The Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, did a fine imitation of a rooster in full flush on al-Manar TV in Beruit last week. Of course, the man did have something to crow about--victory.
While the Lebanese Army stood around with its collective thumb up an anatomically improbable location, its commander waited the call---
No. He wasn't waiting for a call to arms. That came. He declined.
Michel Sleiman, the reluctant general became Michel Sleiman, eager president. That was the call he wanted. He got it.
From Hezbollah. Nasrallah characterised Sleiman as "our ally" in his speech and further declared (no doubt accurately) that the Lebanese National Army "will never be used to disarm us."
Between that statement and the fact that the agreement worked out in Doha gives Hezbollah the effective veto in the new government, Nasrallah has the strings of the puppets in his hands. Not a bad few days light work for a militia which no doubt had some kind of fun killing Sunnis and Druze or for negotiators who labored in the upscale surroundings of Qutar with the full support of both Syria and Iran.
From the reaction of George W. Bush (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aNbQ4atY9pn8&refer=africa) one would get the idea that somehow democracy had triumphed in Lebanon. If the current Decider Guy really believes that, Nasrallah doesn't agree.
In his speech, the Hezbollah jefe maintained that his organisation had defeated the democracy movement in Lebanon and the government it had produced. He extended that undoubtedly accurate observation with another. By the success of the armed (can we say, "terrorist?") action and the Munich Conference in Doha, Nasrallah decreed Hezbollah had shown Washington that it could not move ahead with its "freedom and democracy" strategy anywhere in the Mideast and particularly in Lebanon.
The Geek ain't going to argue with that proposition.
Of course, the Geek has long held that the neocon ninny notion of imposing democracy in the frightfully infertile soils of the Mideast was a non-starter since assorted neos first muttered about the need for doing such nearly twenty years ago. History shows that efforts to impose democracy are exercises in futility compared to which masturbation with steel wool is both productive and enjoyable.
Nasrallah offered an alternative model to the "peace and democracy" strategy. It is one that he is certain will prove to be as successful elsewhere in the Mideast as it has just been in Lebanon.
He urged Hamas and Islamic Jihad to continue using "terror operations" on the Hezbollah model against both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He also stated flatly that Hezbollah will support armed action against what he termed the "political process" in Iraq.
The phrasing "political process" is vague but implies to the Geek that Nasrallah means supporting actions directed against the current regime in Baghdad as well as the US and Allied forces. This could make for some interesting complications concerning Hezbollah's relations with Iran as both Iran and the current Iraqi government are Shia in affiliation.
Perhaps that is why the General Secretary moved quickly to add that Hezbollah was proud to be under the Vilayet e-Faqih of Iran. Nothing like a strong declaration of loyalty to the Khomeinist version of Islamism/jihadism to pour preemptive oil on the waves.
The affirmation of faith must be taken in conjunction with the challenge Nasrallah heaved to the West generally and both the US and Israel in particular when he stated that Hezbollah would fight any external intervention and that it had showed the way of successful "confrontationism."
The Geek has seen too much both directly as a practitioner and vicariously as a historian to be of an alarmist nature. Nonetheless, he is of the view that Hezbollah is a greater threat over the near- or mid-term than al-Qaeda.
If nothing else, the Hezbollah victory in Lebanon makes the possibility of an Israeli-Syrian rapprochement move from the "slim" category to the "essentially no-chance-in-hell" level. It also may serve to embolden the mullahocracy in Iran at a critical time when the mullahs are running out of viable options to deal with the combination of economic collapse, social unrest and external pressure.
Hezbollah saw its opportunity and took it. Successfully. One can only hope that Tehran (or Qom) doesn't see the Lebanese model as a guide for for Iran.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
What's Wrong With the "League of Democracy?"
John McCain has proposed the creation of a global organization he has dubbed the "League of Democracies." In either of the two forms which he has outlined, the concept has raised the hackles of the High Minded for whom the UN is the end all and be all of international organizations.
Credit for the idea has been awarded to Ivo Daalder, an analyst at the Brookings Institution. On this, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jHeyKtCtWClMxihMhSrz5rSgaERgD90VTGH00. Without any discredit to Daalder, the germ of the concept was first advanced by Admiral Lacoste, a former director of the French foreign intelligence service in his book World War IV. The admiral's book came out some fifteen years ago.
The admiral, like Senator McCain (and the Geek), regarded the United Nations as an inherently less than reliable body. Looking forward Lacoste saw the situation on the Banks of the Hudson growing ever more frustrating and futile as Islamism and its violent helpmate jihadism grew in influence and puissance.
On occasion the Lofty Global Entity can lurch into a semblance of effective operation. Those few moments have usually come as a result of a truly egregious breech of the peace and the abject failure of diplomacy. It has also come about as the result of a full court press by the US and its major allies.
The results can be good--the Korean War, or the First Persian Gulf War. The results can be poor--regime change in Iraq.
In these high profile cases, the UN has provided a political-diplomatic fig leaf to cover the American policy genitalia. In short, if the US is willing and able to grab enough countries by their short hairs and if the cause of action is sufficient to provide diplomatic cover, the Security Council or even the General Assembly will authorize action.
Outside of a handful of particularly repulsive acts by noxious governments which resulted in UN action, the Association of the High Minded on the edge of the Hudson has a very spotty record.
It is this spottiness which propelled Lacoste, Daalder and McCain to propose an alternative body. This body would at least share a common commitment to and experience with democracy.
Critics of the proposal (http://themoderatevoice.com/at-tmv/newsweek-blogitics/20023/john-mccain-and-the-league-of-global-antagonism/) accuse McCain of proposing an elitist outfit of exploitative states which would seek to impose its collective (read "American") will on the benighted heathens outside the gates.
The US doesn't need to create another multilateral body in order to pursue its subjective foreign policy interests. There are plethora of these already--including the UN, as history (including that of very recent nature) shows.
Other critics http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2008/05/fantasy_league.html. argue that McCain and others who look favorably upon the "League of Democracies" notion are simply unaware of the trajectory of regional multilateral entities. They point to the Commonwealth, the Council of Europe, the African Union and the newly created Union of South American Nations as clear evidence that more than enough democratically based regional outfits exist to accomplish McCain's stated goal of constraining tyrants.
Leaving aside the questionable assumption that the Africa Union represents a congerie of stable countries enjoying open, unfettered democracy or the equally dubious assertion that Hugo Chavez and his ilk are champions of the democratic ideal, this criticism is based on less than firm foundations.
What really seems to bother the supporters of the UN is that any effective "League of Democracies" would be able to function without the let or hindrance of Russia or the Peoples Republic of China. Apparently the very thought of doing something, anything, without the concurrence of these two countries turns knees to knocking and stomachs to quease.
Considering that the PRC is a single party oligarchy and is quite likely to remain such for decades if not generations to come and that Russia is well along the road to the same destination, a simple question is required.
The question?
Why should either single party oligarchy despite the trappings of elections be considered a democracy eligible for membership in the proposed "League?"
A pivotal reality of international life is ignored by the critics both in the US and abroad. They need to get a grip.
Get a grip on this. All states pursue self-defined national interests. Insofar as doing such in conjunction with other nations possessing coinciding national interests, they will do so. If it is necessary to push on alone, a country will do that as well.
Self-defined national interest. Keep a firm grip on that reality.
Why?
Several reasons. It is the rock on which the ship of dreams sailed by the High Minded will always founder. It is the reason that the UN talks, agrees, fails to take effective united action.
Even if the "League of Democracies" included only countries such as the US, the UK, France, Germany, the smaller nations of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the individual members would be governed by self-defined national interests--including the dictates of domestic politics.
This limits the capacity of the proposed "League" to be much more effective than the UN.
Limits, perhaps. Nullifies? No. The predicate for an organisation of states with a sound, tested and lengthy commitment to the mass of processes collected under the word "democracy" is an equally lengthy, tested and generally accepted dedication to human rights including legal equality, freedom of speech, assembly and conscience, and a jealous protection of the minority from a tyranny of the majority.
Common political and social values, a common understanding of the political compact may not be both necessary and sufficient for effective collective action against a common threat. Not necessary and sufficient, perhaps, but absolutely necessary to provide even the potential for coherent collaborative action.
Any "League" is unlikely to become a pure tool for some future cohort of American neocon ninnies. The "League" probably won't become a bureaucratic institution. It would be an effective way to circumvent the UN.
That's not a bad idea. Given the monolithic and large bloc represented by the Organization of Islamic Countries and the number of microstates with no authentic reason to exist beyond the human tendency to clump together on the basis of shared heritage and language, there is decreasing probability that the UN will be able to deal swiftly and effectively with emerging threats to either international peace or the internal disorder of collapsing states.
The High Minded both in and outside the chattering class may not find reality tasteful, but that doesn't make it any less real.
Credit for the idea has been awarded to Ivo Daalder, an analyst at the Brookings Institution. On this, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jHeyKtCtWClMxihMhSrz5rSgaERgD90VTGH00. Without any discredit to Daalder, the germ of the concept was first advanced by Admiral Lacoste, a former director of the French foreign intelligence service in his book World War IV. The admiral's book came out some fifteen years ago.
The admiral, like Senator McCain (and the Geek), regarded the United Nations as an inherently less than reliable body. Looking forward Lacoste saw the situation on the Banks of the Hudson growing ever more frustrating and futile as Islamism and its violent helpmate jihadism grew in influence and puissance.
On occasion the Lofty Global Entity can lurch into a semblance of effective operation. Those few moments have usually come as a result of a truly egregious breech of the peace and the abject failure of diplomacy. It has also come about as the result of a full court press by the US and its major allies.
The results can be good--the Korean War, or the First Persian Gulf War. The results can be poor--regime change in Iraq.
In these high profile cases, the UN has provided a political-diplomatic fig leaf to cover the American policy genitalia. In short, if the US is willing and able to grab enough countries by their short hairs and if the cause of action is sufficient to provide diplomatic cover, the Security Council or even the General Assembly will authorize action.
Outside of a handful of particularly repulsive acts by noxious governments which resulted in UN action, the Association of the High Minded on the edge of the Hudson has a very spotty record.
It is this spottiness which propelled Lacoste, Daalder and McCain to propose an alternative body. This body would at least share a common commitment to and experience with democracy.
Critics of the proposal (http://themoderatevoice.com/at-tmv/newsweek-blogitics/20023/john-mccain-and-the-league-of-global-antagonism/) accuse McCain of proposing an elitist outfit of exploitative states which would seek to impose its collective (read "American") will on the benighted heathens outside the gates.
The US doesn't need to create another multilateral body in order to pursue its subjective foreign policy interests. There are plethora of these already--including the UN, as history (including that of very recent nature) shows.
Other critics http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2008/05/fantasy_league.html. argue that McCain and others who look favorably upon the "League of Democracies" notion are simply unaware of the trajectory of regional multilateral entities. They point to the Commonwealth, the Council of Europe, the African Union and the newly created Union of South American Nations as clear evidence that more than enough democratically based regional outfits exist to accomplish McCain's stated goal of constraining tyrants.
