Ram Guha's 'India after Gandhi'

In the prologue to 'India after Gandhi', Ram Guha writes 

Because they are so many, and so various, the people of India are also divided.

Hindus aren't divided. There is no secessionism where Hindus are in the majority. Why? Hindus have learned from bitter experience that it is better to hang together rather than once again experience Islamic salami tactics or else once again risk falling under foreign hegemony. 

It appears to have always been so.

Only in the sense that every nation, every city, every family is divided.  

In the spring of 1827 the poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

a pensioner of the British 

set out on a journey from Delhi to Calcutta.

to ask for an augmentation of his pension. The Capital of British India was Calcutta.  

Six months later he reached the holy Hindu city of Banaras.

Which had come under direct British rule in 1775. Sadly, Delhi, though under British rule, wasn't under direct British rule. Still it was doing a lot better than it had before, first the Maratha & then the Brits took it under their wing.  

Here he wrote a poem called 'Chiral-i-Dair' (Temple Lamps), which contains these timeless lines: Said I one night to a pristine seer (Who knew the secrets of whirling Time), 'Sir, you well perceive, That goodness and faith, Fidelity and love Have all departed from this sorry land. Father and son are at each other's throat, Brother fights brother. Unity and Federation are undermined. Despite these ominous signs Why has not Doomsday come?

This is a stereotypical 'shehr ashob' type lament. Ghalib's purpose is to praise Benares, the holy city of the Hindus, as the reason God hasn't destroyed the world. Ghalib believed that the Brits would like a sentiment of this sort because it pointed to how much better cities under British rule were doing.  

 Ghalib's poem was composed against the backdrop of the decline of the Mughal Empire.

which happened before he was born. 

His home territory, the Indo-Gangetic plain, once ruled by a single monarch, was now split between contending chiefdoms and armies.

Nope. There had been British paramountcy since 1803. No wars had been fought since then. 

Brother was fighting brother,

only in the privacy of their own home in directly ruled British regions. Even in protectorates, fratricide was becoming punishable rather than the conventional method of inheriting property.  

unity and federation were being undermined.

Because the Brits had defeated the Marathas 25 years ago. But British unity was unimpaired. There was no question of 'Federation'. Britain had a unitary government & it exercised direct control over its three Presidencies in India.  

But even as he wrote, a new (and foreign) power was asserting its influence across the land in the form of the British,

It had gained control of Delhi when Ghalib was 6 years old. The third Maratha war, in 1819 meant that even the home territory of the Marathas & Rajputs to the South West of Delhi came under their paramountcy. Incidentally, the Brits were in India before Ghalib's ancestors arrived. 

who were steadily acquiring control of the greater part of the subcontinent.

The Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, were the only power the Brits were reluctant to tangle with.  

Then in 1857 large sections of the native population rose up in what the colonialists called the Sepoy Mutiny

Ghalib suffered greatly because of this. Like the Emperor, he knew the Brits were the best thing to have happened to Delhi in a long while. When Nehru became Prime Minister, the Muslim population of Delhi fell from one third to about 5 percent. 

and Indian nationalists later referred to as the First War of Indian Independence

Veer Savarkar invented the term in 1909. It was taken up by Bose's INA which fought alongside the Japanese. We don't refer to it as the Second War of Indian Independence because it was utterly shit.  

 Some of the bloodiest fighting was in Ghalib's home town, Delhi - still nominally the capital of the Mughals

It was all they had. Agra, Ghalib's birth place, was under direct British rule and saw little in the way of fighting during the Mutiny.  

and in time to become the capital of the British Raj as well. His own sympathies were divided.

His financial interest was not. He was a pensioner of the Brits. So was the Emperor who, later on, would give Ghalib an appointment at Court for the modest salary of Rs 50 p.m.  

He was the recipient of a stipend from the new rulers,

Because his Uncle had surrendered Agra fort to the Brits when Ghalib was 6 years old 

yet a product of Mughal culture and refinement.

i.e. was ignorant and stupid.  

He saw, more clearly than the British colonialist did then or the Indian nationalist does now, that it was impossible here to separate right from wrong,

Nonsense! It is wrong to do stupid shit which will cause you to lose your wealth and perhaps even your life. It is right to try to get more money by being good at your job.  

that horrible atrocities were being committed by both sides.

The Mutineers started it, the Brits ended it. Many of the Indians who supported the Brits gained greatly thereby. 

Marooned in his home, he wrote a melancholy account of how 'Hindustan has become the arena of the mighty whirlwind and the blazing fire'. 'To what new order can the Indian look with joy'?' he asked.;

Ghalib wrote in a pre-Islamic Persian style. He believed this work of his would help him curry favour with the Brits. But they weren't greatly impressed.  

An answer to this question was forthcoming. After the events of 1857 the Crown took over control of the Indian colonies.

Direct control. There already was a Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, commonly known as the Board of Control, was created in 1784 through the East India Company Act 1784 . It was formally established on September 4, 1784, to supervise the East India Company's administrative and political activities in India. From 1853 onward selection of officers was through competitive exams. But Macaulay & Co had actually passed a law some 20 years previously with that purpose. It wasn't implemented. 

 A sophisticated bureaucracy replaced the somewhat ad-hoc and haphazard administration of the old East India Company.

Not really. The 'Competition-wallah' was trained by the older Haileybury-educated Collectors.  

New districts and provinces were created.

As had previously happened.  

The running of the state was overseen by the elite cadre of the Indian Civil Service supported by departments of police, forests, irrigation, etc. Much energy (and money) was spent on building a railway network that criss-crossed the land.

This had begun in 1853. My point is there was continuity between the rule of the Company & direct Crown rule.  

This contributed enormously to the unity of British India,

No. What united British India was the fact that the British were united. Railways did not prevent India being partitioned.  

as well as to its stability, for now the rulers could quickly move troops to forestall any repeat of 1857.

But they had dealt with 1857 easily enough. The truth is the Bengal Army was mismanaged.  

By 1888 the British were so solidly established in India that they could anticipate, if not a thousand year Raj, at least a rule that extended well beyond their own lifetimes.

That was the case after Trafalgar. The British Raj depended on the supremacy of the Royal Navy. Britain could keep its Empire so long as it faced no mightier foe on the Continent. Since the Indians were technologically backward & shit at fighting, they posed no great danger. 

In that year a man who had helped put the Raj in place

It was in place before he was born in 1823. The Haileybury Training College had been set up in 1806. 

gave a series of lectures in Cambridge which were later published in book form under the simple title India.

Some chaps at Uni would sit the Indian Civil if they wanted a safe, but boring job variegated with dysentery & malaria.  

