Friend and frequent commenter on these pages, Don Larson, recently introduced me to Robert Newman’s “History of Oil”. This video is 45 minutes of stand up comedy on the serious topic of oil in international politics and war. In this video, released in April 2006, Mr. Newman talks about history from the last 100 years or so culminating in why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.
I hope you enjoy it.
April 13th is not just another day.
Not for me, and not for America, either
Thomas Jeffereson was born on this day, in 1742, and he went on to write the Declaration of Independence.  I’ve read that there were approximately 4,000 Americans killed in that conflict, or about 1.3 soldiers a day died to win almost an entire continent from the British.
The first battle of the Civil War began on this day, at Fort Sumter in South Carolina (Rebs won, no casualties) just 68 years after the end of the the American Revolution. There would be over 600,000 Americans killed in that savage conflict, or about 411 men died a day, in a cataclysmic attempt to see if we could keep most of our portion of that continent.
One hundred and eight-five years later, after the end of the Civil War in April 1865, I arrived in Chicago (four days late, around noon) on April 30th, 1950. This is not a historically significant date which I’m sure would be universally agreed upon by all concerned. But thirteen years later, I was a Bat Mizvah boy on April 13th, now 45 years ago, and that still matters to me.
Which, in my typically convoluted fashion, brings me to today’s movie, since at least one major member of that film’s cast had a bar mitzvah, too. But thirty-five years before mine, when that ancient coming-of-age ceremony was far more obscure in America than it is now, and Jews kept a much lower national profile.
The Magnificant Seven! (1960), one of the most revered Western-themed movies ever made, even though it was based on an equally revered Eastern film, The Seven Samurai (1954). I saw it when it came out (the US film) when I was just ten and I haven’t ever recovered from that first fantastic experience of an avalanche of charisma pouring off the screen by already famous and soon-to-be-famous macho American and European actors.
Yul Brynner (Chris, the so-cool leader), Steve McQueen (Vin, deadly, casual and philosophic) lead the cast. Without them, the movie would be one more so-so Western. But their spontaneous compatible relationship and world-weary attitude gave the film a spin that put a romantic sheen on everyone associated with it.Â
Horst Bucholz (Chico), a new and very young German actor, played the 7th man to join the ranks of the immortal Seven. Oddly, he was selected by the director, John Sturges, to play a brash young Mexican who distained the very peasant farmers he signed on to protect from the hordes of Mexican bandits who ravaged there village repeatedly, even though he was one of them. His view of life was that the intinerant and frequently impoverished western gunslingers were muy magnifico!! and he could never be a “miserable cowardly farmer” until Killer Cowboy Philosophy Class 101 cured him of that notion.Â
Plus one very hot (and extremely disrespectful to her justifiably concerned father) chick with a single long black braid and a “Do it to me NOW, baby!” attitude, who convinced him that grinding corn on your knees, under blazing sunshine, can be very sexy indeed.
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Sigh. It’s really depressing thinking about the mess we’re in, and the unlikelihood (given the political situation) that anything substantive will be done about it. For instance, here’s 10 things that I think would begin to turn things around. Read them and you tell me the likelihood that any of them will happen.
1. Return to America’s original foreign policy. George Washington warned against entangling foreign alliances. Then two world wars happened. After the first, we rejected the League of Nations and returned home. After the second, it’s an open question as to what the extent “the world” needed us to remain extended overseas to serve as a bulwark against International Communism. But what the heck are we doing, now? That doesn’t mean we can’t strike fiercely at dirtbags who blow up buildings. We did that to the Barbary Pirates in Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. But 1 Trillion dollars for nation building in Iraq? Are we nuts?
2. Get rid of the IRS. I favor a two-pronged approach to allowing the government to have a limited amount of revenue to do the few things it needs to do. One, repeal the 16th amendment and replace it with one that authorizes a flat, no deductions of any kind salary tax that is limited to under 10%. That should appeal to America’s religious roots as well — if God only gets 10%, government gets less. I say salary tax because I’d make employers pay it — no sense trying to police tips and cash income, it’s the IRS police state we’re trying to eliminate. As part of the new amendment, I’d put in a clause that says “under no circumstances will taxpayers be required to save and produce records of any kind for tax purposes”. How liberating is that? To get more revenue, I’d institute a national VAT tax constitutionally limited to 10% with food and medicine exempted.