Leaving aside the questionable assumption that the Africa Union represents a congerie of stable countries enjoying open, unfettered democracy or the equally dubious assertion that Hugo Chavez and his ilk are champions of the democratic ideal, this criticism is based on less than firm foundations.
What really seems to bother the supporters of the UN is that any effective "League of Democracies" would be able to function without the let or hindrance of Russia or the Peoples Republic of China. Apparently the very thought of doing something, anything, without the concurrence of these two countries turns knees to knocking and stomachs to quease.
Considering that the PRC is a single party oligarchy and is quite likely to remain such for decades if not generations to come and that Russia is well along the road to the same destination, a simple question is required.
The question?
Why should either single party oligarchy despite the trappings of elections be considered a democracy eligible for membership in the proposed "League?"
A pivotal reality of international life is ignored by the critics both in the US and abroad. They need to get a grip.
Get a grip on this. All states pursue self-defined national interests. Insofar as doing such in conjunction with other nations possessing coinciding national interests, they will do so. If it is necessary to push on alone, a country will do that as well.
Self-defined national interest. Keep a firm grip on that reality.
Why?
Several reasons. It is the rock on which the ship of dreams sailed by the High Minded will always founder. It is the reason that the UN talks, agrees, fails to take effective united action.
Even if the "League of Democracies" included only countries such as the US, the UK, France, Germany, the smaller nations of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the individual members would be governed by self-defined national interests--including the dictates of domestic politics.
This limits the capacity of the proposed "League" to be much more effective than the UN.
Limits, perhaps. Nullifies? No. The predicate for an organisation of states with a sound, tested and lengthy commitment to the mass of processes collected under the word "democracy" is an equally lengthy, tested and generally accepted dedication to human rights including legal equality, freedom of speech, assembly and conscience, and a jealous protection of the minority from a tyranny of the majority.
Common political and social values, a common understanding of the political compact may not be both necessary and sufficient for effective collective action against a common threat. Not necessary and sufficient, perhaps, but absolutely necessary to provide even the potential for coherent collaborative action.
Any "League" is unlikely to become a pure tool for some future cohort of American neocon ninnies. The "League" probably won't become a bureaucratic institution. It would be an effective way to circumvent the UN.
That's not a bad idea. Given the monolithic and large bloc represented by the Organization of Islamic Countries and the number of microstates with no authentic reason to exist beyond the human tendency to clump together on the basis of shared heritage and language, there is decreasing probability that the UN will be able to deal swiftly and effectively with emerging threats to either international peace or the internal disorder of collapsing states.
The High Minded both in and outside the chattering class may not find reality tasteful, but that doesn't make it any less real.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Morality Moving Front and Center
In a talk the other day entitled "Remarks by National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley at the Proliferation Security Initiative Fifth Anniversary Senior Level Meeting " the intellectually undistinguished but long serving White House factotum made one interesting point. It was buried in the usual mass of bureaucratic twaddle. To see the entire thirty minute preparation of pap, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/05/20080528-3.html.
The point that struck the Geek came about twenty-seven minutes into the evolution. It is worth quoting in full. "Second, many terrorists value the perception of theological legitimacy for their actions. By encouraging debate over the morality of WMD terrorism, we can try to affect the strategic calculus of the terrorists and discourage them from resorting to these weapons."
The vapid Mr Hadley you will recall stepped up to his current position when his organizational chart superior, Condolezza Rice exceeded her Peter Principle Point by becoming Secretary of State. Like SecState Rice he has excelled to date by defending the indefensible and seeking after the unattainable in the service of the current administration.
However, presumably by the same technique that would allow an infinitude of monkeys with word processors to eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare, Mr Hadley has proposed an interesting, albeit far from unique idea. We ought to debate the morality of WMD terrorism.
Actually, the National Security Advisor seems to be taking a leaf from the book(s) written by the adversaries of the US in the current Great Global War On Terrorism. The basis for this assertion is found in an excellent piece of reportage by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker. On line, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright/?yrail.
Wright parses the semi-subterranean debate over terrorism which finds the original ideological fountainhead for the likes of al-Qaeda changing his views on the morality of terrorism or at least the indiscriminate sort practiced by the followers and imitators of Osama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He has done an exceptional job. The Geek commends his work to your attention.
The Geek prefers to speak of "ethics" as there is no need to invoke the power of the Great Juju with spectres of eternal punishment to reinforce it. However, since the adversaries of the US in the GGWOT are addicted from infancy to visions of hellfire and Mr Hadley correctly notes the theological legitimacy quest of the jihadists and their Islamist cohorts, the Geek will use the word "morality."
The will and intent of the Great Juju is and always has been subject to the interpretation of less than omniscient humans. Humans subject to the whims, passions, fears and exigencies of any and every passing moment.
This is brought out in detail both excruciating and exciting by the Wright article focusing on the key intellectual-theological figure of al-Jihad and its successors, the man born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif. Without going into the details where, as always, the devil resides, al-Sharif went from being a run-of-the-souk radical kid to being an extremist's extremist who subsequently retracted from his blanket Islamist justification for killing all "infidels" and "apostates," much to the vexation and dismay of al-Zawahiri.
Minds as well as values are mutable. Beliefs as well as morality are mutable. Herein lies not only the basis for the perceived decay of al-Qaeda but also the tar pit hidden inside Mr Hadley's call for debate on the morality of WMD based terrorism.
Of course a debate on morality presupposes an agreement on terms.
Lots of luck on that one!
Despite years of trying no consensually accepted, universal definition of "Terrorism" has emerged. The world still seems intellectually mired in the ancient cliche, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
Dr al-Zawahiri in his audiotaped responses to roughly one hundred of the nine hundred questions emailed to him would not even concede that al-Qaeda had undertaken illegitimate terrorist actions against Muslim civilians. Instead he erected a stonewall of denial. All who were killed were somehow either apostates or infidels. Anyway, the "crusaders" were the real terrorists.
Even "reformed" extremist, al-Sharif cannot bring himself to agree that the 9/11 attack was either illegitimate or immoral. No. He sees the real terrorism as residing in the US cruise missile strike on the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan incorrectly perceived as a chemical weapons production facility which resulted in the death of the nightwatchman.
As he explains, the plant was built with Muslim money. The dead man was a Muslim. The World Trade Center was built with "infidel" money and all who died were "infidels."
OK. We're off to a great start in a debate over the morality of WMD terrorism.
Then there is the problem of defining a weapon of mass destruction. Sure, the term is conventionally understood to mean nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical employments which result in massive numbers of killed and wounded. Of course, some statutory definitions lower the threshold so that a an individual weapon or a small explosive charge constitute a WMD.
We sure are getting somewhere now. Right.
We can't even agree on what terrorism might be.
We can't agree on just what constitutes an "immoral" weapon when employed by "terrorists."
In the West we have a long history of trying to ban weapons as "immoral." Consider the crossbow.
Compared with the longbow the crossbow as an ineffective piece of equipment. It did have a couple of very real advantages over the longbow.
First, it was easy to use. Unlike the longbow which took years of practice literally from childhood to master, any peasant could be trained in the crossbow quickly and easily. An ambitious ruler or wannabe princeling could recruit a bunch of peasant kids or denizens of the slums and turn them into an efficient unit of knight-killers in a matter of weeks.
Second, the crossbow could be fired easily from concealed locations. It could be cocked and loaded in advance. It was an excellent ambush weapon.
Can we say a "weapon of terror?"
The Catholic Church did. The crossbow was prohibited from use in "Christian" wars but was permitted in combat against the Muslims.
Morality can be a slippery critter, can't it?
Then there is the question of "mass destruction." Just what does it take to inflict "mass destruction" on a target?
Yeah, we usually think of heaps of bodies in charred ruins. Hiroshima, Dresden, Hamburg or the rubble at Ground Zero.
But ask yourself: what about a cyberattack on the electric grid? What about a cyber hit on the financial institutions of the West?
No heaps of bodies. No rubble except in the virtual sense. The destruction would nonetheless be real and massive--and not impossible for a terrorist organization or the state which wishes to masquerade as one.
Finally consider how understandings of morality change under the pressure of events. In 1939 His Majesty's Government prohibited air attacks of German private property--even German state owned forests. Less than four years later the goal of government and air force alike was the killing of the greatest number of German civilians in the least amount of time with the smallest possible friendly losses.
The British called it "worker de-housing."
The Germans called it Luftterror.
They were both right.
Stephen Hadley missed that.
The point that struck the Geek came about twenty-seven minutes into the evolution. It is worth quoting in full. "Second, many terrorists value the perception of theological legitimacy for their actions. By encouraging debate over the morality of WMD terrorism, we can try to affect the strategic calculus of the terrorists and discourage them from resorting to these weapons."
The vapid Mr Hadley you will recall stepped up to his current position when his organizational chart superior, Condolezza Rice exceeded her Peter Principle Point by becoming Secretary of State. Like SecState Rice he has excelled to date by defending the indefensible and seeking after the unattainable in the service of the current administration.
However, presumably by the same technique that would allow an infinitude of monkeys with word processors to eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare, Mr Hadley has proposed an interesting, albeit far from unique idea. We ought to debate the morality of WMD terrorism.
Actually, the National Security Advisor seems to be taking a leaf from the book(s) written by the adversaries of the US in the current Great Global War On Terrorism. The basis for this assertion is found in an excellent piece of reportage by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker. On line, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright/?yrail.
Wright parses the semi-subterranean debate over terrorism which finds the original ideological fountainhead for the likes of al-Qaeda changing his views on the morality of terrorism or at least the indiscriminate sort practiced by the followers and imitators of Osama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He has done an exceptional job. The Geek commends his work to your attention.
The Geek prefers to speak of "ethics" as there is no need to invoke the power of the Great Juju with spectres of eternal punishment to reinforce it. However, since the adversaries of the US in the GGWOT are addicted from infancy to visions of hellfire and Mr Hadley correctly notes the theological legitimacy quest of the jihadists and their Islamist cohorts, the Geek will use the word "morality."
The will and intent of the Great Juju is and always has been subject to the interpretation of less than omniscient humans. Humans subject to the whims, passions, fears and exigencies of any and every passing moment.
This is brought out in detail both excruciating and exciting by the Wright article focusing on the key intellectual-theological figure of al-Jihad and its successors, the man born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif. Without going into the details where, as always, the devil resides, al-Sharif went from being a run-of-the-souk radical kid to being an extremist's extremist who subsequently retracted from his blanket Islamist justification for killing all "infidels" and "apostates," much to the vexation and dismay of al-Zawahiri.
Minds as well as values are mutable. Beliefs as well as morality are mutable. Herein lies not only the basis for the perceived decay of al-Qaeda but also the tar pit hidden inside Mr Hadley's call for debate on the morality of WMD based terrorism.
Of course a debate on morality presupposes an agreement on terms.
Lots of luck on that one!