The man was Sir John Strachey. Strachey had spent many years in the subcontinent, ultimately becoming member of the Governor General's Council. Now in retirement in England, he set his Indian experience against the background of recent political developments in Europe.

as opposed to what? Ancient developments in Africa?  

Large chunks of Strachey's book are taken up by an administrative history of the Raj, of its army and civil services, its land and taxation policies, the peculiar position of the 'native states'. This was a primer for those who might work in India after coming down from Cambridge.

Unless they got some less shitty berth.  

But there was also a larger theoretical argument to the effect that 'India' was merely a label of convenience, 'a name which we give to a great region including a multitude of different countries' .

True enough. It included Aden & Burma. Singapore had been part of British India till 1867 after which it became a separate Crown Colony.  

In Strachey's view, the differences between the countries of Europe were much smaller than those between the 'countries' of India. 'Scotland is more like Spain than Bengal is like the Punjab."

But a Bengali Judge or District Collector were posted to the Punjab, he would quickly come up to speed. A Scottish Judge would be if transferred to a Spanish bench. Strachey wasn't a real smart dude. 

In India the diversities of race, language and religion were far greater.

But the diversity of the British Empire was exponentially greater.  

Unlike in Europe, these "countries" were not nations,

They were just as much 'nations' as the Irish, the Welsh, the Scots & so on.  

they did not have a distinct political or social identity.

Sure they did. They were either British subjects or British protected subjects.  

This, Strachey told his Cambridge audience, 'is the first and most essential thing to learn about India - that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India possessing, according to any European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious' .

A.O Hume, who was 6 years younger than Strachey,  had just set up the Indian National Congress. Some senior officers wanted reform. Others didn't. Why? It would dilute the power of the Collector. As a matter of fact, Ripon's reforms were, speaking generally, rendered infructuous by the officials. But, the INC would grow and grow.         

There was no Indian nation or country in the past, nor would there be one in the future. Strachey thought it 'conceivable that national sympathies may arise in particular Indian countries', but 'that they should ever extend to India generally, that men of the Punj ab, Bengal, the North-western Provinces, and Madras, should ever feel that they belong to one Indian nation, is impossible. You might with as much reason and probability look forward to a time when a single nation will have taken the place ofthe various nations ofEurope.'

Guha is pretending that Strachey wasn't reacting to a particular development- viz. the foundation of the INC & Ripon's liberal reforms.  

Strachey's remarks were intended as a historical judgment.

No. They were a counter-move to the spirit of reform & the foundation of the INC. Both would diminish the power & autonomy of the bureaucrats.     

At the time, new nations were vigorously identifying themselves within Europe on the basis of a shared language or territory, whereas none of the countries that he knew in India had displayed a comparable national awakening.

No. Strachey was aware that there was an Indian nationalism as represented by the INC. Linguistic sub-nationalism- e.g. Orissa's desire to separate from Bengal- was a slightly later development. But, because Religion trumps Language in India, reorganisation of Provinces on a linguistic basis is sufficient.  

But we might also read them as a political exhortation, intended to stiffen the will of those in his audience who would end up in the service of the Raj.

Civil Servants understood that if they became accountable to Local Councils, then their lives would become more complicated. India might be a shithole, but you didn't have to kowtow to local notables there if you were an ICS officer. By contrast, the civil servant in UK had to brown-nose local councillors & the gentry & so forth. 

For the rise of every new 'nation' in India would mean a corresponding diminution in the power and prestige of Empire.

No. If the INC could gain countervailing power so as to make Ripon's Resolution of 1882 work, then the power & prestige of ICS officers, not the Empire, would diminish.  

Ironically, even as he spoke Strachey's verdict was being disputed by a group of Indians.

Indians in London in the 1860s had been promoting a Nationalist agenda.  

These had set up the Indian National Congress,

It was a joint project with ICS officers like Hume & Wedderburn as well as Indian notables like Naoroji & Surendranath Bannerjee.  

a representative body that asked for a greater say for natives in the running of their affairs. As the name suggests, this body wished to unite Indians across the divisions of culture, territory, religion, and language, thus to construct what the colonialist thought inconceivable - namely, a single Indian nation.

Guha is suppressing the fact that some British ICS officers were involved. It was advantageous for the Brits to cultivate a sense of Indian Nationalism so as to make the place self-administering & self-garrisoning just like the settler colonies. The country would then be able to contribute more to Imperial Defence while representing a bigger market. As the US & Germany rose by 'Listian' means, the notion of 'Imperial Preference' first advocated by Chamberlain in the early 1900s, gained adherents. Also Westminster didn't want to spend a lot of time passing laws for India.  

Very many good books have been written on the growth of the Indian National Congress, on its move from debating club through mass movement

e.g. cow protection? AO Hume advocated it.  

to political party,

it was deeply divided between Moderates & those who wanted to chuck the Brits out bag & baggage.  

on the part played by leaders such as Gokhale, Tilak and (above all) Gandhi in this progression. Attention has been paid to the building of bridges between linguistic communities, religious groupings and castes. These attempts were not wholly successful, for low castes and especially Muslims were never completely convinced of the Congress's claims to be a truly 'national' party. Thus it was that when political independence finally came in 1947 it came not to one nation, but two - India and Pakistan.

The Hindus chose to hang together precisely because of the Muslim threat. The Muslims chose to go their own way because Gandhi was shit. The Dalits didn't matter in the slightest. 

This is not the place to rehearse the history of Indian nationalisms

India is one nation. It has only one nationalism. Sadly, it is wholly Hindu in origin & trajectory.  Even A.O Hume was a Vedantin. Annie Beasant, a Theosophist, knew more about stuff like prarabdha karma than Gandhi. Admittedly, this was because Gandhi was stupid & ignorant. Still. 

I need only note that from the time the Congress was formed right up to when India was made free - and divided - there were sceptics who thought that Indian nationalism was not a natural phenomenon at all.

Guha thinks India is an 'unnatural nation'. It is no such thing for Hindus.  

There were, of course, British politicians and thinkers who welcomed Indian self-rule and, in their own way, aided its coming into being. (One of the prime movers of the Indian National Congress was a colonial official of Scottish parentage, A. O. Hume.)

A vegetarian Vedantist who advocated cow protection. These aren't typical Scottish traits.  

Yet there were many others who argued that, unlike France or Germany or Italy, there was here no national essence, no glue to bind the people and take them purposively forward.

There were plenty who said the same thing about France, Germany & Italy. This can take the shape of a North South split- e.g. Occitan sense of grievance (Vergonha)- or an East West split- e.g. Germany. Will Britain break apart & Scotland go its own way under the SNP? I have no idea. 

From this perspective stemmed the claim that it was only British rule that held India and the Indians together.

