The Jade Steps

Chapter Twenty One: The  Trap of Cholula

They spent most of the siesta, the Spaniards' period of rest after the mid-day meal, having fun turning Spanish words into Nahuatl. Malinali was having so much fun it made her forgetful. She shook her head. "I must leave," she told them. "Our Mesheeka guests have come for their daily ceremony of complaining to Captain Cortez, and I must be there, for it is through me that they address their complaints."

"Have fun," Aguilar joked. Malinali sighed. "Our talking - that was fun. But ‘fun' and ‘Mesheeka' are two words that don't go together - in Spanish or Nahuatl."

Today is the nineteenth day here in Tlaxcala, she thought as she walked to Cortez's quarters, and for every one of those days, the Mesheeka emissaries who had accompanied them from Xocotlan had come to complain to Cortez about what terrible people the Tlaxcalans were, how they were all traitors and thieves and poor and wicked and not fit even to be slaves. It was so tiresome to hear and translate, and how Cortez could pretend to always be courteous and polite, or even stay awake, during the daily moaning, she didn't know.

When she saw the crowd of soldiers in front of Cortez's quarters, she realized something was different.

In what is probably the silliest comment on climate since Harry Reid blamed global warming on the Koch brothers, a green journalist opined of the refugees currently dying in the Mediterranean: "This is what climate crisis looks like . . . We know there is evidence that the violence triggered by the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 were in part fuelled by protests over soaring food prices."

The soaring prices were actually exacerbated (as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN confirmed) by the diversion of much of the world's farmland into making motor fuel, in the form of ethanol and biodiesel, for the rich to salve their green consciences. Greenie climate policies were a far greater contributor to the Arab Spring than climate change itself.

Without abundant fuel and power, prosperity is impossible. Nearly 700 million Africans rely mainly on wood or dung to cook and heat with, and 600 million have no access to electric light.

As the International Energy Agency recently put it in a recent report, "increasing access to modern forms of energy is crucial to unlocking faster economic and social development in sub-Saharan Africa". Africa is awash with fossil fuels - but not the capital to build plants to turn them into electricity.

Greenie activists and politicians in the West -- what I call the Green Taliban -- are determined to deny them that capital.  Why?

How would you feel if you had to have bodyguards anytime you moved about — not because you were a voluntary celebrity, such as a presidential candidate or movie star, but merely because you exercised your free speech right by publishing cartoons that some found offensive?

Danish journalist Flemming Rose published cartoons of Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten back in 2006, which led to many violent riots by Moslems around the world. He has written a book, “The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech” (the English edition was just published by the Cato Institute Press).

Mr. Rose, rather than hiding, even though a fatwa has been leveled against him calling for his death, has traveled and spoken widely in his unrelenting advocacy of free speech and against the tyranny of silence. He has argued that “the lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow.  The time is now to shut down Islamic Terrorism's financial network.

Ayn Rand famously titled one of her non-fiction books, "The Virtue of Selfishness." This was a combative and provocative title, which reflects her own personality as well as the intellectual environment in which she lived.

The problem with this title, though, is that it creates a polarity in many people's minds between owning and honoring one's own life, dreams, and actions, and the kind of loving, compassionate, and empathic human connection which is central to a good and happy life.

That polarity need not exist; there is no contradiction - most of the time - between caring for others and honoring your own life. They are deeply interconnected.

There are moments in life when you have to choose whether to take care of your own needs or to give up those needs for the good of others, but they are not all that common, and such circumstances have their own unique dynamics.  Let's talk about how this works in real life.

The Democrat Circus continues to be the zaniest show in town.  Obambi exults the nomination is barely his while Hillary the Loser angrily demands she be his running-mate. 

Angrily demanding something is rarely the most effective negotiating technique to get what you want.  A smart person will use it only when both the anger and the demand are a pretense, when you want your demand rejected, not accepted.

Yes, intimidation often works when your opponent is a pussy.  Obambi is indeed a pussy, and voters' suspicion that he is would only be confirmed if he capitulated to Clinton intimidation - which is why he has to reject her, even though he knows she wants to be rejected.

It's not complicated once it's understood what Hillary's game plan is now - and the pact she's making with John McCain to achieve it.  So the plan works like this.