Despite years of trying no consensually accepted, universal definition of "Terrorism" has emerged. The world still seems intellectually mired in the ancient cliche, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
Dr al-Zawahiri in his audiotaped responses to roughly one hundred of the nine hundred questions emailed to him would not even concede that al-Qaeda had undertaken illegitimate terrorist actions against Muslim civilians. Instead he erected a stonewall of denial. All who were killed were somehow either apostates or infidels. Anyway, the "crusaders" were the real terrorists.
Even "reformed" extremist, al-Sharif cannot bring himself to agree that the 9/11 attack was either illegitimate or immoral. No. He sees the real terrorism as residing in the US cruise missile strike on the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan incorrectly perceived as a chemical weapons production facility which resulted in the death of the nightwatchman.
As he explains, the plant was built with Muslim money. The dead man was a Muslim. The World Trade Center was built with "infidel" money and all who died were "infidels."
OK. We're off to a great start in a debate over the morality of WMD terrorism.
Then there is the problem of defining a weapon of mass destruction. Sure, the term is conventionally understood to mean nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical employments which result in massive numbers of killed and wounded. Of course, some statutory definitions lower the threshold so that a an individual weapon or a small explosive charge constitute a WMD.
We sure are getting somewhere now. Right.
We can't even agree on what terrorism might be.
We can't agree on just what constitutes an "immoral" weapon when employed by "terrorists."
In the West we have a long history of trying to ban weapons as "immoral." Consider the crossbow.
Compared with the longbow the crossbow as an ineffective piece of equipment. It did have a couple of very real advantages over the longbow.
First, it was easy to use. Unlike the longbow which took years of practice literally from childhood to master, any peasant could be trained in the crossbow quickly and easily. An ambitious ruler or wannabe princeling could recruit a bunch of peasant kids or denizens of the slums and turn them into an efficient unit of knight-killers in a matter of weeks.
Second, the crossbow could be fired easily from concealed locations. It could be cocked and loaded in advance. It was an excellent ambush weapon.
Can we say a "weapon of terror?"
The Catholic Church did. The crossbow was prohibited from use in "Christian" wars but was permitted in combat against the Muslims.
Morality can be a slippery critter, can't it?
Then there is the question of "mass destruction." Just what does it take to inflict "mass destruction" on a target?
Yeah, we usually think of heaps of bodies in charred ruins. Hiroshima, Dresden, Hamburg or the rubble at Ground Zero.
But ask yourself: what about a cyberattack on the electric grid? What about a cyber hit on the financial institutions of the West?
No heaps of bodies. No rubble except in the virtual sense. The destruction would nonetheless be real and massive--and not impossible for a terrorist organization or the state which wishes to masquerade as one.
Finally consider how understandings of morality change under the pressure of events. In 1939 His Majesty's Government prohibited air attacks of German private property--even German state owned forests. Less than four years later the goal of government and air force alike was the killing of the greatest number of German civilians in the least amount of time with the smallest possible friendly losses.
The British called it "worker de-housing."
The Germans called it Luftterror.
They were both right.
Stephen Hadley missed that.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Some Countries Are Amusing and Some Are Dangerous
Iran is both.
Underneath its risible surface Iran is a lethal menace. The Iranian mullahocracy and the government which fronts for it is a weapon pointed at its own citizens. The same deadly duo is a life threatening condition for the Mideast.
And, potentially, for the world as a whole.
Given the recent remarks by Ayatollah Ahmed Elmalhoda that feminists are "whores and foreign spies," the Geek expects the count of female corpses to grow in the Islamic Republic as Stalwart Defenders of the Faith execute these vile suborners of the Revolution and the Will of Allah. For details see, http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.2200287203.
The Ayatollahs'take on feminism would simply be bitterly amusing were it not for the past record of the regime in blocking Internet sites seen somehow as facilitating the Tehran described "destabilizing" agendas of foreign governments sponsoring feminism as subversion. The potential for humor is drained by the simple reality that the mullahocracy's hatred and fear of women allows the continuation of a policy of death by stoning despite official avowals that the barbaric practice had been made illegal. (As if hanging, decapitation or shooting somehow made the killing of women for adultery any less primitive, barbaric and savage.)
Iran's threat to the peace and stability of the Mideast has been made abundantly clear in recent days by the success of its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the meeting over the weekend between the Defense Ministers of Iran and Syria.
The Iranian threat to the region is also behind the recent interest in developing nuclear energy by the majority of the Mideast countries led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. All of these eager seekers after the nuclear grail have taken the same line as the Iranians--they only want splittable atoms for the peaceful production of electricity.
Yeah. Right. And, "The check is in the mail," or "I'll call you tomorrow, babe."
Iranian nuclear ambitions also threaten the peace of the world. According to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) the report cannot be made public (see the IAEA website http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2008/iranreport0508.html.) The New York Times along with about half the world's mainstream media have copies.
The NYT gave the report above the fold billing and quoted its tough language. Take a look--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/world/middleeast/27iran.html?th&emc=th.
It comes as no shock that the Mouthpiece of the Revolution, PRESS-TV, saw the report as another IAEA award for Transparency in the Pursuit of Peace Loving Atoms. That view is at http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=57458§ionid=351020104.
The Iranian Republic News Agency was more restrained--by Iranian standards downright understated in its well below the fold coverage. http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-20/0805279642004910.htm.
Regardless of framing, the underlying reality remains unchanged. Iran is seeking independent enrichment of uranium. It is installing new design, domestically fabricated high efficiency centrifuges. Foreign intelligence sources including but not limited to the US point at basic work conducted to provide effective weaponization of a uranium based bomb.
The mullahocracy has countered only by vitrupitation, denials and diversions such as the proposal for a conference that would include not only nuclear matters but regional concerns generally and Iranian worries about Venezuela and Bosnia.
What really makes Iran dangerous is not the nuclear stalemate per se.
No. What makes the mullahocracy and its facade government dangerous is the rapidity with which Iran is imploding economically, socially and politically.
For two years and more, capital has been fleeing Iran at an ever accelerating rate. This flight has been complemented by economic policies that can, at best, be characterized as suicidal. As a result, Iran is on the verge of uncontrollable hyperinflation.
For the moment Iran (along with Venezuela, its cohort in flirting with hyperinflation as well as partner in a recently announced joint bank) has been protected from its own economic throat slitting by the rise in oil prices. But, that rise is not unending. Indeed, it may have already ended without an extra barrel being pumped from the lands of OPEC.
Few governments have long survived hyperinflation.
Iran is also facing other internal problems. Unemployment is high and growing higher. At the least the national rate is twenty-five percent with higher percentages among the urban population generally and youth. The escalation in global food prices, in part caused by the rise in oil, is hitting a very large segment of the Iranian population very, very hard.
Another round of UN sanctions or even a more rigid enforcement of the sanctions regime currently in place will push the Iranian economy over the edge. The underlying discontent with the aging mullahocracy will be strongly exacerbated by the increase in the economic misery index.
When faced with a strong possibility of internal unrest, including violent opposition to the regime, governments have often sought to displace anger and frustration onto an external target. The Geek is certain that you can all think of examples.
The mullahocracy and its governmental talking dummies have already been taking that route. The "Zionist enemy" gets its unfair share of abuse daily. So also do the "Imperial powers" with the Great Satan at their head. Now, the feminists have been added to the list.
Rhetorical violence has its limits. At some point mere words do not counter the anger at the regime. Action is needed. Action that will both unify people behind government and vent the power of fear and hate.
The violence can be internally directed. Stone some women. Hang some "spies." Shoot some "traitors to the revolution."
However, unless the conditions that produced the original fear and anger are not addressed, even the most robust internal displacement measures will lose effect.
Considering the record to date of the Iranian mullahs, it is not too likely that things will improve in Shia Land.
External displacement measures will be necessary. In the words of an old Marx Brothers movie, "You realise, gentlemen, this means war!"
Of course the mullahs realise that.
Not that they care.
One way or another the theocracy is going to plunge down the tubes. At least in a war there is some chance to go down with glory.
And, come to think of it, since war is never predictable as to outcome, there is even some chance, Allah Willing, that the regime would come through intact.
Underneath its risible surface Iran is a lethal menace. The Iranian mullahocracy and the government which fronts for it is a weapon pointed at its own citizens. The same deadly duo is a life threatening condition for the Mideast.
And, potentially, for the world as a whole.
Given the recent remarks by Ayatollah Ahmed Elmalhoda that feminists are "whores and foreign spies," the Geek expects the count of female corpses to grow in the Islamic Republic as Stalwart Defenders of the Faith execute these vile suborners of the Revolution and the Will of Allah. For details see, http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.2200287203.
The Ayatollahs'take on feminism would simply be bitterly amusing were it not for the past record of the regime in blocking Internet sites seen somehow as facilitating the Tehran described "destabilizing" agendas of foreign governments sponsoring feminism as subversion. The potential for humor is drained by the simple reality that the mullahocracy's hatred and fear of women allows the continuation of a policy of death by stoning despite official avowals that the barbaric practice had been made illegal. (As if hanging, decapitation or shooting somehow made the killing of women for adultery any less primitive, barbaric and savage.)
Iran's threat to the peace and stability of the Mideast has been made abundantly clear in recent days by the success of its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the meeting over the weekend between the Defense Ministers of Iran and Syria.
The Iranian threat to the region is also behind the recent interest in developing nuclear energy by the majority of the Mideast countries led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. All of these eager seekers after the nuclear grail have taken the same line as the Iranians--they only want splittable atoms for the peaceful production of electricity.
Yeah. Right. And, "The check is in the mail," or "I'll call you tomorrow, babe."
Iranian nuclear ambitions also threaten the peace of the world. According to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) the report cannot be made public (see the IAEA website http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2008/iranreport0508.html.) The New York Times along with about half the world's mainstream media have copies.
The NYT gave the report above the fold billing and quoted its tough language. Take a look--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/world/middleeast/27iran.html?th&emc=th.
It comes as no shock that the Mouthpiece of the Revolution, PRESS-TV, saw the report as another IAEA award for Transparency in the Pursuit of Peace Loving Atoms. That view is at http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=57458§ionid=351020104.
The Iranian Republic News Agency was more restrained--by Iranian standards downright understated in its well below the fold coverage. http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-20/0805279642004910.htm.
Regardless of framing, the underlying reality remains unchanged. Iran is seeking independent enrichment of uranium. It is installing new design, domestically fabricated high efficiency centrifuges. Foreign intelligence sources including but not limited to the US point at basic work conducted to provide effective weaponization of a uranium based bomb.
The mullahocracy has countered only by vitrupitation, denials and diversions such as the proposal for a conference that would include not only nuclear matters but regional concerns generally and Iranian worries about Venezuela and Bosnia.
What really makes Iran dangerous is not the nuclear stalemate per se.
No. What makes the mullahocracy and its facade government dangerous is the rapidity with which Iran is imploding economically, socially and politically.
For two years and more, capital has been fleeing Iran at an ever accelerating rate. This flight has been complemented by economic policies that can, at best, be characterized as suicidal. As a result, Iran is on the verge of uncontrollable hyperinflation.