This could also be said of the United Kingdom. As a matter of fact, even the British Army could not keep Southern Ireland part of 

Among those who endorsed Jolt Strachey's view that there could never be an independent Indian nation were writers both famous and obscure. Prominent in the first category was Rudyard Kipling,

a fan of the Punjab Civil Service. But he was also critical of the bureaucratic red-tape & corruption that characterised the Raj.  

who had spent this formative years in - and was to write some of his finest stories about-the subcontinent. In November 1891 Kipling visited Australia, where a journalist asked him about the 'possibility of self-government in India'.

At the time, the Viceroy & Secretary of State were focused on the Russian threat. They wanted to concentrate power rather than devolve it.  

'Oh no!' he answered: 'They are 4,000 years old out there, much too old to learn that business. Law and order is what they want and we are there to give it to them and we give it them straight. '

Fair point. India was very poor. It couldn't afford much more than a 'nightwatchman state'.  The problem was, as Kitchener would report, the Indian Army was shitty. 60,000 Russians could defeat a quarter of a million Sepoys. 

Where Kipling laid emphasis on the antiquity of the Indian civilization, other colonialists stressed the immaturity of the Indian mind to reach the same conclusion: namely, that Indians could not govern themselves.

Yet, if it continued to stagnate economically, there would be no other alternative. It simply wouldn't have the money to pay for Oxbridge ICS men.  

A cricketer and tea planter insisted, after forty years there, that chaos would prevail in India if we were ever so foolish to leave the natives to run their own show. Ye gods! What a salad of confusion, of bungle, of mismanagement, and far worse, would be the instant result. These grand people will go anywhere and do anything if led by us. Themselves they are still infants as regards governing or statesmanship. And their so-called leaders are the worst of the 1ot.'

  Oddly, the tea plantations survived well enough into the Sixties. 

Views such as these were widely prevalent among the British in India, and among the British at home as well.

The Brits also thought that giving women the vote was a terrible idea.  

Politically speaking, the most important of these 'Stracheyans' was undoubtedly Winston Churchill

He was 14 in 1888.  During his 'wilderness years', in the Thirties, he was the chief of the 'die-hard' Empire Loyalists. Indeed, he was considered a bit cracked on this topic. Senior Tories piloted through the 1935 bill which he hated. 

In the 1940s, with Indian independence manifestly round the corner, Churchill grumbled that he had not become the King's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

But the British Army performed badly- unless you compare it to the French Army which was completely useless.  

A decade previously he had tried to rebuild a fading political career on the plank of opposing self-government for Indians.

This was unpopular. Westminster wanted shot of India. Churchill had his own health & financial problems. Still, his books were selling well. But his fundamental economic beliefs- free trade & the gold standard- had become wholly unviable.  

After Gandhi's 'salt satyagrafra' of 1930 in protest against taxes on salt, the British government began speakng with Indian nationalists about the possibility of granting the colony dominion status.

Viceroy Irwin (later Lord Halifax) had suggested, in November 1929, that Dominion status was the goal for India. By 1931, Baldwin was openly supporting this policy. Churchill's attempted rebellion was a miserable failure. This had nothing to do with the salt satyagraha.  It was Motilal & C.R Das who had first raised the issue when salt taxes were raised. Gandhi's agitation was bound to fail because salt didn't matter. It was land taxes/rents which were of concern to the masses- more particularly after the Great Depression & consequent fall in agricultural prices hit the country. 

This was vaguely defined, with no timetable set for its realization. Even so, Churchill called the idea 'not only fantastic in itself but criminally mischievous in its effects'.

Tories thought the fellow had gone potty. Churchill never had any influence over Indian policy. Even the one Viceroy he chose- Wavell- defied him by demanding the complete evacuation of White people from India.  

Since Indians were not fit for self-govermnent, it was necessary to marshal 'the sober

Churchill was often drunk.  

and resolute forces of the British Empire' to stall any such possibility. In 1930 and 1931 Churchill delivered numerous speeches designed to work up, in most unsober form, the constituency opposed to independence for India.

He failed. What Guha isn't saying is that India could have got, in 1924, what Egypt. Ireland & Afghanistan had got 2 years earlier. 

Speaking to an audience at the City of London in December 1930,

they wanted to be told that Churchill would lead a vast army of special constables to beat the fuck out of the revolting proletariat. They didn't want to hear about India. Killing darkies far far away won't keep you safe from striking workers closing down your factories. 

he claimed that if the British left the subcontinent, then 'an army of white janissaries, officered if necessary from Germany, will be hired to secure the armed ascendancy of the Hindu'.

Churchill was the original author of the Ambedkarite philosophy. Brahmins are very evil.  

Three months later, speaking at the Albert Hall on 'Our Duty to India'

he was addressing the India Empire Society composed of elderly shitheads who had served in India. They even had an Indian member- a Muslim.                               

- with his kinsman the Duke of Marlborough presiding - Churchill argued that 'to abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins [who in his opinion dominated the Congress Party] would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence'. If the British left, he predicted, then the entire gamut of public services created by them -the judicial, medical, railway and public works departments - would perish, and 'India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations ofthe Middle Ages'.

Churchill said some stupid shit. The result was that his own party shunned him. He was denied any Ministerial position. Why is Guha focussing on him? The answer is that he thinks he himself is justified in calling India an 'unnatural nation'. Yet, for Hindus, it is entirely natural. 

Guha writes as though he has never visited India or had any sort of family or other connection with it. He takes it for granted that India is an 'unnatural nation' & people are little better than monkeys.  The plain fact is, no diplomat posted to India- or any statesman with the slightest knowledge of it- has said that there was a risk of a military coup in that country. It was somewhat surprising that it became dynastic but even so the dynasty needed to hold periodic elections. In any case, assassination tempers autocracy.

This is sheer nonsense. When Nehru died, nobody anywhere thought the Army would take over. True, a few years previously some stupid journalist mentioned General Kaul- but he fucked up in 1962 and, in any case, was not popular in the Army. Oddly, in 1964, the CIA, the KGB & Britain's MI5 were all rooting for Sastri. But he died soon enough. After Indira & her father were the only Prime Ministers to die in office. Nobody thought the Army would take over after either event. Both chose their successor. Monsoon failure occurred in 2002, 2009 & 2023. Nobody talked of 'countrywide famine'. No 'secessionist movement' has caused anybody to think India would disappear. The outcome was always obvious. As in British times, the insurgency would be crushed with varying degrees of brutality. Guha lives in a fantasy world. So do many academics teaching worthless shite. But that is because non-STEM subjects are adversely selective of imbecility. 

Guha genuinely doesn't know the answer to the question 'why is there an India at all'

The answer is Hindus need to solve collective action problems peculiar to themselves. Independence & Democracy was a way to legitimize reform of Hindu Personal Law as well as alter the balance of power between 'castes' & regions. Also, Hindus wanted to be able to defend themselves against invaders or the 'salami' tactics of aggressive, non-Indian, religions or ideologies. 

