Archive for December 9th, 2009
Responses to “Einstein speaks on Zionism”;
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 9, 2009
Responses to “Einstein speaks on Zionism”; (Dec. 8, 2009)
I received this comment on my post “Einstein speaks on Zionism”. I edited errors of spelling before replying. I do enjoy developed comments which prove involvement.
“At the risk of lending this diatribe even a modicum of credibility by responding to it I shall confine my comments to two easily verifiable factual matters.
1. ORT was not a Zionist organization at the time specified by “Adonis49”. Between the wars it was heavily influenced by the Bundhists and others who saw the future of Jewish communities lying within the countries in which they were already situated. The organization was founded in St Petersburg in 1880 by three prominent Jews – all of them patriotic Russians with nary a proto-Zionist whim between them.
2. As for Einstein calling Arabs in the British Mandated territory “Arabs” – this may well have been because the only people calling themselves “Palestinians” at that time were Jews living there. Arabs did not start calling themselves “Palestinian” until well after the establishment of the State of Israel. I refer you to the interview which Zuheir Mohsen, a then prominent member of the PLO, gave to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977, in which he stated: “The Palestinian people do not exist… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.”
3. Indeed, any archaeologists among you may want to try digging into the ground of Israel to find “Palestinian” artifacts. You’ll find Ottoman artifacts, Muslim pieces, even some remnants of the idolatrous Canaanites if you dig deep enough. But most of all you’ll find a lot of Jewish artifacts, stretching back some 3,000 years.”
The translated book in French did not provide context to what Einstein’s wrote, published, or delivered in speeches; thus, I have no sources for the dates or events or purpose for these documents except what I may conjecture.
The Bundhists organization that was founded in St Petersburg in 1880 may not have been pro-Zionist at first but most of the first Russian immigrants to Palestine at the turn of the 20th century were encouraged later by that organization. Those agricultural Russian immigrants worked the land and Einstein praised them for their effort to “re-constructing” Palestine. Their offspring joined the Hagana, then the British forces in the Near East, and then were dispatched to Europe in 1945 as allied soldiers to collect arms and be re-routed to Palestine. They were the ones that the Mossad relied on to negotiate with the countries soon to fall under Soviet influence (Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Bulgaria) because they could speak Russian. It is from these countries that the first heavy arms came from after the first armistice in 1948: Stalin was convinced that the State of Israel will become the first communist state in the Middle East and was thus the first to recognize Israel.
Zuheir Mohsen was a leader of a “Palestinian” faction (Al Saika) controlled totally by Syria that wanted to control the PLO; its propaganda tried to rob any independent entity to the Palestinians since Syria was planning to enjoy a mandated power over Lebanon during the civil war. Pan Arabism is not a national identity but an attribute for people speaking Arabic.
I cannot understand the logic; if the freshly arriving Jews call their new land Palestine and they are known as Palestinians then why the original “Arabs” in that land for over two thousand years should not be called Palestinians? I understand the power of Zionism to disseminating fictitious stories and “facts” but I expect a minimum of rational thinking even from those who don’t care to read or reflect.
As for artifacts, the fact is that for a century and since the recognition of Israel no Jewish artifacts were found even in Judea. It is not possible to find artifacts for nomadic people. Artifacts are within the realm of urban civilizations such as the Canaanite and Phoenicians. Even the scrolls found are not Jewish but were written by sects fleeing the persecutions of the McCabe, Pharisee, and Sadducee sects based in Judea. No there are no “Jewish” artifacts and whatever will be found will not be dated before 200 BC.
I might develop further on this article in the coming days.
What we knew on Climate Change Before Copenhagen;
Before 1992 six States accounted for over 80% of the total accumulated 6 gases related to environment global temperature increase such as CO2, fluor, and especially methane. These countries are USA (27%), Europe’s major States (23%), China (10%), Russia (9.25%), Germany (5.5%), and Japan (5%). In 2005, the same countries emit more than 70% of the gases. They are: China (19.5%), USA (18.5%), The EU (13.5%), Russia (5.25%), India (5%) and Japan 3.5%).
Only three countries have managed to reduce their CO2 equivalent emissions since the Kyoto agreement reference of 1992. They are: Russia by 40%, Germany and England by almost 20% each.