For the moment Iran (along with Venezuela, its cohort in flirting with hyperinflation as well as partner in a recently announced joint bank) has been protected from its own economic throat slitting by the rise in oil prices. But, that rise is not unending. Indeed, it may have already ended without an extra barrel being pumped from the lands of OPEC.
Few governments have long survived hyperinflation.
Iran is also facing other internal problems. Unemployment is high and growing higher. At the least the national rate is twenty-five percent with higher percentages among the urban population generally and youth. The escalation in global food prices, in part caused by the rise in oil, is hitting a very large segment of the Iranian population very, very hard.
Another round of UN sanctions or even a more rigid enforcement of the sanctions regime currently in place will push the Iranian economy over the edge. The underlying discontent with the aging mullahocracy will be strongly exacerbated by the increase in the economic misery index.
When faced with a strong possibility of internal unrest, including violent opposition to the regime, governments have often sought to displace anger and frustration onto an external target. The Geek is certain that you can all think of examples.
The mullahocracy and its governmental talking dummies have already been taking that route. The "Zionist enemy" gets its unfair share of abuse daily. So also do the "Imperial powers" with the Great Satan at their head. Now, the feminists have been added to the list.
Rhetorical violence has its limits. At some point mere words do not counter the anger at the regime. Action is needed. Action that will both unify people behind government and vent the power of fear and hate.
The violence can be internally directed. Stone some women. Hang some "spies." Shoot some "traitors to the revolution."
However, unless the conditions that produced the original fear and anger are not addressed, even the most robust internal displacement measures will lose effect.
Considering the record to date of the Iranian mullahs, it is not too likely that things will improve in Shia Land.
External displacement measures will be necessary. In the words of an old Marx Brothers movie, "You realise, gentlemen, this means war!"
Of course the mullahs realise that.
Not that they care.
One way or another the theocracy is going to plunge down the tubes. At least in a war there is some chance to go down with glory.
And, come to think of it, since war is never predictable as to outcome, there is even some chance, Allah Willing, that the regime would come through intact.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Help Wanted! No Experience Necessary
Major international organization with affiliates and franchises across Mideast, Africa, Europe and the United States is now recruiting!
Successful applicants may be of any age and either sex. No specific education level is required although some positions may require technical skills.
Cognitively impaired? Emotionally troubled? No Problem!
We want you regardless of so called developmental difficulties or mental problems. We are truly equal opportunity!
Two of our most successful associates had Down's Syndrome. Others have had similar "problems."
Suicidal?
Don't wait!
Call us now!
We're al-Qaeda.
You've heard of us--now join us!
Just call us in Wazirastan. We're ready and waiting--
Are you?
Sure, al-Qaeda isn't running ads like this--yet. Still, the daring young men from the caves in the K-2 mountains might just as well be.
Either because the security forces in some locations have gotten good at stopping the usual suicide bomber or because the martyrdom brigade is running short of enlistees with big cajones and small cerebral cortexes, the Kill -Civilians-For-Allah mob has been increasingly relying on women and mentally or physically challenged.
The employment of female suicide bombers increased in Iraq--attributed by some mental health workers to the proliferation of widowhood in a war-torn society without support systems for women without "natural protectors." The Geek agrees with that argument but considers it to be only part of the story. The larger part is the nature of the hyper-patriarchal society made possible by Islamic doctrine.
The lives of women are cheap.
It is better women become martyrs than merely corpses with slit throats or blankets of rocks.
The Heroic Warriors of Islam pioneered another type of equal opportunity martyrdom in Iraq when they employed two women with Down's Syndrome to be (probably) unwitting carriers of remotely detonated bombs in the catastrophic market attacks earlier this year.
If the reports of the women's condition as given by Iraqi witnesses and authorities are true--and the Geek finds them credible after further investigation--the use of these individuals by the anti-government, anti-US terrorists marked a new and despicably low point in their tactics.
The Down's Syndrome kamikazes were a follow-on to the successful killing of an Iraqi general in Samarra in February by a man in a wheelchair. The Geek hasn't been able to resolve to his satisfaction from either US or Iraqi sources the question of the man's apparent disability or his volunteer status. Still, the event showed the willingness of the terrorists to employ either the appearance or reality of physical disability to circumvent security precautions.
(There is a US historical precedent for this approach. The assassin of President McKinley wrapped the pistol in his right hand as well as the hand that held it in a bandage and pulled the trigger as McKinley reached to shake the killer's left hand.)
The most recent attempt by the Gangsters For Global Jihad to exploit the cognitively impaired for terrorism comes from England. The other day Nicky Reilly, a 22 year old who has spent time in a mental hospital, suffered injuries when one of the three primitive bombs he was carrying detonated prematurely in the lavatory of a restaurant.
Reilly, a recent convert to Islam, has been described as having the mental age of ten and possibly laboring with the challenge of Asperger's Syndrome and schizophrenia. Those who knew him referred to him as a "shambling introvert." See the Times On-line for these characterizations. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3999058.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084)
A mental age of ten implies that Mr Reilly (or Mohammad Rasheed as he has been calling himself since converting) is severely mentally impaired. He would be easy pickings for a suitably intelligent al-Qaeda recruiter who had fewer ethics than a Mafia debt collector.
That Reilly was "controlled" by others is strongly implied by a text message received on his cell phone moments before his bomb exploded.
A person does not have to be possessed of a low IQ to fall prey to the homicidal beliefs of al-Qaeda thugs and their ilk. Certainly, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the infamous KSM of 9/11) is not cognitively challenged although his Navy defense attorney at Gitmo who has a psych as well as a law degree thinks KSM suffers from a disorder listed in the DSM-IV.
In the UK the Security Service (MI-5) worries that Nicky Reilly, "the friendly giant" to his neighbors, is the first in a new line of the homegrown, foreign operated terror brigade. The Geek concurs.
So far there has been no official word from our protectors, the Department of Homeland Security, whose globe trotting Secretary has been most recently in Afghanistan conferring citizenship on foreign born US service personnel and making hortatory speeches. So the Geek doesn't know if we will be treated soon to an Orange Alert warning us to keep a wary eye on all of our fellow citizens who mumble to themselves on urban street corners or lack the IQ necessary to be rocket scientists.
The Geek certainly hopes that DHS plays it cool. True, the Glorious Fighters of Islamic Conquest might try to exploit those of us who are emotionally, cognitively or physically challenged. They might even succeed in a few cases.
But, if We the People respond by increased fear and loathing directed against the mumblers and shambling introverts, "the friendly giants" of our society, we will only succeed in becoming more rigid in our conformity and far less able to accept the differences that make humans more interesting than machines.
Successful applicants may be of any age and either sex. No specific education level is required although some positions may require technical skills.
Cognitively impaired? Emotionally troubled? No Problem!
We want you regardless of so called developmental difficulties or mental problems. We are truly equal opportunity!
Two of our most successful associates had Down's Syndrome. Others have had similar "problems."
Suicidal?
Don't wait!
Call us now!
We're al-Qaeda.
You've heard of us--now join us!
Just call us in Wazirastan. We're ready and waiting--
Are you?
Sure, al-Qaeda isn't running ads like this--yet. Still, the daring young men from the caves in the K-2 mountains might just as well be.
Either because the security forces in some locations have gotten good at stopping the usual suicide bomber or because the martyrdom brigade is running short of enlistees with big cajones and small cerebral cortexes, the Kill -Civilians-For-Allah mob has been increasingly relying on women and mentally or physically challenged.
The employment of female suicide bombers increased in Iraq--attributed by some mental health workers to the proliferation of widowhood in a war-torn society without support systems for women without "natural protectors." The Geek agrees with that argument but considers it to be only part of the story. The larger part is the nature of the hyper-patriarchal society made possible by Islamic doctrine.
The lives of women are cheap.
It is better women become martyrs than merely corpses with slit throats or blankets of rocks.
The Heroic Warriors of Islam pioneered another type of equal opportunity martyrdom in Iraq when they employed two women with Down's Syndrome to be (probably) unwitting carriers of remotely detonated bombs in the catastrophic market attacks earlier this year.
If the reports of the women's condition as given by Iraqi witnesses and authorities are true--and the Geek finds them credible after further investigation--the use of these individuals by the anti-government, anti-US terrorists marked a new and despicably low point in their tactics.
The Down's Syndrome kamikazes were a follow-on to the successful killing of an Iraqi general in Samarra in February by a man in a wheelchair. The Geek hasn't been able to resolve to his satisfaction from either US or Iraqi sources the question of the man's apparent disability or his volunteer status. Still, the event showed the willingness of the terrorists to employ either the appearance or reality of physical disability to circumvent security precautions.
(There is a US historical precedent for this approach. The assassin of President McKinley wrapped the pistol in his right hand as well as the hand that held it in a bandage and pulled the trigger as McKinley reached to shake the killer's left hand.)
The most recent attempt by the Gangsters For Global Jihad to exploit the cognitively impaired for terrorism comes from England. The other day Nicky Reilly, a 22 year old who has spent time in a mental hospital, suffered injuries when one of the three primitive bombs he was carrying detonated prematurely in the lavatory of a restaurant.
Reilly, a recent convert to Islam, has been described as having the mental age of ten and possibly laboring with the challenge of Asperger's Syndrome and schizophrenia. Those who knew him referred to him as a "shambling introvert." See the Times On-line for these characterizations. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3999058.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084)
A mental age of ten implies that Mr Reilly (or Mohammad Rasheed as he has been calling himself since converting) is severely mentally impaired. He would be easy pickings for a suitably intelligent al-Qaeda recruiter who had fewer ethics than a Mafia debt collector.
That Reilly was "controlled" by others is strongly implied by a text message received on his cell phone moments before his bomb exploded.
A person does not have to be possessed of a low IQ to fall prey to the homicidal beliefs of al-Qaeda thugs and their ilk. Certainly, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the infamous KSM of 9/11) is not cognitively challenged although his Navy defense attorney at Gitmo who has a psych as well as a law degree thinks KSM suffers from a disorder listed in the DSM-IV.
In the UK the Security Service (MI-5) worries that Nicky Reilly, "the friendly giant" to his neighbors, is the first in a new line of the homegrown, foreign operated terror brigade. The Geek concurs.
So far there has been no official word from our protectors, the Department of Homeland Security, whose globe trotting Secretary has been most recently in Afghanistan conferring citizenship on foreign born US service personnel and making hortatory speeches. So the Geek doesn't know if we will be treated soon to an Orange Alert warning us to keep a wary eye on all of our fellow citizens who mumble to themselves on urban street corners or lack the IQ necessary to be rocket scientists.
The Geek certainly hopes that DHS plays it cool. True, the Glorious Fighters of Islamic Conquest might try to exploit those of us who are emotionally, cognitively or physically challenged. They might even succeed in a few cases.
But, if We the People respond by increased fear and loathing directed against the mumblers and shambling introverts, "the friendly giants" of our society, we will only succeed in becoming more rigid in our conformity and far less able to accept the differences that make humans more interesting than machines.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
What About Muslim Anti-Semitism?