If you don't know why India exists, you can say nothing interesting or informative about its recent history. But, since academic historians are shitheads, it really doesn't matter what shite they write. 

κἀτοπτρον εἴδους χαλκός ἐστ᾿, οἶνος δὲ νοῦ

Be it Homer's, or Hesiod's, my hermeneut of what Greeks know

Yet is Wine- that fairground mirror of my Love- as freak-show

In which, I, alone, to myself, appear- alethic, undistorted

Being, now, ablectic to what marriage aborted. 

Sun Quan to Yu Dafu

Blue seas turn into mulberry leaves

Man & maid- one Orphic flesh

What's hylomorphic but deceives

 Hypokeimenon's refining mesh

Envoi- 

'Twixt Love & Death, every bridge crashes

Till Zhuo Wenjun, Widowhood, rehashes

Riposte- 

Of the Xiqing Sanji, urban poets emulously talk

Yet none, on reed leaves, write with chalk

Siddhantha- 

For three millennia beacon fires have seared the skies

So what if 'family letters' are filled with lies?

 

Krugman's interstellar stupidity

Back in 1978, when post-tax real interest rates were negative in many parts of the world, Paul Krugman wrote an paper about the impact of 'time dilation' in near-speed-of-light interstellar trade. Put simply,  calendars on space ships show fewer elapsed years than those not subject to acceleration. In other words, interstellar travel 'fast forwards' Time. 

But this is equivalent to cryonic freezing!

 People who love their families & who want to age at the same pace as them will prefer to avoid both cryonic freezing & interstellar travel. Those who have few friends or other affectionate ties may want to take advantage of the 'magic of compound interest' to make an investment now & 'speed up time' so they get a big reward after very little time has elapsed from their own perspective. 

The net present value of a project differs for different people if they have different opportunity cost/cost of funds & if the 'turnaround time' is different for them or they use techniques with different capital intensity or 'Roundaboutness'. 

I am stupid  & lazy. It would take me 10 years to turn a one K investment into 2 K. But it is the best I can hope for and so I do it. You are smart and industrious. You could turn 1K into 2K, in just one year, producing exactly the same thing. But there's an alternative investment opportunity available to you, but not me, which nets you 3K. So you pass on the project.

What would happen in an economy where time-travel or cryonics freezing were cheap & ubiquitous? The answer is that there would be downward pressure on the real interest rate, assuming it is positive, because 'time preference' is eroded at the margin. The reverse happens if the real interest rate is negative because people would borrow, invest & go to sleep or fly away. Suppose nobody has 'affectionate ties' & thus everybody is prepared to get frozen or shot into space for a near light speed round trip. Then real interest rates would tend to zero.  If some people have 'affectionate ties' but others don't, then, overall, there will still be some 'time preference' & non-zero real interest rate & hence non-zero discounting.

Krugman's paper begins thus-

The total interest payable (or the discount rate applied to a self funded project) is compounded on the length of the project or its 'turnaround'. Thus, if I buy cotton in Surat & send it to Manchester where it is auctioned then, if the average transit time is 5 months, and it takes one month for the money amount to be remitted to Manchester via a Bill of Exchange, then the applicable discount rate is half of the annual interest rate because the 'turnaround was' 6 months. Incidentally, longer 'turnaround' is like increased Austrian 'roundaboutness' in that a capital intensive project which takes 5 years to start producing cotton is more heavily discounted than a labour intensive project which takes 2 years. 

 If the cotton is sent to Alpha Centauri & the voyage takes 50 years then, assuming, the transaction can be notified to Earth in 5 years (since Alpha Centauri is about 4.5 light years away & information (but not goods) can be transmitted at light speed), then the total turnaround time is 55 years.  Suppose there is an equally costly/beneficial 'roundabout' way to produce cotton on Alpha Centauri in 50 years. It would be preferred. 

Krugman was a mathematical economist- i.e. he didn't know how business is done. The fact is, Lombard Merchants in the 13th Century knew the right answer to the question he posed. It is simply a fact that the interest 'clock' stops ticking when the loan is repaid.

 Obviously, if you are using your own funds, then you stop 'discounting' when you get the lump-sum on sale. You don't have to worry about wiring it back to the loan originator because you are he. 

Consider the first theorem of Krugman's

This would make no difference if interest rates go to zero. But they won't if there is preference diversity (e.g. some have affectionate ties which cause them to prefer 'natural' ageing). It may be that 'affectionate ties' is a function of 'synergy'. People who are more productive within a particular group, have stronger bonds & thus greater reluctance to 'fast forward'. If total factor productivity is rising more rapidly on one planet than another, interest rates are likely to be higher in the former. This means that the merchant who arrives in the higher productivity planet will settle- or at least invest- there. 

Krugman's argument relies on the notion that opportunity cost (discount rate) depends on the interest rate on the home planet. Such is not the case. Assuming information can be transmitted at the speed of light, there will be some long enough maturity bond on a different planet which would represent the opportunity cost. 

Obviously, if interest rates everywhere go to zero (which makes sense if 'time-preference' is literally preferring at which future time you want to spend any particular period of your life) then Krugman's theorem is harmless. Otherwise, it is simply wrong. Voyage time plus information transmission time has always been crucial to robust trading networks. The real interest rate (on riskless assets) may be zero or positive or negative. But logistic & arbitrage networks are relatively independent of it. 

This is Krugman's 

Only if they are both zero for endogenous reasons. Otherwise, we could see both transport of goods from low growth (stagnant productivity) planets & capital flight from them. They may have negative real interest rates & depopulation while the high growth (rising productivity) planet has positive real interest rates & demographic growth. The reverse is also possible. A backward planet may get some money from aliens to invest in sweated labour or other extractive projects. Its elite maintain higher real interest rates so as to permit capital inflow. 

Krugman says interest rates will equalise even though simultaneous arbitrage is impossible though he also says that relative prices won't converge. 

Interest costs depend on voyage length. Only if voyage length is zero could they be neglected. But, that means, either we live in an Occasionalist Universe where God is the only efficient cause, or every point in Space-Time is immediately contiguous to every other. We are in a one period economy of a kshanikavada Buddhist type. 

Krugman doesn't say why he thinks relative prices won't converge (he assumes prices remain constant). But that means 'Law of one price' is violated. In that case, arbitrage can't equalise interest rates because there is some commodity outside its charmed circle.

The fact is, if information can be transmitted at light speed, but commodities can only be transported at below light speed, then median  'roundaboutness' converges across planets even though median 'turnaround' increases as more planets come within the ambit of interstellar trade. 

