at the 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, they signed a deal to develop a pilot with NBC (about a pair of Kiwi musicians trying to make it in L.A.). When that didn’t stick, they moved to HBO, where they were teamed with James Bobin (Da Ali G Show), whom they now regard as the third Conchord. After studying the ill-fated musical series Cop Rock—“It gave us some ideas about what not to do,” says McKenzie—they decided to set the new series in New York.
Both Conchords now admit that had they known how grueling the gig would be, they might never have signed up for it. “I hope our union doesn’t read this, but we worked seven days a week for months in a row,” says Clement. “Not only did we act in it and work on the scripts, but we also had to record the music. Plus, we did the incidental music! It seems crazy, when I look back on it now. HBO was making out like bandits.”
“Nobody shoots a half-hour show in five days,” says Schaal, who was awestruck at the bare-bones production values. “There weren’t any dressing rooms, so we’d just sit on the curb. At one point, I think, this crew person found some cardboard and put it on the ground for us to sit on.”
While the first season was written around the Conchords’ existing set list, they’re now fresh out of material—though neither one seems par ticularly anxious about it. McKenzie is eager to do a Queen parody, tackle acid jazz, and attempt an R. Kelly homage. “Trapped in the Closet was a big inspiration for the show,” he says. “He’s definitely one of our favorites.”
“Bret urinates on all the girls,” Clement explains.
For now, though, they’re eager for a break—and grateful to the Writers Guild for providing an ideal excuse. “It’s quite good timing for us,” says Clement. “Otherwise there’d be pressure from HBO to start working,” McKenzie says, “but they can’t even call us.”
“They’re not allowed to pick up the phone,” Clement adds, explaining that both Conchords are still highly ambivalent about being on television at all.
“We should get other actors to play us,” Mc Kenzie suggests.
“Personally, I’d be happy just to make the show and have no one ever see it,” Clement says. “That would be the perfect scenario.” Sir Edmund Hillary, at least, would be proud.
Recently I discovered Adyashanti who is an American teacher of Advaita Vedanta (non-dual enlightenment). He is really good. To me it seems he has a much deeper experience of consciousness than the majority of Advaita teachers.
The popular perception of the recently skyrocketing oil price is that there is an oil shortage in global energy markets. The perceived shortage is generally blamed on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries (OPEC) for “insufficient” production, or on countries like China and India for their increased demand for energy, or on both.
This perception is reinforced—indeed, largely shaped—by the Bush administration and its neoconservative handlers who are eager to deflect attention away from war and geopolitical turbulence as driving forces behind the skyrocketing energy prices.
Impressions of an oil shortage are further bolstered by Wall Street and its financial giants that are taking advantage of the insecurity created by war and geopolitical turmoil in oil markets and are making fortunes through manipulative speculation in commodity futures markets.
Perceptions of insufficient oil supply are also heightened by the recently resuscitated theory of the so-called Peak Oil, which maintains that world production of conventional oil will soon reach—if it has not already reached—a maximum, or peak, and decline thereafter, with grave socio-economic consequences.[1]
However, claims of an oil shortage are not supported by facts. Evidence shows that, in reality, there is no discrepancy between production and consumption of oil on a global level. Citing statistical evidence of parity between production and consumption of oil, OPEC President Chakib Khelil recently emphasized that there was no shortage of oil: “As far as fundamentals are concerned I think we have equilibrium between supply and demand. . . . In fact right now we have more supply than demand.”[2]
Facts of abundant oil supplies in global markets are now also being acknowledged and reported by mainstream media. For example, Ed Wallace of Business Week recently reported that “that worldwide production of oil has risen 2.5% in the first quarter, while worldwide demand has grown by only 2%. Production is expected to increase by 3.3% in the second quarter, and by as much as 4.1% by the third quarter. The net result is that the U.S. daily buffer for oil production against demand, which was a paltry 1.5 million barrels as recently as 2005, is now up to 3 million barrels in excess capacity today.”
Wallace then asks, “So what is going on here? Why would our Energy Secretary say there’s a supply and demand problem when none exists? Why would he say that speculators have little or nothing to do with the incredibly high price of oil and gasoline, when it’s clear they do? President Bush—a former oilman—gives the ever-growing demand for gasoline as the primary reason prices are so high, yet that notion can be dispelled with one minute of research.”[3]
So, if indeed there is no imbalance between production and consumption of oil in global markets, how do we then explain the skyrocketing oil prices?