In an add-on to yesterday's post on the PRESS-TV article (http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=56834§ionid=3510303) and a closely related interview confusing "hate" speech and free speech (http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=6244§ionid=3510302), the Geek has a question for the alleged signers of the open letter to the West, "Thousands of academics, intellectuals, poets, writers, artists, journalists and scientists of the Islamic countries."
The question?
Here it is. Where are your righteous protests regarding the decades of anti-Semitic diatribes, cartoons, films, songs and writings?
Or don't Jews count as religious people deserving the same respect as that which you demand for Muslims?
It can't be that Jews are not a religious people, can it? After all your whining missive specifically mentions Moses and Abraham. Aren't they major figures in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament? Doesn't the Prophet Mohammad make some favorable reference to them?
If it is--as your own writing implies--true that Judaism is a religion deserving respect then why don't you condemn the defamation of Jews and Judaism conducted for years, decades, centuries by Muslims?
Or perhaps your "intellectual" sensibilities are non-existent with respect to the vile billingsgate spewed by Muslim governments, Muslim non-governmental entities, Muslim clerics, Muslim individuals. Perhaps you don't believe that true believers in the Religion of Peace and Tolerance would--could--act in such a disgusting, inhuman way.
Well, Deep Thinking and Profoundly Offended Intellectuals, take a look at the web. You might try http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FI=D=253&PID=0&IID=644&TTL=Major_Anti-Semitic_Motifs_in_Arab_Cartoons. That particular post dates back a few years, so you might take a virtual walk through http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/site/html/search.asp?isSearch=yes&isT8=yes&searchText=T99&pid=119&sid=15&preview. This site is current through the past month.
Both sites are Israeli but don't worry, neither has cartoons of Mohammad. They only show Muslim cartoons, children's books and scribblings for grown-ups(?) of a virulently anti-Semitic nature. The Geek is sure that no Muslim "academic, intellectual, etc" could possibly be offended.
Before the Geek leaves this subject and returns to matters of the real world, there are a couple of final points regarding the open letter.
The Geek would really appreciate it if the folks at PRESS-TV or whoever wrote the open letter could use the English language with precision. It would. for example, be both nice and accurate if the term "intellectuals" had not been employed to describe the "signers."
Why?
Simple. Intellectuals have been long noted for their constitutional inability to subscribe unquestioningly to dogma. An intellectual has too darn much fun playing with ideas to believe for a nanosecond that censorship is somehow justified. This, after all, was why the Communist Party not only in the US but the USSR had so much trouble co-opting authentic intellectuals and why intellectuals made up such a distinguished portion of the population in the frozen Gulag.
Then there is the word, "scientists." Islamic science is an oxymoron. For centuries the best that could--or can--be said of Islamic countries is that they produce technologists. Derivative technologists at that.
Science cannot flourish in rigid, authoritarian environments such as those which typify Islam dominated countries. While the Geek acknowledges the accomplishments of Muslim astronomers, physicians and mathematicians a thousand and more years ago as Europe lay intellectually prostrate under the heel of a repressive Church, in recent times, science--the methodical seeking after incremental truths about the universe and all that is in it--has been conspicuous by its absence in Muslim societies.
The Geek can believe that the letter was written by journalists. It has all the superficiality and notes of special pleading that characterize the product of journalists. The Geek can even believe that poets were involved in crafting the letter. It has the lack of firm connection with the cold world of reality which gives poetry its piquancy.
Most of all, the Geek can believe that the letter, like the interview and all the other outpourings of outraged Muslim sensibilities, was the product of insecure men.
Men driven by fear.
Men who accept the principles of doublethink.
Men who would mob together and chant, "Death to -----!" Men who accept, even applaud the killing and maiming of women as the will of the deity.
Men who approve of suicide bombers attacking non-combatants.
In short, men lacking in courage. Men without manliness.
The question?
Here it is. Where are your righteous protests regarding the decades of anti-Semitic diatribes, cartoons, films, songs and writings?
Or don't Jews count as religious people deserving the same respect as that which you demand for Muslims?
It can't be that Jews are not a religious people, can it? After all your whining missive specifically mentions Moses and Abraham. Aren't they major figures in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament? Doesn't the Prophet Mohammad make some favorable reference to them?
If it is--as your own writing implies--true that Judaism is a religion deserving respect then why don't you condemn the defamation of Jews and Judaism conducted for years, decades, centuries by Muslims?
Or perhaps your "intellectual" sensibilities are non-existent with respect to the vile billingsgate spewed by Muslim governments, Muslim non-governmental entities, Muslim clerics, Muslim individuals. Perhaps you don't believe that true believers in the Religion of Peace and Tolerance would--could--act in such a disgusting, inhuman way.
Well, Deep Thinking and Profoundly Offended Intellectuals, take a look at the web. You might try http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FI=D=253&PID=0&IID=644&TTL=Major_Anti-Semitic_Motifs_in_Arab_Cartoons. That particular post dates back a few years, so you might take a virtual walk through http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/site/html/search.asp?isSearch=yes&isT8=yes&searchText=T99&pid=119&sid=15&preview. This site is current through the past month.
Both sites are Israeli but don't worry, neither has cartoons of Mohammad. They only show Muslim cartoons, children's books and scribblings for grown-ups(?) of a virulently anti-Semitic nature. The Geek is sure that no Muslim "academic, intellectual, etc" could possibly be offended.
Before the Geek leaves this subject and returns to matters of the real world, there are a couple of final points regarding the open letter.
The Geek would really appreciate it if the folks at PRESS-TV or whoever wrote the open letter could use the English language with precision. It would. for example, be both nice and accurate if the term "intellectuals" had not been employed to describe the "signers."
Why?
Simple. Intellectuals have been long noted for their constitutional inability to subscribe unquestioningly to dogma. An intellectual has too darn much fun playing with ideas to believe for a nanosecond that censorship is somehow justified. This, after all, was why the Communist Party not only in the US but the USSR had so much trouble co-opting authentic intellectuals and why intellectuals made up such a distinguished portion of the population in the frozen Gulag.
Then there is the word, "scientists." Islamic science is an oxymoron. For centuries the best that could--or can--be said of Islamic countries is that they produce technologists. Derivative technologists at that.
Science cannot flourish in rigid, authoritarian environments such as those which typify Islam dominated countries. While the Geek acknowledges the accomplishments of Muslim astronomers, physicians and mathematicians a thousand and more years ago as Europe lay intellectually prostrate under the heel of a repressive Church, in recent times, science--the methodical seeking after incremental truths about the universe and all that is in it--has been conspicuous by its absence in Muslim societies.
The Geek can believe that the letter was written by journalists. It has all the superficiality and notes of special pleading that characterize the product of journalists. The Geek can even believe that poets were involved in crafting the letter. It has the lack of firm connection with the cold world of reality which gives poetry its piquancy.
Most of all, the Geek can believe that the letter, like the interview and all the other outpourings of outraged Muslim sensibilities, was the product of insecure men.
Men driven by fear.
Men who accept the principles of doublethink.
Men who would mob together and chant, "Death to -----!" Men who accept, even applaud the killing and maiming of women as the will of the deity.
Men who approve of suicide bombers attacking non-combatants.
In short, men lacking in courage. Men without manliness.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Some Muslims Are Awesomely Insecure
The Geek was all cranked up to post on the current violence in South Africa, but a post from PRESS TV ( ohttp://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=56834§ionid=3510303) out of Iran caught his attention. And rankled him.
Once again (some) Muslims are making a mighty moan about the West. The West apparently is a monolithic monster breathing satanic fumes of Islamophobia and similar foul odors of blasphemy. Worse, the loathsome Moloch of the West justifies its conduct by invoking a patently secular totem--Free Speech.
The nerve of the Secular Savages of the West astonished the writers of this open letter, identified on as "Thousands of academics, intellectuals, poets, writers, artists, journalists and scientists of the Islamic countries."
It strikes the Geek that this panoply of deep thinking desperately offended academics, intellectuals, et cetera, possess an extremely shallow understanding of the post-Enlightenment trajectory of Western Europe and the United States.
Perhaps they have to appreciate that the Enlightenment and its aftermath are not universally well-regarded in either Europe or the United States.
Perhaps the size of the Christian Fundamentalist movement which contains a significant number of Enlightenment deniers (at least in the US) has eluded them.
Perhaps they have missed the explosive rise of multi-culturalism in the post-Modernist period not only in the US but Europe as well.
More importantly these anonymous "academics, intellectuals" et cetera have overlooked that the West has undergone a number of fierce, violent conflicts over the past centuries all of which have been predicated to a significant extent upon the right of the individual as opposed to the authority of the community.
Ultimately the conflicts have ended in favor of the individual. The individual has been acknowledged to possess certain basic rights. Chief among them has been the right to free expression construed broadly and its essential twin, freedom of inquiry.
The rights of free inquiry and expression are particularly protected in the United States. As a result expression is notably raucous, boisterous and occasionally quite tasteless in the US.
(Intellectual honesty requires the Geek to admit he is periodically offended by some of what he sees, reads or hears.)
Religion is not off-limits for discussion--even attack. Nor should it be. Religion, like politics and economics is part of the human experience and as such is fair game for investigation, debate and disagreement.
That's the way it should be. As soon as one area of human discourse is ruled sacrosanct, no other area is safe. The reasons for insulating one specific arena of discourse out-of-bounds are immaterial. The harm is done by the prohibition.
Most Western governments and societies recognise this. They are secure enough in their values and identities not to seek the imposition of cordons sanitaires.
Apparently most Islamic governments and societies lack the same measure of security in values and identities. They not only need off-limit signs--they demand them.
If these insecure Muslims demanded thought police and mental shackles be applied only to themselves, this might be lamentable, unfortunate and ultimately counterproductive, but it would be their right.
The problem comes when the Legion of the Insecure demand that all humans be confined in the prison of Islamic sensibilities. This is neither ethically justifiable on any grounds nor allowable.
If Islam is the final, most highly perfected form of monotheism as the open letter from the Terminally Offended indicates, then why are they so insecure about it?
It seems to the Geek that certainty of correctness should lead to serenity when under putative attack. If cartoons, or grade school kids naming a rabbit Mohammad or even a US Army sergeant shooting up a copy of the Quran shakes the base of a religion adhered to by 1.5 giga-people, one can only wonder about the strength of that base.
Muslims howling about slander under the rubric of free speech are not the first to seek limits on the ability of individuals to write, speak, read or hear all forms of opinion or the manifold contradictory facts abounding in the world. Limits have been attempted--and failed--even in the US.
Remember all the well-intentioned efforts by assorted state legislatures back during the Fifties to purge our university campuses of "communists?" Recall all the state imposed bans on "communist" speakers or the possession by libraries of "communist" literature?"
The Geek thought at the time as did many of his contemporaries--the supposed beneficiaries of these "protect our precious children" enactments--that if free enterprise economics and democratic processes were so inherently good, what was the need to stifle opposing perspectives?