Krugman ends his jeu d'esprit by invoking the Star Trek slogan 'may the Force be with you'. That force, it is now amply apparent, was stupidity. It is with him still. 

Martial's una manus me

The Roman poet Martial, commends his own work, in the course of one of his pithy epigrams, by saying

 Fascia libellis non magna meos, sed parva volumina; una manus me

Copilot translates this as- 

Let my little books have, instead of large bookcases, small portfolios; one hand will hold me.-(una manus me).

Responding to some scabrous suggestions of mine, re. an updating of Martial, Copilot came up with the following-


Uraniae in dies magis obesioris docti vitam perdentes struite pulvinar ampliandum;
Una manus me tenet—carmen ego, o Martialis, quasi Aeon secum coniugium.


Which it translates as-

For Urania, growing fatter day by day, scholars waste their lives building a couch that must be enlarged; one hand holds me—I the epigram, O Martial!—like Aeon in marriage with himself.


My own, not AI enhanced, but Rum diminished trans-creation, or condensation ,of Martial is-

Because Urania, grows fatter, faster, than e'en a Vedic Vulcan can trick out her nuptial bed

Apollo, e'er fugitive, yet fathers this Epigram on Aeon- or, Martial, thy hand self-wed

Upon whom conferred, the rarer the bird, its gift bruits but this sequent

The Word, as Parrot, if profound- as Phoenix is too fucking frequent.

John Ambrosio on the Super-heroes taking on Trump

The following was published on 3 Quarks 

The Achilles Heel of Trump’s Mafia-State Authoritarianism
Posted on Sunday, Apr 5, 2026 5:00AM by John Ambrosio

If Trump has an Achilles heel, why was his political life cut off long ago? Did the Dems really want to lose the White House twice?  Perhaps, Ambrosio has only now discovered this Achilles heel. But if it was there to be discovered, someone smarter than him would have found it already. 

In a recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, drew on a paper written by the renowned Czech dissident, and later president, Václav Havel that discussed how totalitarian regimes, like the former Soviet Union, seek to control the population

they did it by killing people and sending their families to the Gulag 

by providing individuals with an “ideological excuse”

Nobody needs any such thing if it is common knowledge that lack of enthusiasm for the regime will get you shot or sent to the fucking Gulag.  

that enables them to conceal from themselves their silent capitulation,

Why conceal it? You congratulate yourself on having lived another day while your neighbour was dragged out of his bed by the Secret Police & is now being tortured in the Lubyanka. The reason most people supported the regime was because the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Change might be for the worse. Maybe, if the whole world turns Communist, the regime won't need to spend so much on guns. There will be more butter.  

in the face of real and threatened state repression, in order to avoid the shame and indignity of having their obedience to the regime exposed.

There was and is no shame in doing what you have to do to stay alive. Prostitutes say 'we're putting food on the table for our kids'. They don't say 'we are ideologically opposed to sexual repression'  

In The Power of the Powerless, Havel used the example of a greengrocer who put a sign with an official slogan in his shop window

because he is required to do so or may get into trouble if he does not 

to illustrate how totalitarian regimes seek to control and manipulate the population.

They do it by beating and killing them.  

Havel wrote that “the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience,

Similarly, if he is required by the wholesaler to display a poster for Marmite, the sign conceals from himself the fact that he has a contractual obligation to do so. He looks at the poster and says to himself 'I must really like that beastly stuff.  Otherwise, why would I have put up that sign?'

at the same time concealing the low foundations of power.

Similarly, when the motorist sees a traffic light, he conceals from himself the fact that if he does not obey it then he might lose his licence. Instead he says to himself 'What an odd coincidence! It seems that whenever I feel like stopping the traffic light is red! When I feel like driving ahead, it is green! Perhaps I am controlling the traffic lights with my mind.' 

It hides them behind the façade of something high. And that something high is ideology.

Nobody gives a shit about ideology except for a few paranoid nutters. Those paid to gas on about it are just going through the motions.  

It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo,” an “excuse that everyone can use” to maintain an “illusory identity, dignity, and morality,” to “live within a lie.”

Very true. You go to work because you really enjoy doing boring shite. It isn't the case that you need the money.  

As the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci argued, in capitalist systems with highly developed civil societies the ruling class exercises power through a combination of force and consent.

This is true of all governments everywhere at every time. Why not say 'under neo-liberalism, people fart. They are blinded by the occulted hegemony exercised by the Bourgeoisie into thinking they are farting because of some biological process occurring within their own bodies. Actually, it is capitalism which is making them fart.'  

That is, it achieves hegemony through coercion and state violence, and by obtaining the passive or active consent of the masses of people by exercising moral and intellectual leadership.

Nonsense! A State can be ruled well enough by a bunch of Army officers or Party hacks or plutocrats without anybody thinking any of them have a shred of morality or intellect.  

Hegemony is never complete or final and must be continually reproduced,

Capitalism must continually exert itself to make us fart. 

which is why authoritarian regimes strenuously repress criticism of their ideological excuses,

The Beloved Leader also kills any of his comrades whom he starts to see as a rival for power.  

of the official stories people tell themselves about themselves, one another, and the nation that enable them to conceal from themselves their obedience to the regime.

No. Once people are doing what you want, you don't bother expending any further effort on making sure they believe that Capitalism is causing them to fart. After all, you don't want those who slave away to create wealth for you to become complete lunatics.  

For most people, avoiding the shame of having their accommodation to the regime exposed is a powerful motivational force.

Who would do the exposing? A guy who would be swiftly killed. On the other hand, there may be guys who say 'you want to suck my cock. Sadly Capitalism has brainwashed you into thinking you aren't a raving poofter.' In cases like this, beating the shit out of the cunt is a fine way to get a bit of exercise. 

I would argue that Trump and his MAGA allies are experiencing a kind of legitimation crisis

they are going to lose the mid-terms. SCOTUS is already turning against Trump. If the Dems win big in November, Trump will face impeachment hearings. He may have to resign to get a pardon from Vance. But who will pardon Vance?  

that has weakened their political power, given the complete absence, or even the pretence, of needing to provide people who are not his core supporters with “something high” to conceal their adaptation to the administration’s lawlessness and sadistic cruelty.

Unlike Obama. He often provided White Racists, who hated him, with something to get high with which would cause them to see him as Dolly Parton.  

In place of ideological excuses, such as the meritocracy to justify extreme inequality at home,

as opposed too DEI which would cause America to become a starving colony of China 

and American exceptionalism to legitimize military interventionism abroad,

 America doesn't care about legitimacy. It only back off if the thing costs too much.

Trumpism substitutes a constant stream of lies, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.

Yet, he isn't a Marxist. How strange! 

