Peru returns to natural sanitation

The Third World and not only it continues to dream of returning to a pristine Edenic Nature, and escape from their impotence to catch up with modernity. Having rejected hard engineering, the try to build their drainage system by investing in soft "natural infrastructure"– natural areas such as forests or grasslands that can purify water, absorb floodwaters, and like a sponge soak up excess precipitation in the rainy season and release it months later during dry months. Peru is seriously rejecting "engineered infrastructure", and investing millions in premodern green technologies. Wasted money and wasted hopes.  

Another Miracle: Antisemitism is a Civil Rights Issue !

The Senate confirmed Kenneth L. Marcus as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. The vote was 50-46, with not one Democrat supporting him !  I have never seen such clear cut division in American politics, and the issue is... Jews.  Now we can clearly see that there are sharp ideological differences between the parties. And that the Democrats are the party of the  African Americans and the alienated intelligentsia. Marcus disagrees with the procedures and the substance of the Democratic Party's advanced program of transformation of American education.  First thing first, and he already has declared that Jews are an ethnic group - not less than American Africans - and they are protected by the Civil Rights legislation. I love President Trump. 

Connecticut GOP Goes Gay With Six Sodomite Republicans Running For Political Office

 Source. 

The title is from the source, a Christian site. In fact, Connecticut Republicans are smartly pre-empting the Democratic Party's arguments. Aristophanes in his comedies notes in passing the fact that the speakers in the Ecclesia (Assembly) are mostly homosexuals. He makes no issue nor fun of it. He does make fun of his rivals, putting then on scene dressed as women. I have nothing against homosexuals as politicians or any other honorable trade, just keep them apart from children. 

Casting our bread on the water

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and 50 other diplomats walked to New York's East River Saturday evening to cast away their sins in a traditional Rosh Hashana ceremony, known as tashlich, led by Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN Danny Danon.

Guterres wished a "year of peace and prosperity" to the Jewish people and the State of Israel and expressed hope that the "UN will be able to increase the trust it enjoys in the upcoming year."

The Solomor Epidemy

In Denmark, one in 10 babies conceived with donor sperm is born to a woman without a partner. It is called a solomor (from Solo Amor). Denmark has the highest number of births by assisted fertility treatment in the world, and 10% solomor is just the start of a powerful trend.  The reason may be social (unwillingness to become a father) and/or biological. The sperm quality among young Danish men is low, with a quarter barely able to impregnate his partner (from Rigshospitalet the National Hospital of Denmark).  

In the USA, AID results in about 100,000 babies per year — 2% of all births. The rate is higher in Japan (5 percent) and Denmark (10 percent).

Denmark is trying to solve the problem through unprecedented State support to anyone willing to make a baby. That system is feasible while the population is homogeneous as Denmark. May be I am wrong, because France is diverse and the State provides much social assistance, although diversity in Europe is a relatively recent development that is still undigested and not reflected in the laws and the social arrangements. 

The general unwillingness of young males to marry and form families is not of today. In Solon's Greece it was necessary to force by law everyone to marry. In Sparta, unmarried men were interrogated frequently by the police and punished and imposed shaming inabilities. In Augustus's Rome, the Emperor himself publicly harangued and shamed the reluctant.  Even today, in most countries, married men pay less tax. 

Hungerstein - The Hunger Stone of the River Elbe

Medieval inscription on a stone bordering the river Elbe in Germany. "When you see me, cry". It is called the Hunger Stone. It means that the river flow is low and there is draught and failed crops. In Central Europe, the stone can be seen today. 

Thucydides' Trap Nonsense

Ischinger (A German Senior Strategist in Der Spiegel): China, of course, represents a significant future challenge. The question for us must be: What contribution must we make to ensure that China's rise does not result in military conflict? That is the global political challenge. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides once said that war is unavoidable when an established power is challenged by a new power. In his era, it was Sparta and Athens. The challenge for us is to avoid stumbling into that trap.

It happens that I had studied the Peloponnesian War for years and Thucydides never mentioned a trap. He studied the causes of the war and said that the conservative, provincial Laconians, whose food was provided by Messenian subjects and their safety was based on an orderly system of alliances, were afraid of the disordered, mob-ruled, crazy, destabilizing, revolutionary city of Athens. One day the Athenian demos decided - against all advice - sail and attack the island of Sicily, peopled by Greek colonists. The crazy expedition failed and almost no one returned home. The Spartans feared that the Athenians, fueled by revolutionary ideas, would infect the Messenians and other subject peoples, and decided to impose order in Hellas.

It reminds me of revolutionary France, full of effervescence and energy, establishing Jacobin clubs in England. Ultimately republican France attacked its neighbors and caused mighty disturbance in the established order of Europe. No Thucydides trap at all, simple preventive self defense against a nation with feverish ideas and expansionist tendencies.

In the case of China XXI Century, no ideology, just commercial expansion, perfectly assimilable by the community of nations.