Censorship whether for political or religious reasons, no matter how presented, is not simply wrong. The imposition of limits on speech whether to protect the minds of children or to guard the sensitivities of (some) Muslims is simply a sign of underlying insecurity.
Censorship screams, "Maybe what I/we believe isn't right after all."
Censorship screams with fear, deep and primordial, "Maybe I'm wrong."
Censorship is the coward's way out of real debate.
Once again (some) Muslims are making a mighty moan about the West. The West apparently is a monolithic monster breathing satanic fumes of Islamophobia and similar foul odors of blasphemy. Worse, the loathsome Moloch of the West justifies its conduct by invoking a patently secular totem--Free Speech.
The nerve of the Secular Savages of the West astonished the writers of this open letter, identified on as "Thousands of academics, intellectuals, poets, writers, artists, journalists and scientists of the Islamic countries."
It strikes the Geek that this panoply of deep thinking desperately offended academics, intellectuals, et cetera, possess an extremely shallow understanding of the post-Enlightenment trajectory of Western Europe and the United States.
Perhaps they have to appreciate that the Enlightenment and its aftermath are not universally well-regarded in either Europe or the United States.
Perhaps the size of the Christian Fundamentalist movement which contains a significant number of Enlightenment deniers (at least in the US) has eluded them.
Perhaps they have missed the explosive rise of multi-culturalism in the post-Modernist period not only in the US but Europe as well.
More importantly these anonymous "academics, intellectuals" et cetera have overlooked that the West has undergone a number of fierce, violent conflicts over the past centuries all of which have been predicated to a significant extent upon the right of the individual as opposed to the authority of the community.
Ultimately the conflicts have ended in favor of the individual. The individual has been acknowledged to possess certain basic rights. Chief among them has been the right to free expression construed broadly and its essential twin, freedom of inquiry.
The rights of free inquiry and expression are particularly protected in the United States. As a result expression is notably raucous, boisterous and occasionally quite tasteless in the US.
(Intellectual honesty requires the Geek to admit he is periodically offended by some of what he sees, reads or hears.)
Religion is not off-limits for discussion--even attack. Nor should it be. Religion, like politics and economics is part of the human experience and as such is fair game for investigation, debate and disagreement.
That's the way it should be. As soon as one area of human discourse is ruled sacrosanct, no other area is safe. The reasons for insulating one specific arena of discourse out-of-bounds are immaterial. The harm is done by the prohibition.
Most Western governments and societies recognise this. They are secure enough in their values and identities not to seek the imposition of cordons sanitaires.
Apparently most Islamic governments and societies lack the same measure of security in values and identities. They not only need off-limit signs--they demand them.
If these insecure Muslims demanded thought police and mental shackles be applied only to themselves, this might be lamentable, unfortunate and ultimately counterproductive, but it would be their right.
The problem comes when the Legion of the Insecure demand that all humans be confined in the prison of Islamic sensibilities. This is neither ethically justifiable on any grounds nor allowable.
If Islam is the final, most highly perfected form of monotheism as the open letter from the Terminally Offended indicates, then why are they so insecure about it?
It seems to the Geek that certainty of correctness should lead to serenity when under putative attack. If cartoons, or grade school kids naming a rabbit Mohammad or even a US Army sergeant shooting up a copy of the Quran shakes the base of a religion adhered to by 1.5 giga-people, one can only wonder about the strength of that base.
Muslims howling about slander under the rubric of free speech are not the first to seek limits on the ability of individuals to write, speak, read or hear all forms of opinion or the manifold contradictory facts abounding in the world. Limits have been attempted--and failed--even in the US.
Remember all the well-intentioned efforts by assorted state legislatures back during the Fifties to purge our university campuses of "communists?" Recall all the state imposed bans on "communist" speakers or the possession by libraries of "communist" literature?"
The Geek thought at the time as did many of his contemporaries--the supposed beneficiaries of these "protect our precious children" enactments--that if free enterprise economics and democratic processes were so inherently good, what was the need to stifle opposing perspectives?
Censorship whether for political or religious reasons, no matter how presented, is not simply wrong. The imposition of limits on speech whether to protect the minds of children or to guard the sensitivities of (some) Muslims is simply a sign of underlying insecurity.
Censorship screams, "Maybe what I/we believe isn't right after all."
Censorship screams with fear, deep and primordial, "Maybe I'm wrong."
Censorship is the coward's way out of real debate.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Looks Like Turkey Is Starting the Reformation--Or Not
Months ago the Geek posted his view that under all the hoopla over "Islamists" coming to power in Turkey, the reality might be different. To the Geek it appeared possible, if not overwhelmingly likely, that the emergence of the admittedly Islamist rooted AKP as the majority party in Turkey would help bring about the start of an Islamic Reformation.
Recent developments in the country appear to support the Geek's assessment. He would like to start crowing about his prescience, but can't. Not and be honest.
The most intriguing development comes from the quaintly named Presidency of Religious Affairs and Religious Charitable Foundation (http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/english/default.asp.) As announced earlier this year, The Presidency has initiated a three year program entitled the Hadith Project.
This might be important. And, then, it might not.
The Hadith comprises some 162,000 sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet Mohammad. Complementing the Quran, the Hadith serves as a foundation for Islamic law, Shari'a. The Hadith is central to the understanding and practice of Islam today.
The goal of the Hadith Project is to winnow the Hadith, to prune out those sayings which contradict the Quran or violate the fundamental principles of Islam. One member of the eighty-five member panel, Ankara University theology professor Ismail Hakki Unni, is reported to have said, "The Koran is our basic guide. Anything that conflicts with that we are trying to eliminate."
The Presidency in a carefully worded press release describes the nature and extent of the project. (http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/english/englh.asp?id=114.) The concluding line of the release is, "It will constitute an important step for carrying the universal message of the Prophet of Islam to the 21st century."
This simple wording encloses a major set of changes in the orientation of the Hadith. The goal of the Project according to Mehmet Gormez, senior lecturer in Hadith at the University of Ankara, is to bring out the portions of the Prophet's message which support human rights, women's rights, justice and respect for the other. (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1211288138020&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
Of course all must not be seen as peace, love and modernization on the Islamic Front no matter how engaging Gormez's words might be.
The relationship of the Presidency with the rest of the Turkish government must be looked at closely and critically. How independent are the assorted scholars and theologians associated with the Project? What agenda(s) are at work below the surface?
One possible hint regarding the currents running deep below the still waters of Gormez's characterization is given by the headscarf issue.
The headscarf issue?
You bet. The wearing of headscarves by Turkish women has become a barometer of Islamist tendencies. The AKP has moved to drop the Ataturk-era ban on women wearing headscarves in government offices and on university campuses.
The Hadith Project will apparently be evading the headscarf issue. Does that mean it will evade other touchy, but utterly central matters such as jihad, the ability of a Muslim to convert to another religion without fear of the death penalty or the rights of non-Muslims?
The Geek likes Turks very much. He hopes to see Turkey play the key role geography and history has made possible for the country as the broker between Muslims and the West. He would be delighted if the Hadith Project is the opening of an Islamic Reformation.
But, the Geek has doubts. Major doubts. He sees a possibility far larger in likelihood than Reformation.
Here it is, bucko.
The end result of the Hadith Project will be limited in impact to social issues of high visibility and easy condemnation such as honor killings, female genital mutilation and (perhaps) suicide bombings directed at non-combatants.
This would make Islam and Islamism more defensible as religio-political ideologies (and Turkey more attractive for EU membership.)
It would not, repeat, not either reform or modernise Islam. It would not, repeat, not defang the global ambitions of Islamists. It would not even limit the utility of jihadism and most of its tactics.
The Geek hopes he is wrong about the downside of the Hadith Project. But, he won't bet the ranch on it.
Recent developments in the country appear to support the Geek's assessment. He would like to start crowing about his prescience, but can't. Not and be honest.
The most intriguing development comes from the quaintly named Presidency of Religious Affairs and Religious Charitable Foundation (http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/english/default.asp.) As announced earlier this year, The Presidency has initiated a three year program entitled the Hadith Project.
This might be important. And, then, it might not.
The Hadith comprises some 162,000 sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet Mohammad. Complementing the Quran, the Hadith serves as a foundation for Islamic law, Shari'a. The Hadith is central to the understanding and practice of Islam today.
The goal of the Hadith Project is to winnow the Hadith, to prune out those sayings which contradict the Quran or violate the fundamental principles of Islam. One member of the eighty-five member panel, Ankara University theology professor Ismail Hakki Unni, is reported to have said, "The Koran is our basic guide. Anything that conflicts with that we are trying to eliminate."
The Presidency in a carefully worded press release describes the nature and extent of the project. (http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/english/englh.asp?id=114.) The concluding line of the release is, "It will constitute an important step for carrying the universal message of the Prophet of Islam to the 21st century."
This simple wording encloses a major set of changes in the orientation of the Hadith. The goal of the Project according to Mehmet Gormez, senior lecturer in Hadith at the University of Ankara, is to bring out the portions of the Prophet's message which support human rights, women's rights, justice and respect for the other. (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1211288138020&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
Of course all must not be seen as peace, love and modernization on the Islamic Front no matter how engaging Gormez's words might be.
The relationship of the Presidency with the rest of the Turkish government must be looked at closely and critically. How independent are the assorted scholars and theologians associated with the Project? What agenda(s) are at work below the surface?
One possible hint regarding the currents running deep below the still waters of Gormez's characterization is given by the headscarf issue.
The headscarf issue?
You bet. The wearing of headscarves by Turkish women has become a barometer of Islamist tendencies. The AKP has moved to drop the Ataturk-era ban on women wearing headscarves in government offices and on university campuses.
The Hadith Project will apparently be evading the headscarf issue. Does that mean it will evade other touchy, but utterly central matters such as jihad, the ability of a Muslim to convert to another religion without fear of the death penalty or the rights of non-Muslims?
The Geek likes Turks very much. He hopes to see Turkey play the key role geography and history has made possible for the country as the broker between Muslims and the West. He would be delighted if the Hadith Project is the opening of an Islamic Reformation.
But, the Geek has doubts. Major doubts. He sees a possibility far larger in likelihood than Reformation.
Here it is, bucko.
The end result of the Hadith Project will be limited in impact to social issues of high visibility and easy condemnation such as honor killings, female genital mutilation and (perhaps) suicide bombings directed at non-combatants.
This would make Islam and Islamism more defensible as religio-political ideologies (and Turkey more attractive for EU membership.)
It would not, repeat, not either reform or modernise Islam. It would not, repeat, not defang the global ambitions of Islamists. It would not even limit the utility of jihadism and most of its tactics.
The Geek hopes he is wrong about the downside of the Hadith Project. But, he won't bet the ranch on it.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Some Muslims Live In the Land of Newspeak
The most chilling feature of George Orwell's classic 1984 (at least to the Geek) was the intentional impoverishment and distortion of language embodied in the new form of English called "Newspeak." The purpose of the new language was to enable people to engage in "doublethink," the holding of two mutually contradictory ideas simultaneously--and believe each was true.