While these false narratives are uncritically absorbed by his base,

People don't care about narratives. Anybody can tell a story.  

they leave others, who do not inhabit Trump’s alternate reality and whose political support is more tenuous, without a way to conceal “their own fallen existence” from themselves.

Why are they not sucking off hobos at truck stops? It is because Neo-Liberalism has brainwashed them.  

As Masha Gessen 

who wrote about the return to totalitarianism in Russia. She didn't mention that, historically, the alternative was economic collapse. 

and others have pointed out, individuals need not believe the lies and mystifications, only act as if they do, or simply tolerate them in silence.

Or ignore them completely or laugh at them but still end up voting for the candidate who is less shit.  

While individuals need not accept the lie, they are nonetheless expected to publicly perform their adherence to it.

Only if that is what they are paid to do. I had gone to Bucking Palace to perform my adherence to Britain's Monarchical ideology. Sadly, I wasn't permitted to enter even though I claimed to be the Dowager Duchess of Dublin.  

What is different today is Trump’s view that the exercise of state power is no longer in need of ideological excuses, that he possesses a king-like divine right to do as he pleases, unconstrained by norms or law, which people must simply accept as legitimate.

Also Capitalism is causing him to fart.  

While Trump’s staunchest supporters in the MAGA movement do not need the false justifications, those in the outer rings of his political universe, many of whom are young, racially diverse, low information, and low propensity voters, are left without a way to rationalize their support or indifference to his gangster authoritarianism, which relies on thinly veiled and coded threats, bullying, extortion, and extreme violence to achieve its political objectives.

He promised that he would bring peace & prosperity. Currently, it looks as though he has done the opposite. Sadly, if enough people want to see darkies deported in the most brutal manner possible, he may still win.  

In this sense, Trump’s remarkable openness and transparency about his illegal, unconstitutional, and corrupt practices, his penchant for saying the quiet part out loud, makes it more difficult for less partisan Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to hide their adaptation to the regime from themselves.

Why would they want to? The question was always 'can Trump deliver?' He did so well enough in his first term till COVID blindsided him. Currently, it looks as though his economic & diplomatic strategies have misfired. But if the American military inflicts a crushing defeat on Iran, he may still win the mid-terms.  

What is a source of political strength in relation to his most ardent supporters can be a significant weakness for voters who are not securely on board the MAGA train, as the recent gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey demonstrate. Being open and unapologetic about

the fact that he has a penis- a white penis!- is totes triggering to me.  

his bigotry and lawbreaking, and offering only implausible and easily refutable narratives to justify his actions, makes it exceedingly difficult for Trump to assemble a stable political coalition.

Other Presidents had the same problem, even affable Biden & charismatic Obama. 

Some might argue that it’s better that Trump dispenses with the need to provide ideological excuses that give people a way to accommodate themselves to his lawlessness, to carry on with their everyday lives. Telegraphing his thinking and intentions gives Trump’s political opponents a heads-up and an opportunity to prepare for what’s coming. But by not seeking to obscure or hide his crimes, Trump normalizes his criminal behavior, makes it appear as if his lawlessness is just business as usual, no big deal. If they were crimes, why would Trump repeatedly talk about them in public?

If they were crimes, why couldn't Joe & Kamala lock him up?  

The failure to provide individuals with a means to avoid the shame of having their complicity with Trump’s crimes exposed

fuck shame. It's going to prison which scares people. I bet there will be tens of thousands of pardons before Trump leaves office.  

means he must increasingly rely on fear and intimidation, on the use of coercion and force,

& mind control rays 

which will lead to a further weakening of his political support, as was made clear by Trump’s declining approval ratings on immigration in the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and CBP agents in Minneapolis after videos of the shootings that circulated widely on social media and elsewhere contradicted the official story.

Don't shoot white peeps.  It's not like America is running out of niggers, spics, wops, dagos & those fucking annoying dot Indians who stink of curry. 

Trump’s political strategy, which depends primarily on

offering enough voters things they really want. Politics is a business. If you can't deliver, your rival takes market share from you.  

the unflinching support of a cultish base of loyal voters is unlikely to succeed, although he will have done a lot of long-term damage to the country in the meantime.

In which case the Dems share the blame for being so utterly shit.  

As Gramsci argues, like other liberal democracies in the West,

Gramsci had never seen a liberal democracy. The King appointed Mussolini & the King dismissed him two decades later.  

the U.S. developed “a sturdy structure of civil society”

a sound economy. Civil Society is meaningless shite.  

that constitutes “a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks”

reservations for such indigenous people as had not been killed.  

, a kind of firewall, that makes it exceedingly difficult for Trump and his MAGA allies to consolidate an authoritarian takeover of the country.

If he has both SCOTUS & Congress on side, he can do pretty much anything he likes. Now Gorsuch & Amy Coney Barret are defying him because it looks likely that he will lose the mid-terms.  

This is the case, despite the fact that much of the mass media is controlled by a few oligarchs and large corporations, the judiciary is dominated by a rouge MAGA-friendly Supreme Court, and elites in some major law, firms, universities, and media organizations capitulated to Trump’s threats and extortion.

The MAGA tide appears to be ebbing.  

Nearly half of the U.S. electorate identify as independents. While the overwhelming majority of them lean toward one of the major parties, about 9% of these unaffiliated voters demonstrate a pattern of voting behavior that is unstable and inconsistent, and are potentially up for grabs. In a nearly evenly divided electorate, these potential swing voters can determine the outcome of a close national election, along with anti-Trump and establishment Republicans.

In Economics, Expectations create Reality. In Politics, perception is Reality. The Dems need to put their best foot forward.  People need to believe they will deliver lower inflation. 

The point is not that Trump’s inherent political weakness will necessarily lead to his electoral defeat, given the Republican Party’s success in limiting access to the ballot and controlling the administration of elections in many Republican-led states,

also, they are using mind-rays to cause people to fart. Flatulence is a Neo-Liberal conspiracy.  

but that his attempt to control the country through fear, intimidation, and the random use of force has become increasingly necessary and politically problematic.

not to mention smelly. Did you know that in a truly Socialist Society, farts smell like roses?  

Absent significant popular support or widely accepted ideological excuses, which white Christian Nationalism does not provide for the majority of voters, Trump’s gangster authoritarianism will require a continual ratcheting up of threats of violence and actual violence.

We get it. He is a Nazi. Trillions of disabled Lesbians of colour have already been forced on to cattle trucks & sent to gas-chambers.  

The purpose of engaging in extreme and unaccountable violence is not only to shock and terrorize the population, but to normalize the brutality, to condition people to accept state violence as an ordinary aspect of everyday life.

Very true. Americans first started to suspect something of the sort when the Postman took to brutally sodomizing them while delivering the mail. 