The answer, in a nutshell, is: war and geopolitical instability in oil markets. Contrary to the claims of the champions of war and militarism, of the Wall Street speculators in energy markets, and of the proponents of Peak Oil, the current oil price shocks are caused largely by the destabilizing wars and political turbulences in the Middle East. These include not only the raging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the danger of a looming war against Iran that would threaten the flow of oil out of Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.
If you want to understand the policy of a country, look at the map – as Napoleon recommended.
Anyone who wants to guess whether Israel and/or the United States are going to attack Iran should look at the map of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.
Through this narrow waterway, only 34 km wide, pass the ships that carry between a fifth and a third of the world’s oil, including that from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.
MOST OF the commentators who talk about the inevitable American and Israeli attack on Iran do not take account of this map.
There is talk about a “sterile”, a “surgical” air strike. The mighty air fleet of the United States will take off from the aircraft carriers already stationed in the Persian Gulf and the American air bases dispersed throughout the region and bomb all the nuclear sites of Iran – and on this happy occasion also bomb government institutions, army installations, industrial centers and anything else they might fancy. They will use bombs that can penetrate deep into the ground.
Simple, quick and elegant – one blow and bye-bye Iran, bye-bye ayatollahs, bye-bye Ahmadinejad.
If Israel attacks alone, the blow will be more modest. The most the attackers can hope for is the destruction of the main nuclear sites and a safe return.
I have a modest request: before you start, please look at the map once more, at the Strait named (probably) after the god of Zarathustra.
THE INEVITABLE reaction to the bombing of Iran will be the blocking of this Strait. That should have been self-evident even without the explicit declaration by one of Iran’s highest ranking generals a few days ago.
Iran dominates the whole length of the Strait. They can seal it hermetically with their missiles and artillery, both land based and naval.
If that happens, the price of oil will skyrocket – far beyond the 200 dollars-per-barrel that pessimists dread now. That will cause a chain reaction: a world-wide depression, the collapse of whole industries and a catastrophic rise in unemployment in America, Europe and Japan.
In order to avert this danger, the Americans would need to conquer parts of Iran – perhaps the whole of this large country. The US does not have at its disposal even a small part of the forces they would need. Practically all their land forces are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The mighty American navy is menacing Iran – but the moment the Strait is closed, it will itself resemble those model ships in bottles. Perhaps it is this danger that made the navy chiefs extricate the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln from the Persian Gulf this week, ostensibly because of the situation in Pakistan.
This leaves the possibility that the US will act by proxy. Israel will attack, and this will not officially involve the US, which will deny any responsibility.
Indeed? Iran has already announced that it would consider an Israeli attack as an American operation, and act as if it had been directly attacked by the US. That is logical.
NO ISRAELI government would ever consider the possibility of starting such an operation without the explicit and unreserved agreement of the US. Such a confirmation will not be forthcoming.
So what are all these exercises, which generate such dramatic headlines in the international media?
The Israeli Air Force has held exercises at a distance of 1500 km from our shores. The Iranians have responded with test firings of their Shihab missiles, which have a similar range. Once, such activities were called “saber rattling”, nowadays the preferred term is “psychological warfare”. They are good for failed politicians with domestic needs, to divert attention, to scare citizens. They also make excellent television. But simple common sense tells us that whoever plans a surprise strike does not proclaim this from the rooftops. Menachem Begin did not stage public exercises before sending the bombers to destroy the Iraqi reactor, and even Ehud Olmert did not make a speech about his intention to bomb a mysterious building in Syria.
SINCE KING Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire some 2500 years ago, who allowed the Israelite exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and build a temple there, Israeli-Persian relations have their ups and downs.
Until the Khomeini revolution, there was a close alliance between them. Israel trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police (“Savak”). The Shah was a partner in the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline which was designed to bypass the Suez Canal. (Iran is still trying to enforce payment for the oil it supplied then.)
The Shah helped to infiltrate Israeli army officers into the Kurdish part of Iraq, where they assisted Mustafa Barzani’s revolt against Saddam Hussein. That operation came to an end when the Shah betrayed the Iraqi Kurds and made a deal with Saddam. But Israeli-Iranian cooperation was almost restored after Saddam attacked Iran. In the course of that long and cruel war (1980-1988), Israel secretly supported the Iran of the ayatollahs. The Irangate affair was only a small part of that story.