A second goal of Newspeak was to make holding certain ideas literally impossible as there would be no words, no symbols to represent them.
Some Muslims at least accept both goals. They not only practice doublethink but want all of us to join them in the process. Beyond that they desire the eradication of some words in order that people not be able to formulate certain ideas which these Muslims find odious.
The statement, "Islam is the religion of peace" is on a par with the Orwellian phrases, "War is Peace," or "Freedom is Slavery."
Or, if you don't find "Islam is the religion of peace" sufficiently redolent of Newspeak, how about calling on a "Most Merciful and Compassionate" deity in a fatwa authorizing the death of an author or even an anonymous group of women and children?
Newspeaking Muslims include not just the usual deniers of Islamic rooted terrorism such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) or other offshoots of the Islamic Brotherhood, but purportedly responsible leaders of governments formally aligned with the US in the fight against jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and Taliban. Neither are Muslim Newspeakers confined to the Wahabist clerics or Iranian ayatollahs.
They include the Speaker of the National Assembly in Pakistan. As reported yesterday by the Associated Press of Pakistan, http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38881&Itemid=2, the Speaker, Dr. Fehmida Mirza, proclaimed to a visiting delegation of Iranians, "Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that abhors terrorism and extremism in all it forms and manifestations and it was the responsibility of religious scholars to play their role to remove the misperceptions of the West about Islam."
Right.
Unfortunately the Speaker didn't explain how this position squared with a report coming from the very same country she allegedly helps govern. The story (but not the video) ran on CBS. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/20/cbsnews_investigates/main4110408.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4110408)
The star is a young boy, estimated to be about twelve years old. The featured supporting player was a man of unknown age accused of spying on the jihadists who is prone on the ground, trussed and bound.
The action is simple. The kid wields a machete. Cuts off the head of the man on the ground. Holds it up to the camera.
The dialogue is even simpler. The kid crys, "Allah o Akbar." The Geek presumes that the head chopping kid is praising the Most Merciful and Compassionate One.
This video and many like it were and are being made in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, The two Waziristans (North and South, for those of you who like details) are also the center of al-Qaeda and Taliban training, logistics and base camps offering support to those fighting the Americans, NATO and, lest we forget, Afghans across the border.
It is also worth noting that the preferred tactic of the "Holy Warriors of Islam" is the bombing of civilians.
"Religion of peace and tolerance that abhors terrorism and extremism in all forms and manifestations..." So said the Speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan. And, she must be an honest and honorable woman.
"Doublethink!" The Geek thinks.
No response was quoted for the delegation of the Guardian Council from the Islamic Republic of Iran. But, it's probably fair to think they agreed with the Speaker.
After all, the Iranian mullahocracy has often stated that Iran abhors terrorism and would never, never, never have anything to do with sponsoring or supporting it. And the assorted mullahs and ayatollahs who comprise the Iranian government must all be honest and honorable men.
Another example of Muslim style Newspeak that particularly rankles is the term "honor killing."
How is killing one's own daughters because they dressed and acted like the American teenagers they were a matter of "honor?"
How is killing one's sister (whom one has abused before) for no particular reason a matter of "honor?" The Geek would list more but it makes him sick.
Killing, particularly the killing of unarmed, defenseless women is not and can never be "honorable." It is true that women, children and other people without means of defending themselves are killed. With few exceptions the goal of military operations has not been the killing of civilians--even adult civilian men.
The Muslim "honor" killing is not an act of war. It is not even the act of the suicide bomber hitting the clicker in a crowded marketplace. It is an act of cold, ruthless murder. The act of murdering, not a stranger, but a person's own daughter, sister, wife.
Only a person well versed in the practice of doublethink could make any effort to justify it as a matter of family "honor." Only a person well versed in the practice of doublethink could see despicable up close and personal homicide of this sort as fitting with the demands of a Most Merciful and Compassionate deity.
It is not "Islamophobic" to point out the doublethinking nature of some Muslims. It is not "Islamophobic" to reject the Newspeak demands of some Muslims. It is neither insensitive nor phobic to insist that language be used correctly, even bluntly.
Remember in 1984 Newspeak was not only the prime tool of government control of all aspects of life. Newspeak aided mightily in assuring that perpetual war was the fate of the human race.
The war with Islamists and jihadists need not--can not--last forever. If we are going to end it with our victory, the calls to adopt Newspeak and doublethink, Muslim style must be rejected fast and hard.
A second goal of Newspeak was to make holding certain ideas literally impossible as there would be no words, no symbols to represent them.
Some Muslims at least accept both goals. They not only practice doublethink but want all of us to join them in the process. Beyond that they desire the eradication of some words in order that people not be able to formulate certain ideas which these Muslims find odious.
The statement, "Islam is the religion of peace" is on a par with the Orwellian phrases, "War is Peace," or "Freedom is Slavery."
Or, if you don't find "Islam is the religion of peace" sufficiently redolent of Newspeak, how about calling on a "Most Merciful and Compassionate" deity in a fatwa authorizing the death of an author or even an anonymous group of women and children?
Newspeaking Muslims include not just the usual deniers of Islamic rooted terrorism such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) or other offshoots of the Islamic Brotherhood, but purportedly responsible leaders of governments formally aligned with the US in the fight against jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and Taliban. Neither are Muslim Newspeakers confined to the Wahabist clerics or Iranian ayatollahs.
They include the Speaker of the National Assembly in Pakistan. As reported yesterday by the Associated Press of Pakistan, http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38881&Itemid=2, the Speaker, Dr. Fehmida Mirza, proclaimed to a visiting delegation of Iranians, "Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that abhors terrorism and extremism in all it forms and manifestations and it was the responsibility of religious scholars to play their role to remove the misperceptions of the West about Islam."
Right.
Unfortunately the Speaker didn't explain how this position squared with a report coming from the very same country she allegedly helps govern. The story (but not the video) ran on CBS. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/20/cbsnews_investigates/main4110408.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4110408)
The star is a young boy, estimated to be about twelve years old. The featured supporting player was a man of unknown age accused of spying on the jihadists who is prone on the ground, trussed and bound.
The action is simple. The kid wields a machete. Cuts off the head of the man on the ground. Holds it up to the camera.
The dialogue is even simpler. The kid crys, "Allah o Akbar." The Geek presumes that the head chopping kid is praising the Most Merciful and Compassionate One.
This video and many like it were and are being made in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, The two Waziristans (North and South, for those of you who like details) are also the center of al-Qaeda and Taliban training, logistics and base camps offering support to those fighting the Americans, NATO and, lest we forget, Afghans across the border.
It is also worth noting that the preferred tactic of the "Holy Warriors of Islam" is the bombing of civilians.
"Religion of peace and tolerance that abhors terrorism and extremism in all forms and manifestations..." So said the Speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan. And, she must be an honest and honorable woman.
"Doublethink!" The Geek thinks.
No response was quoted for the delegation of the Guardian Council from the Islamic Republic of Iran. But, it's probably fair to think they agreed with the Speaker.
After all, the Iranian mullahocracy has often stated that Iran abhors terrorism and would never, never, never have anything to do with sponsoring or supporting it. And the assorted mullahs and ayatollahs who comprise the Iranian government must all be honest and honorable men.
Another example of Muslim style Newspeak that particularly rankles is the term "honor killing."
How is killing one's own daughters because they dressed and acted like the American teenagers they were a matter of "honor?"
How is killing one's sister (whom one has abused before) for no particular reason a matter of "honor?" The Geek would list more but it makes him sick.
Killing, particularly the killing of unarmed, defenseless women is not and can never be "honorable." It is true that women, children and other people without means of defending themselves are killed. With few exceptions the goal of military operations has not been the killing of civilians--even adult civilian men.
The Muslim "honor" killing is not an act of war. It is not even the act of the suicide bomber hitting the clicker in a crowded marketplace. It is an act of cold, ruthless murder. The act of murdering, not a stranger, but a person's own daughter, sister, wife.
Only a person well versed in the practice of doublethink could make any effort to justify it as a matter of family "honor." Only a person well versed in the practice of doublethink could see despicable up close and personal homicide of this sort as fitting with the demands of a Most Merciful and Compassionate deity.
It is not "Islamophobic" to point out the doublethinking nature of some Muslims. It is not "Islamophobic" to reject the Newspeak demands of some Muslims. It is neither insensitive nor phobic to insist that language be used correctly, even bluntly.
Remember in 1984 Newspeak was not only the prime tool of government control of all aspects of life. Newspeak aided mightily in assuring that perpetual war was the fate of the human race.
The war with Islamists and jihadists need not--can not--last forever. If we are going to end it with our victory, the calls to adopt Newspeak and doublethink, Muslim style must be rejected fast and hard.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Words, Words and More Words--About Words
Question 1. A jihadist is not a jihadist if--
A.) he is dead
B.) the fatwa authorizing his jihad is cancelled by clerical authority
C.) the clicker on his vest/vehicle/roadside bomb fails
D.) the National Counterterrorism Center and Department of Homeland Security
pronounce that the word must never be used except in a peaceful way
E.) none of the above.
Question 2. An Islamist is--
A.) an adherent of Islam
B.) a student of the foundations and tenets of Islam
C.) a political radical seeking the imposition of Islamic law on a people
D.) a believer in the necessity, desirability and inevitability of the global caliphate
E.) a figment of the fevered minds of Islamophobes
Question 3. A moderate Muslim is--
A.) a member of the silent Islamic majority who may or may not support terror
B.) a Muslim who rises in indignant opposition to those who pilfer Islam in the
cause of killing women, children and other civilians
C.) the target audience for US public diplomacy
D.) a Muslim the US must not risk offending lest he join the black hats
E,) nonexistent given the radical political nature of Islam from a Western
perspective
Question 4. Which statements are true
A.) Muslim terrorist is an oxymoron
B.) Jihad refers to peaceful internal struggle
C.) Jihad refers to peaceful struggle against human enemies such as poverty and
racism
D.) Calling suicide bombers "jihadists" or "mujahideen" confers legitimacy on
them
E.) According to the US Government, all of the above.
(If you answered 1-E, 2-E, 3-C and 4-E you are a US Government approved Sensitive Person. You have also had your visa to the Republic of Reality cancelled.)
The United States is not engaged in a Great Global War on Terror. We are haphazardly skirmishing with a specific and easily defined transnational group including both non-governmental actors and States which espouse the supremacy of Islam and pursue a political agenda which is hoped will lead to the establishment of a global caliphate and the universal application of Islamic law and principles.
What's hard to understand in that?
Islamism and jihadism have been around a long while. Since the purported receipt of the Word From On High by the Prophet Mohammad. Nothing hard to grasp there.
Nothing inherently wrong with the idea either. Islamists are welcome to have their beliefs. They are welcome to hope, pray and even argue that their desired end goal will come to fruition.
Islamists and their more action oriented kin, the jihadist, must not be permitted to use force, the threat of force or subversion to impose their vision upon individuals and nations that do not wish to live in an Islamic Paradise. (Or go there post-mortem.)