Despite the growing unpopularity of how immigration laws are being enforced, and public revulsion at the brutality and murderous violence of Homeland Security agents,

The problem is that a lot of people who say they don't like it, may still want the intended outcome. We don't like the way the sausage is made. But we like sausages. 

Trump will likely respond to declining public support by doubling down on intimidation and state repression to advance his political agenda,

He will set up more concentration camps.  

since there is no other plausible path open to him.

There is one. Trump could use the excuse of the Hormuz crisis, & rising oil prices, to invoke the  International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to seize assets and 'redistribute' them- i.e. buy votes. But there would be legal challenges. Still, that seems to me to be the logical move. 

His abject indifference

gloating, not abject  

to acknowledging, much less seriously addressing, the concerns of people who did not support him, leaves Trump little choice but to push ahead, despite the negative electoral consequences for the Republican Party.

Voters care about money. They want more of it in their pockets. Trump needs to deliver on that though he may still lose.  

While Trump ostensibly cares little about public opinion,

He may not care about opinion. He cares about votes.  

it turns out that the forces of political gravity have not been completely suspended, that elections still matter, which is why Trump and his MAGA allies have pursued numerous strategies in Republican-led states to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters by limiting access to the ballot and putting loyalists in control of who counts and verifies election results.

Also he is using Neo-Liberalism to force them to fart.  

If necessary, they are prepared to steal the election through bogus claims of voter fraud and foreign interference, and by manipulating the vote.

No! Trump will stage a coup & declare himself Emperor.  

In an effort to further tilt the political playing field in their favor, the Republican majority in the House recently passed the Save America Act which would mandate in-person voter registration and require a birth certificate, passport, or certain state-issued forms of identification that match your current name,

This could backfire. Rednecks don't carry no identification. My guess is, anyone at risk from ICE would be careful to keep such things to hand at all time.  

so that people without access to these documents, including married women who took their husband’s name,

who tend to update their documentation 

would be unable to register to vote. It would also allow the Department of Homeland Security to seize state voter rolls in order to challenge and preemptively remove potential Democratic voters.

Who believes they are that efficient? Trump's henchmen don't exactly have a sterling track record. 

Although the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, and will have the unintended effect of disenfranchising many Republican voters as well, the political motivation of the legislation is clear.

Bills generally do have a political motivation. Sad.  

Trump might also seek to instill fear and terror, and scare off potential Democratic voters by stationing ICE and CBP agents near polling stations in some blue cities and states, by flooding the zone with his paramilitary force of Brownshirts, and by

holding Nuremberg rallies?

deploying National Guard troops or other military units in highly contested congressional districts.

The smart move would be to deploy hookers. Wives won't let their husbands vote. Dems tend to be pussy-whipped.  

Like European fascism, Trump’s mafia-state authoritarianism celebrates the naked exercise of state power

as opposed to exposing its limp & tiny dick 

by an omnipotent strongman, the unapologetic use of violence against its perceived enemies,

Iran? 

and the triumph of emotion and action over reason and deliberation.

Like this guy can reason! 

But in the absence of significant popular support for his Project 2025-inspired political agenda, his unconstitutional war of choice against Iran, and his increasing reliance on fear, intimidation, and state violence to control the population, the MAGA movement may have reached its political limits.

It also may have turned into a pussy cat.  

People who refuse to capitulate to Trump’s gangster authoritarianism

are like people who refuse to let goats sodomize them while playing tennis

do not have to constitute a majority of the population to succeed. According to Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, a relatively small percentage of the population, as little as about 3.5%, that actively participates in nonviolent resistance can bring about significant political change.

That's why if sex offenders could just raise their numbers a little they can get rape decriminalized.  

This is not an iron law of history

It is nonsense. The fact is even 0.0001 percent of the population can bring about significant political change if they come up with a better solution to a collective action problem.  

but a tendency that depends on other factors, such as

saving tax payers money?  

“momentum, organization, strategic leadership, and sustainability.”

Money.  

There are no guarantees. Although peaceful resistance is twice as likely as armed conflict to succeed, it still fails around 47% of the time.

What succeeds 100 % of the time, in a Democracy, is being more popular than the other side.  Pretending you are fighting Hitler doesn't make you popular. People think you are a hysterical nutcase. 

Meeting the threshold for significant political change in the U.S. would require about 12 million people to become actively engaged in nonviolent resistance.

Masturbation is one of the best ways to non-violently resist Patriarchy, Neo-Liberalism & the Military-Industrial Complex. That's why teechur tried to get us not to do it in class. Fuck you teechur! Fuck you very much! 

Trump demands that people repeatedly perform their loyalty to him

He wants loyalty, not the performance of it. Anyone can pretend to be loyal while stealing all your money or sticking a knife in your back.  

without the cover of an ideological excuse,

He genuinely isn't ideological.  

to accept his unrestrained and lawless

clueless maybe.  

exercise of political, economic, and military power as inherently justifiable, as the natural order of things, as the rightful domination of the weak by the strong.

Ambrosio goes weak at the knees when the contemplates the Donald. I bet he was stroking himself off as he wrote this.  

Stephen Miller,

another of Ambrosio's crushes 

Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff, summed up this view in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN: “We live in the real world,

Not Germany in the 1930s 

Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Ambrosio thinks the world has always been ruled by cute little kittens. 

As others have pointed out, a key flaw and political weakness of the purveyors of Trumpism is their belief that everyone is more or less like them, corrupt, mendacious, and transactional, but only pretend to be otherwise.

Actually everybody is a cute little kitten.  

This false assumption relies on the belief that everyone has a price and can be bribed, bought off, or bullied, that liberal notions of fairness and social justice are just ideological cover for exercising the baser instincts that drive all human behavior.

What people really want is a ball of yarn to play with. Trump doesn't understand this. That's why he lost to Hilary & Kamala/ 

They simply cannot imagine a world in which truth, virtue, ethics, and ideals motivate people, in which people are willing to risk their lives for the benefit of others.

Ambrosio is risking his life helping disabled lesbians of colour escape from Trump's gas chambers. Does he get any thanks for this? No. Those ungrateful lesbians make him eat out their pussies while they are on their periods. Would Trump do any thing similar? No! That's the difference between a pussy-grabber & a pussy eater. 

The “morally depraved” Homeland Security agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere are finding out otherwise,

At some point, the penny is going to drop that in a country with lots of guns & jury trials, people are going to start shooting back.  

that there are many people who refuse to “live within a lie”

I hear of this one disabled lesbian of colour who refused to give the Nazi salute to Hesgeth. True, she didn't have any arms, but it was the thought which counts.  

and perform loyalty rituals, who will not succumb to threats and murderous state repression,

indeed some won't even sing the Horst Wessel song. Not many. Still.  

and who will put their lives at risk to protect their neighbors.