The major themes in the coming conference are eight:
First, the long term objective for 2050 is to staying below 2degrees increase in global temperature. This is not acceptable: it means that the world community has already condemned 30% of animal and vegetable species to go extinct, 30% of sea shore swamps will disappear, and a qualitative jump in desertification and rate of inundations; potable water will become scarce resource. For that purpose, the most industrialized States should reduce by 80% the equivalent CO2 emissions. The overall reduction is to be 50% with the contribution of the developing countries in going green. To that effect, the target is not to exceed 450 particles of CO2 concentration. This is not acceptable. Currently we have a concentration of 390 particles and the temperature just increased by 0.8 degrees in the last three decades and we are already witnessing the melting of the Arctic Pole.
The target should be to drop to 350 particles at most. The main reason is the emission of methane (a gas worse by 20 times the effect of CO2) that the hard frozen ground are emitting and which kept this nasty gas trapped underground before this melting phase.
Second, the medium term objective is a reduction of CO2 equivalent to 30% in reference to the year 1990. The actual engagement is 13%. The US administrations are not ready for even that modest reduction of 13%.
Third, an engagement to adopting industrial processes with low CO2 emissions.
Fourth, reducing deforestation by 50% and replanting new trees. Brazil has already started policies of saving the Amazon forest areas from further plantations.
Fifth, pumping $3 billions a year into the poorest States to encourage them switching to alternative cleaner energy resources.
Sixth, pumping additional $ 2 billions a year for innovative green technologies.
Seventh, allocating $ 10 billions, each year, till 2012 to finance green alternatives.
Eight, developing an alternative program that will substitute the “Carbon market” due to terminate in 2012.
According to the Bangkok Post the US President Obama and China Hu Jintao have agreed to lower expectation in Copenhagen. Most probably, the reference for lowering gas emission will be of 2005 instead of 1992, a move that will encourage accepting raising the CO2 concentration beyond the 400 particles. All indicates that the US is going to the Copenhagen conference empty handed in home legislations. Many leaders are encouraging President Obama to raise the standard unilaterally as a sign of personal commitment and set the psychology of the US people in motion. Everything might restart from scratch.
The Kyoto agreement had for purpose to encouraging the heaviest state polluters to invest in the poorer States with less polluting technologies to stabilize the overall concentration of gases. The idea was to deter the emerging economies from emulating the same industrial processes that the developed countries have previously used and thus, saving future deterioration of the environment. A tax of 2% on the heaviest industrial polluters was to generate $1.6 billion by 2012. Nothing was done so far and the US administrations refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on the basis that climatic changes are mostly a myth.
The hardest hit states are located in Africa (the western and eastern states), Afghanistan, Bangladesh (17% of its land will be submerged). The next worst hit states are Mexico, Pakistan, Iraq, India, the western states in Latin America, and many States in South East Asia. The actual facts and trends are changing priorities for the worst hit states; for example, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, North of China, and India are witnessing the lowest rain precipitations in decades for two consecutive years.
List of posts from Nov. 27 to Dec. 4, 2009
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 9, 2009
577. Climate change: Before Copenhagen; (Nov. 27, 2009)
578. “War on Rhetoric”; (Nov. 28, 2009)
579. Einstein speaks on “How I see the world”; (Nov. 30, 2009)
580. Einstein speaks on Zionism; (Dec. 2, 2009)
581. Testing 3 thousand years of babbling; (Dec. 3, 2009)
582. “Sophie’s World” on David Hume; (Dec. 4, 2009)
Ironing out a few chaotic glitches
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 9, 2009
Ironing out a few chaotic glitches; (Dec. 5, 2009)
Philosophers have been babbling for many thousand years whether the universe is chaotic or very structured so that rational and logical thinking can untangle its laws and comprehend nature’s behaviors and phenomena.
Plato wrote that the world is comprehensible. The world looked like a structured work of art built on mathematical logical precision. Why? Plato was found of symmetry, geometry, numbers, and he was impressed by the ordered tonality of musical cord instruments. Leibnitz in the 18th century explained “In what manner God created the universe it must be in the most regular and ordered structure. Leibnitz claimed that God selected the simplest in hypotheses that generated the richest varieties of phenomena.” A strong impetus that the universe is comprehensible started with the “positivist philosophers and scientists” of the 20th century who were convinced that the laws of natures can be discovered by rational mind.
