Tyrannies are doomed

This WSJ interview Tyrannies are Doomed with Bernard Lewis, a preeminent Islam scholar, is very interesting and what he says directly and between the lines is what I have come to believe in recent years:  1. democracy is not the ideal government for all, 2. democracy is not necessary nor sufficient for a functional and productive society, 3. conflict between Islam and the world will not end until one or the other gives up, and 4. the New York Times is full of liberal art majors (I remember reading an article on an African pygmy named Ota Benga and exhibited in a cage with an orangutan at the Bronx zoo in 1906, the NY Times declared this was an example of evolution).

Buses adjust to larger Americans

We are getting bigger: http://gothamist.com/2011/03/14/good_job_america_fta_wants_fatter_b.php

Earthquake hits Japan

Enormous earthquake hits northern Japan.  From viewing live coverage online, earthquake generated tsunami all along the coast.  One shown was very powerful sweeping far inland moving entire frigates into farmlands, smashing into buildings unabated.  A huge fire at oil refineries in Chiba just east of Tokyo.  Prime Minster of Japan gives a very brief understated message that to me does not exude credibility and connection to people.  I admitted went to Al Jazeera to watch live footage and English commentary.  1 m tsunami detected by buoys in the Pacific Ocean and Hawaii has been given a warning to evacuate to higher grounds.

Last vet of WW 1

Frank Buckles, the last Doughboy, has died at age 110.  The New York Times article is the best of the ones that I've read.

American Cronyism expand to US Mint

Since around the late 1990s, the US Mint had minted commemorative medals in bronze or silver for collectors.  The subjects for commemoration are usually important past events, people, and places.   For example, there is a medal commemorating the Navajo Indians who were used for communicating encoded messages in  World War 2. Because their language is highly complex in grammar and sound and spoken only in America, the Navajo codes were never broken by the Japanese.  Most people would agree that this is truly worth commemorating.

Now I find this:  medals for former treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and John Snow.  I mean what the heck have they done that is worth commemorating?  They were treasury secretaries only in the past 10 years!  Not even last century!  They have the same stature as Yosemite National Park?  Unbelievable.

Here we go again

Hedge funds borrowing record amounts to gamble invest in stocks:   http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.zOaZV1dx10&pos=5

Sunset of the West

Interesting radio segment entitled Sunset of the West on the Brian Lehrer Show which is an interview with author Dambisa Moyo.  I had always thought that

1. democracy is not necessary for a thriving society,
2. democracy can not survive unless the masses are educated, and
3. the US has been pushing democracy as a way to allow US companies to enter foreign countries and exploit their resources.

Some notes:

• Numerous failed and failing democracies in South America and Africa and Eastern Europe and even India proves the point that democracy can not work overnight and can not be supported when the masses are uneducated.  The fact that the US continues to push democracy down the throats of other countries can only be explained by their need to get US companies into the country to exploit their resources.

• For thousands of years until the United States was formed, societies around the world advanced without democracy at all.  Thankfully democracy is not as incoherent and ruinous as Karl  Marx's communism and no one has taken an equally narrow-minded and ruinous "philosophy" of Ayn Rand's objectivism on a large scale (well unless you count Alan Greenspan).  But is it the only type of government that works?  You hear the phrase "democracy is not perfect but there is nothing better".  Although as a kid I accepted this statement, it seems to me now that it is plain rhetoric with  no substance.