That did not prevent Ariel Sharon from planning to conquer Iran, as I have already disclosed in the past. When I was writing an in-depth article about him in 1981, after his appointment as Minister of Defense, he told me in confidence about this daring idea: after the death of Khomeini, Israel would forestall the Soviet Union in the race to Iran. The Israeli army would occupy Iran in a few days and turn the country over to the much slower Americans, who would have supplied Israel well in advance with large quantities of sophisticated arms for this express purpose.
He also showed me the maps he intended to take with him to the annual strategic consultations in Washington. They looked very impressive. It seems, however, that the Americans were not so impressed.
All this indicates that by itself, the idea of an Israeli military intervention in Iran is not so revolutionary. But a prior condition is close cooperation with the US. This will not be forthcoming, because the US would be the primary victim of the consequences.
IRAN IS now a regional power. It makes no sense to deny that.
The irony of the matter is that for this they must thank their foremost benefactor in recent times: George W. Bush. If they had even a modicum of gratitude, they would erect a statue to him in Tehran’s central square.
For many generations, Iraq was the gatekeeper of the Arab region. It was the wall of the Arab world against the Persian Shiites. It should be remembered that during the Iraqi-Iranian war, Arab Shiite Iraqis fought with great enthusiasm against Persian Shiite Iranians.
When President Bush invaded Iraq and destroyed it, he opened the whole region to the growing might of Iran. In future generations, historians will wonder about this action, which deserves a chapter to itself in “The March of Folly”.
Today it is already clear that the real American aim (as I have asserted in this column right from the beginning) was to take possession of the Caspian Sea/Persian Gulf oil region and station a permanent American garrison at its center. This aim was indeed achieved – the Americans are now talking about their forces remaining in Iraq “for a hundred years”, and they are now busily engaged in dividing Iraq’s huge oil reserves among the four or five giant American oil companies.
But this war was started without wider strategic thinking and without looking at the geopolitical map. It was not decided who is the main enemy of the US in the region, neither was it clear where the main effort should be. The advantage of dominating Iraq may well be outweighed by the rise of Iran as a nuclear, military and political power that will overshadow America’s allies in the Arab world.
WHERE DO we Israelis stand in this game?
For years now, we have been bombarded by a propaganda campaign that depicts the Iranian nuclear effort as an existential threat to Israel. Forget the Palestinians, forget Hamas and Hizbullah, forget Syria – the sole danger that threatens the very existence of the State of Israel is the Iranian nuclear bomb.
I repeat what I have said before: I am not prey to this existential Angst. True, life is more pleasant without an Iranian nuclear bomb, and Ahmadinejad is not very nice either. But if the worst comes to the worst, we will have a “balance of terror” between the two nations, much like the American-Soviet balance of terror that saved mankind from World War III, or the Indian-Pakistani balance of terror that provides a framework for a rapprochement between those two countries that hate each other’s guts.
ON THE basis of all these considerations, I dare to predict that there will be no military attack on Iran this year – not by the Americans, not by the Israelis.
As I write these lines, a little red light turns on in my head. It is related to a memory: in my youth I was an avid reader of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s weekly articles, which impressed me with their cold logic and clear style. In August 1939, Jabotinsky wrote an article in which he asserted categorically that no war would break out, in spite of all the rumors to the contrary. His reasoning: modern weapons are so terrible, that no country would dare to start a war.
A few days later Germany invaded Poland, starting the most terrible war in human history (until now), which ended with the Americans dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, for 63 years, nobody has used nuclear weapons in a war.
President Bush is about to end his career in disgrace. The same fate is waiting impatiently for Ehud Olmert. For politicians of this kind, it is easy to be tempted by a last adventure, a last chance for a decent place in history after all.
All the same, I stick to my prognosis: it will not happen.
An Australian TV show called The Gruen Transfer asked advertising agencies to create an ad to sell the unsellable – convincing Australia to invade New Zealand.
NZ Defence Minister Phil Goff joined in, telling the New Zealand Herald that the Kiwis had “already invaded Australia”. “We created a beachhead [on Bondi Beach] years ago and they have yet to recapture it,” he said.
A monk on his journey home comes to the banks of a wide river.
Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he ponders
for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier.
Just as he is to give up his journey, he sees a great teacher on the
other side of the river.
The monk yells over to the teacher, “Oh Master, can you tell me how
to get to the other side of this river?”
The teacher ponders for a moment, looks up and down the river and
yells back, “You are already on the other side.”