Masturbation can be a very dangerous activity. Still, to protect your neighbours by masturbating incessantly is the act of a real hero.  

It turns out that the “suckers and losers” who refuse to be like them are the real heroes in America.

Heroism is not enough. They need to gain the superpower of being able to drown swarms of attacking ICE agents with a vast torrent of their own jizz.  

 

Habermas on Gaza

 In 2023, after the Hamas atrocities & the start of the Gaza war, Habermas & three other German intellectuals published the following statement re. 'Principles of Solidarity'.  

A principle is a 'fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning'. However, whether a principle is applicable in a particular situation depends on the facts of the case as well as the purpose for which it is being applied.

The word 'Solidarity' means- 'unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group'. 

One may say that people being attacked are likely to have solidarity more particularly if they can work together to tackle this 'collective action problem'. The same is true of people who wish to attack a particular group. They may ally for particular limited purposes and show a certain amount of solidarity towards each other over the course of the conflict.

Since elderly German pedants were not, as a group, affected in any material way by the Gaza conflict- nor could they affect, in any material way, its outcome- the question arises as to whether this was a case of genuine solidarity or mere moral posturing of a self-aggrandising type. The possibility that this was 'Aumann agreement'- i.e. a consensus based on the facts which thus may have probative value- is ruled out by the following considerations

1) those concerned did not know the facts and were not concerned to discover them. 

2) without knowledge of the facts, the question of what juristic or other norms should be applied remains open. Since agreement is precluded, so is 'Solidarity' as opposed to 'sympathy' or 'concern' or the wish that things might have turned out differently.

I suppose one might say 'these pedants remember a time when Student movement in Germany & America affected political outcomes. Perhaps they have disciples on university campuses who have influence among the rising generation of students and political activists.'

The problem here is that if this is true then there may be a strategic component in what is occurring such that the reactions of these people has been factored in. But, if so, their response needs to acknowledge that possibility. Moreover, it would need to foster an equally strategic alliance. Otherwise, there is no 'Solidarity'. There is merely some ipse dixit, unprincipled, arbitrary assertions.                                                                                                                                                

The current situation created by Hamas‘ extreme atrocity and Israel’s response to it has led to a cascade of moral and political statements and protests.

People being killed don't matter. People, living far away, who talk bollocks for purely narcissistic reasons matter a great deal.  

We believe that amidst all the conflicting views being expressed, there are some principles that should not be disputed.

Even if there is no dispute about principles, there will be disputes as to the facts of the case which in turn determine which principle is applicable.  

They are the basis of a rightly understood solidarity with Israel and Jews in Germany.

Solidarity is solidarity whether 'rightly understood' on not. I rightly understand what it is to give birth to a baby. This does not mean I can or have given birth to a baby. There are people who have given birth who didn't rightly understand what was happening when they gave birth but who became good mothers nevertheless. I 'rightly understand' birth & motherhood but can't be a mother.  Solidarity with Israel would involve shipping them military material and putting diplomatic pressure on the allies of Hamas so as to persuade them to release all the hostages. Solidarity with Jews in Germany might involve helping protect Synagogues & going on marches to the Qatar Embassy demanding the release of the hostages. 

Disapproval of Hamas is not solidarity with Israel. Saying 'anti-Semitism is naughty' is not solidarity. What is it? A way to pass the time; that is all.  

The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of eliminating Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to strike back.

Because it thinks it can win. If it didn't, it might pay to get its people released. As a matter of fact, it is likely to trade some prisoners for hostages. 

How this retaliation, which is justified in principle,

if it can succeed. If it can't, it isn't justified. The facts of the case determine which principle is applicable.  

is carried out is the subject of controversial debate;

meaningless debate unless it features military experts with a profound knowledge of the region 

principles of proportionality,

do not arise if a sovereign power can implement a 'zero tolerance' policy with respect to crimes of murder & kidnap. Here, what matters is whether the matter is justiciable or whether it comes under the rubric of 'political question'. That is a matter for Israeli jurists. The principle of comity of nations applies. There may be jurists or military experts outside Israel whose work Israeli Courts may consider germane.  

the prevention of civilian casualties

by Hamas involves the complete eradication of Hamas. Does it also involve bombing Qatar? Only the Iranians could get away with it. Maybe there's a way to get them to do it.  

and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace

e.g. the peace that followed the occupation & 'de-Nazification' of Germany?  

must be the guiding principles.

For whom?  Those who deliver pizza in Frankfurt? No. Only those who teach useless shite. 

Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions.

No. The standard of judgment in the only jurisdiction capable of enforcing it remains the same. 

In particular, Israel’s actions in no way justify anti-Semitic reactions, especially not in Germany.

That is a justiciable matter. It is perfectly legal to be anti-Semitic. Such people are bound to make hay while the Sun shines. Anti-anti-Semites too are welcome to come out to play. 

It is intolerable that Jews in Germany are once again exposed to threats to life and limb and have to fear physical violence on the streets.

To be fair, German Jews get even angrier when young girls are raped by asylum seekers. The feeling is Jews can look after themselves. But, if the German public has lost the will to protect its own young people, maybe it is time to think of making Aliyah. 

If Germans won't show solidarity with their own daughters, then that Nation is doomed. 

The democratic ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is orientated towards the obligation to respect human dignity,

especially the dignity of rapists from far away countries 

is linked to a political culture for which Jewish life and Israel’s right to exist

the remedy for that right must be supplied by Israel itself. But, it has to cut its coat according to its cloth. The complicating factor is the American leash on Israel. That is what gives the current situation its game-theoretic complexity.  

are central elements worthy of special protection

what is worthy of special protection is the means to protect. If those means are lost, you can't protect shit. You can merely talk. 

in light of the mass crimes of the Nazi era.

The mass crimes of the Germans are irrelevant. Germany is now part of the comity of Nations. Will it do stupid shit? Probably. But it is what is happening within its own borders- not stuff going down far far away- which matters.  

The commitment to this is fundamental to our political life.

They really aren't. Either Israel prevails or it goes under. If it goes under, there will be a war between one bunch of Muslims & another bunch of Muslims. If it doesn't go under, this will still be the case. Either German political life focuses on solving German collective action problems (& those of the EU) or it doesn't have a political life. It has a bunch of ranters.  

The elementary rights to freedom and physical integrity as well as to protection from racist defamation are indivisible and apply equally to all.

What about the elementary right not to be raped by soi disant 'refugees'?  

All those in our country who have cultivated anti-Semitic sentiments and convictions behind all kinds of pretexts and now see a welcome opportunity to express them uninhibitedly must also abide by this.

Why? If anti-anti-Semites get to roll around in their own shit on the pretext of solidarity with Israel, why shouldn't those they are opposed to do the same on the pretext of solidarity with Gaza?