Einstein followed suit and wrote “God does not play dice. To rationally comprehend a phenomenon we must reduce, by a logical process, the propositions (or axioms) to apparently known evidence that reason cannot touch.” The pronouncement of Einstein “The eternally incomprehensible universe is its comprehensibility” can be interpreted in many ways. The first interpretation is “what is most incomprehensible in the universe is that it can be comprehensible but we must refrain from revoking its sacral complexity and uncertainty”. The second interpretation is “If we are still thinking that the universe is not comprehensible then may be it is so, as much as we want to think that we may understand it; thus, the universe will remain incomprehensible (and we should not prematurely declare the “end of science”).
The mathematician Herman Weyl developed the notion: “The assertion that nature is regulated by strict laws is void unless we affirm that it is related by simple mathematical laws. The more we delve in the reduction process to the bare fundamental propositions the more facts are explained with exactitude.” It is this philosophy of an ordered and symmetrical world that drove Mendeleyev to classifying the chemical elements; Murry Gell-Mann used “group theory” to predicting the existence of quarks.
A few scientists went even further; they claimed that the universe evolved in such a way to permit the emergence of the rational thinking man. Scientists enunciated many principles such as “the principle of least time” that Fermat used to deduce the laws of refraction and reflection of light; Richard Feynman discoursed on the “principle of least actions”; we have the “principle of least energy consumed”, the “principle of computational equivalence”, the “principle of entropy” or the level of uncertainty in a chaotic environment.
Stephen Hawking popularized the idea of the “Theory of Everything TOE” a theory based on a few simple and non redundant rules that govern the universe. Stephen Wolfran thinks that the TOE can be found by a thorough systematic computer search: The universe complexity is finite and the most seemingly complex phenomena (for example cognitive functions) emerge from simple rules.
Before we offer the opposite view that universe is intrinsically chaotic let us define what is a theory. Gregory Chaitin explained that “a theory is a computer program designed to account for observed facts by computation”. (Warning to all mathematicians! If you want your theory to be published by peer reviewers then you might have to attach an “elegant” or the shortest computer program in bits that describes your theory)
Kurt Gödel and Alain Turing demonstrated what is called “incompletude” in mathematics or the ultimate uncertainty of mathematical foundations. There are innumerable “true” propositions or conjectures that can never be demonstrated. For example, it is impossible to account for the results of elementary arithmetic such as addition or multiplication by the deductive processes of its basic axioms. Thus, many more axioms and unresolved conjectures have to be added in order to explain correctly many mathematical results. Turing demonstrated mathematically that there is no algorithm that can “know” if a program will ever stop or not. The consequence in mathematics is this: no set of axioms will ever permit to deduce if a program will ever stop or not. Actually, there exist many numbers that cannot be computed. There are mathematical facts that are logically irreducible and incomprehensive.
Quantum mechanics proclaimed that, on the micro level, the universe is chaotic: there is impossibility of simultaneously locating a particle, its direction, and determining its velocity. We are computing probabilities of occurrences. John von Neumann wrote: “Theoretical physics does not explain natural phenomena: it classifies phenomena and tries to link or relate the classes.”
Acquiring knowledge was intuitively understood as a tool to improving human dignity by increasing quality of life; thus, erasing as many dangerous superstitions that bogged down spiritual and moral life of man. Ironically, the trend captured a negative life of its own in the last century. The subconscious goal for learning was to frustrate fanatic religiosity that proclaimed that God is the sole creator and controller of our life, its quality, and its destiny. With our gained power in knowledge we may thus destroy our survival by our own volition; we can commit earth suicide regardless of what God wishes. So far, we have been extremely successful beyond all expectations. We can destroy all living creatures and plants by activating a single H-Bomb or whether we act now or desist from finding resolution to the predicaments of climate changes.
I have impressions. First, what the mathematicians and scientists are doing is not discovering the truth or the real processes but to condense complexity into simple propositions so that an individual may think that he is able to comprehend the complexities of the world. Second, nature is complex; man is more complex; social interactions are far more complex. No mathematical equations or simple laws will ever help an individual to comprehend the thousands of interactions among the thousands of variability. Third, we need to focus on the rare events; it has been proven that the rare events (for example, occurrences at the tails of probability functions) are the most catastrophic simply because very few are the researchers interested in investigating them; scientists are cozy with those well structured behaviors that answer collective behaviors.
My fourth impression is that I am a genius without realizing it. Unfortunately Kurt Gödel is the prime kill joy; he would have mock me on the ground that he mathematically demonstrated that any sentence I write is a lie. How would I dare write anything?
Adonis Diaries 