3. Treat energy independence like the Manhattan project. (That was the crash program during WWII to produce the atomic bomb just in case you didn’t know). The payment of hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase oil overseas is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to begin. We should tax the importation of oil (which will be ameliorated by the great reduction of income taxes) at least 30%. All new home construction should have solar energy, etc. This is a no-brainer, isn’t it? Hybrids, biofuels, pebble-bed nuclear technology must be given Manhattan project importance and schedules for development. Then, our trade balance will improve and we can tell Middle Eastern insane countries to eat sand.
4. Institute real free trade. Not the so-called free trade that is anything but that which we have now. Many foreign countries refund the VAT to their companies which export goods. We should put a tariff in place that taxes those goods by the exact amount they get refunded. Many countries practice currency manipulation that pegs their own currencies to the dollar artificially low so that they can export easier. Again, a tariff which neutralizes that advantage would be in order. Many countries have labor and other costs which are extremely low in part because they exploit their own labor force (lack of rights and protections), and they allow environmentally harmful industrial policy. Tariffs to neutralize these are in order as well. Don’t get me wrong; I believe the ideal is truly free trade and open borders. But that is a long way off given the current state of the world. If we make it clear that as these impediments to real free trade are removed, our tariffs come down quickly and reliably, we can help bring about these good things to the rest of the world (and it’s cheaper than sending in the Delta Force, which is how we usually try to do it).
5. Decriminalize much. Look at Rick’s previous post on Amsterdam. Are they much worse off because they don’t try to throw hookers, drug users, etc. in the pen for draconian sentences? No, of course not. The best way to get rid of evil people capitalizing on prohibitions is to end the prohibitions. Did we learn nothing from prohibition of alcohol? Abolish the DEA. Abolish the BATF. Let states decide what is acceptable public behavior.
I’ll give the other 5 ideas later. I’m still depressed over realizing that none of these things are likely to happen any time soon.
by Robert M. Katzman © April 5, 2008
This unlikely story of pre-adolescent solidarity is about one hour, during one day, on one quiet South Side Chicago street, in which an astonishing assault was mounted to stop one sadistic adult from tormenting one child.
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I don’t believe abused children ever really recover. I believe they burn. A low flame perhaps, but it’s on, all the time. Some evil person who thinks they’re safe, in control and free to do as they please with one of them never knows when that low flame will burst into a wildfire…and consume them. This story is about one of those times.
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When you read my story, a harsh story, think about what you would have done, if I had come to your door that mild summer day, fifty-five years ago, to ask you to leave your home to come help me.
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It may be harder than you imagine to answer my question, once you find out what really happened, in the end.
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But first, some essential historical background:
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In 1960, I lived on the South Side of Chicago, near 87th and Stony and I went to the Charles P. Caldwell Grammar School, where at ten I was in the fifth grade.
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My neighborhood was solidly Jewish and Irish. Growing up at that time, it was as common for me to hear Yiddish accented English from Warsaw, and Gaelic accented English from Cork, as it is to hear to hear Spanish accents today from Mexico, Costa Rica and Honduras on the streets and stores of Chicago.
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The Irish arrived here first in very large numbers, more than a million after the 1848 Potato Famine devastated the lives of the poor in British-Protestant controlled Catholic Ireland. Many died of starvation and disease and many more fled to America for a new start.
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Then came the great 1880-1914 wave of Jewish immigrants, my ancestors, fleeing the poor and terror ridden shtetles of Eastern Europe, an area then known as the Pale where Jews from various bordering countries were forced to live in a narrow geographic corridor and who were periodically attacked and killed by rampaging Cossacks with the blessing of the Czarist government. Over two million came past Miss Liberty, on ships.
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The Jews and the Irish had much in common. Both lived in terror of a merciless enemy too powerful to defeat and both saw America as the promised land, where all that mattered was how hard you worked and not where you were from and what God you believed in. At least, that was the dream.
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