Drawing and defending that line is or should be the focus of the United States and kindred spirit countries. It is no more and certainly no less than what we did with respect to expansionist oriented, Soviet Union powered Communism during the Cold War.
Yes, the Geek readily acknowledges that the US government engaged in infuriating excesses of thought policing during the Cold War. As a historian he can cite chapter, verse and line about those excesses both foreign and domestic.
The Geek is quite well aware that the US often committed the fatal blunder of confusing short-term order under a repressive dictator with long term stability within a foreign nation. He knows the US often, all-too-often tried to put the brakes on change within another society and culture with long-term disastrous results for both them and us.
Recognising all of this it is still necessary to state unequivocally that during the Cold War the US understood the nature and character of the threat--the enemy, if you'll permit the Geek to use a harsh, blunt word.
More, the US understood the nature, character and appeal of its values, beliefs and institutions--warts, scars and all. We knew ourselves as we were and showed it to the world even if many were unwilling or unable to accept us as we presented ourselves.
The knowledge of ourselves and our adversaries served us well. It was a (perhaps the) key to understanding the final outcome of the Cold War.
Now it appears that we have thrown all that aside. Our government is unwilling or unable to define who the enemy is and where the threat originates.
Worse, our government--at least the current administration--seems to be gripless regarding just who or what we are and how best to present that to the world. Particularly that portion of the world covered by the word, Muslim.
The effort by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security joined by the State Department to become the Word Police has been given wide currency over the Internet. There is no need for the Geek to summarize the NCTC-DHS dictat.
Wrong headed attempts to assuage the ever-so-sensitive feelings of some American resident Muslims might be warm and fuzzy, but they are ultimately counterproductive in a world filled with cold sharpies.
The last time the US government tried such an exercise in the softening of terms was in 1948 and 1949 when members of the Truman Administration referred to the Chinese Communists of Mao as being "agrarian reformers."
Islamists and jihadists wear the label with pride. They know what they want. They know who they are. There is no reason for the government not to use the same terms.
If some non-Islamist, non-jihadist Muslims take unwarranted offense, that is their problem and the government need take no responsibility for it. There are more than enough multi-cultural oriented academics to wring their hands and view with dismay. The government and the rest of us don't have to join in the circle of tears.
More importantly, the US would be best served not by tender ministration to easily bruised sensitivity but by a robust declaration of what we stand for and why we stand for it.
Unlike the death worshiping Islamists/jihadists, the people of the United States are life oriented, life-affirming. We see both the risks and, more, the opportunities of life. We pursue life and all it has to offer with very few of us casting glances at some presumed pit of hell waiting to swallow our souls.
Unlike fear ridden, eager-to-submit to Higher Authority Islamists and jihadists, We the People are willing, even eager, to stand tall and proud, meeting authority on our terms--not its. We can admit our collective mistakes, the "sins" of our ancestors, rectify the wrongs and seek a better collective future.
Yes, we may take our individualism too far. Yes, we may be a messy people given to too much consumption (at least in the eyes of some). But, in our boisterous and often too exploitative way, we have been living up to that long ago vision of John Winthrop of establishing a "shining city."
Instead of playing the role of the politically correct English Department, the US government should speak of our adversaries bluntly and directly, calling them what they are. More, We the People best demand of the next administration that it get on with the task of letting all those "moderate" Muslims of the Islamic Silent Majority know just what we are and why we are that way.
Perhaps, just maybe, then the Silent Muslim Majority will find its collective voice and drown the demands of the Islamist for more martyrdom in a chorus of "No!"
A.) he is dead
B.) the fatwa authorizing his jihad is cancelled by clerical authority
C.) the clicker on his vest/vehicle/roadside bomb fails
D.) the National Counterterrorism Center and Department of Homeland Security
pronounce that the word must never be used except in a peaceful way
E.) none of the above.
Question 2. An Islamist is--
A.) an adherent of Islam
B.) a student of the foundations and tenets of Islam
C.) a political radical seeking the imposition of Islamic law on a people
D.) a believer in the necessity, desirability and inevitability of the global caliphate
E.) a figment of the fevered minds of Islamophobes
Question 3. A moderate Muslim is--
A.) a member of the silent Islamic majority who may or may not support terror
B.) a Muslim who rises in indignant opposition to those who pilfer Islam in the
cause of killing women, children and other civilians
C.) the target audience for US public diplomacy
D.) a Muslim the US must not risk offending lest he join the black hats
E,) nonexistent given the radical political nature of Islam from a Western
perspective
Question 4. Which statements are true
A.) Muslim terrorist is an oxymoron
B.) Jihad refers to peaceful internal struggle
C.) Jihad refers to peaceful struggle against human enemies such as poverty and
racism
D.) Calling suicide bombers "jihadists" or "mujahideen" confers legitimacy on
them
E.) According to the US Government, all of the above.
(If you answered 1-E, 2-E, 3-C and 4-E you are a US Government approved Sensitive Person. You have also had your visa to the Republic of Reality cancelled.)
The United States is not engaged in a Great Global War on Terror. We are haphazardly skirmishing with a specific and easily defined transnational group including both non-governmental actors and States which espouse the supremacy of Islam and pursue a political agenda which is hoped will lead to the establishment of a global caliphate and the universal application of Islamic law and principles.
What's hard to understand in that?
Islamism and jihadism have been around a long while. Since the purported receipt of the Word From On High by the Prophet Mohammad. Nothing hard to grasp there.
Nothing inherently wrong with the idea either. Islamists are welcome to have their beliefs. They are welcome to hope, pray and even argue that their desired end goal will come to fruition.
Islamists and their more action oriented kin, the jihadist, must not be permitted to use force, the threat of force or subversion to impose their vision upon individuals and nations that do not wish to live in an Islamic Paradise. (Or go there post-mortem.)
Drawing and defending that line is or should be the focus of the United States and kindred spirit countries. It is no more and certainly no less than what we did with respect to expansionist oriented, Soviet Union powered Communism during the Cold War.
Yes, the Geek readily acknowledges that the US government engaged in infuriating excesses of thought policing during the Cold War. As a historian he can cite chapter, verse and line about those excesses both foreign and domestic.
The Geek is quite well aware that the US often committed the fatal blunder of confusing short-term order under a repressive dictator with long term stability within a foreign nation. He knows the US often, all-too-often tried to put the brakes on change within another society and culture with long-term disastrous results for both them and us.
Recognising all of this it is still necessary to state unequivocally that during the Cold War the US understood the nature and character of the threat--the enemy, if you'll permit the Geek to use a harsh, blunt word.
More, the US understood the nature, character and appeal of its values, beliefs and institutions--warts, scars and all. We knew ourselves as we were and showed it to the world even if many were unwilling or unable to accept us as we presented ourselves.
The knowledge of ourselves and our adversaries served us well. It was a (perhaps the) key to understanding the final outcome of the Cold War.
Now it appears that we have thrown all that aside. Our government is unwilling or unable to define who the enemy is and where the threat originates.
Worse, our government--at least the current administration--seems to be gripless regarding just who or what we are and how best to present that to the world. Particularly that portion of the world covered by the word, Muslim.
The effort by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security joined by the State Department to become the Word Police has been given wide currency over the Internet. There is no need for the Geek to summarize the NCTC-DHS dictat.
Wrong headed attempts to assuage the ever-so-sensitive feelings of some American resident Muslims might be warm and fuzzy, but they are ultimately counterproductive in a world filled with cold sharpies.
The last time the US government tried such an exercise in the softening of terms was in 1948 and 1949 when members of the Truman Administration referred to the Chinese Communists of Mao as being "agrarian reformers."
Islamists and jihadists wear the label with pride. They know what they want. They know who they are. There is no reason for the government not to use the same terms.
If some non-Islamist, non-jihadist Muslims take unwarranted offense, that is their problem and the government need take no responsibility for it. There are more than enough multi-cultural oriented academics to wring their hands and view with dismay. The government and the rest of us don't have to join in the circle of tears.
More importantly, the US would be best served not by tender ministration to easily bruised sensitivity but by a robust declaration of what we stand for and why we stand for it.
Unlike the death worshiping Islamists/jihadists, the people of the United States are life oriented, life-affirming. We see both the risks and, more, the opportunities of life. We pursue life and all it has to offer with very few of us casting glances at some presumed pit of hell waiting to swallow our souls.
Unlike fear ridden, eager-to-submit to Higher Authority Islamists and jihadists, We the People are willing, even eager, to stand tall and proud, meeting authority on our terms--not its. We can admit our collective mistakes, the "sins" of our ancestors, rectify the wrongs and seek a better collective future.
Yes, we may take our individualism too far. Yes, we may be a messy people given to too much consumption (at least in the eyes of some). But, in our boisterous and often too exploitative way, we have been living up to that long ago vision of John Winthrop of establishing a "shining city."
Instead of playing the role of the politically correct English Department, the US government should speak of our adversaries bluntly and directly, calling them what they are. More, We the People best demand of the next administration that it get on with the task of letting all those "moderate" Muslims of the Islamic Silent Majority know just what we are and why we are that way.
Perhaps, just maybe, then the Silent Muslim Majority will find its collective voice and drown the demands of the Islamist for more martyrdom in a chorus of "No!"
Monday, May 19, 2008
Is Osama bin Laden Getting Catty or Just Losing It?
In his latest audiotape, al-Qaeda Symbol-in-Chief, bin Laden, sang one of his long time faves, "Death to the Zionist Entity and the Apostate Arab Leaders Who Protect It." This time he added some new lyrics.
Specifically the hermit sage named names and pointed fingers.
Bin Laden pointed his Flying Finger of Blame at Hezbollah. The name he named was that of Hezbollah's capo de tutti capi, Hassan Nasrallah.
Apparently the al-Qaeda Leader In Hiding was unimpressed by the outcome of the Hezbollah vs Israeli Defense Forces match up back in 2006. From the Geek's perspective, Hezbollah did very well against the IDF. Much better than, say, Taliban against the minature US invasion force and its Northern Alliance confederates four years earlier.
Maybe Osama is bent out of shape because he is the Running Man while Nasrallah sits in front of al-Jeezera cameras.
Deep in his twenty-two minute rant, the Troglodyte Sheik rhetorically demands why Nasrallah and his Hezbollah fighters allowed the UN peacekeepers "to protect the Jews." The Mystic of the Mountains alleged Nasrallah was deficient in manliness. "If he was honest and has enough (resources), why then he did not support the fight to liberate Palestine."
Golly, Mr bin Ladan, you sure do ask the tough questions.
Perhaps Nasrallah stopped fighting when he did because he has enough brains to know that Hezbollah had won. Did you consider that, Osama?
Hezbollah did win in a substantial and meaningful way. The IDF lost heavily. Israel did not accomplish any of the goals for which its military had been employed. Hezbollah gained status with Sunnis and Shias alike. It showed to its sponsors, Iran and Syria, that their investments had been well worth the price.
Perhaps Hezbollah's greatest victory in 2006 was undercutting Israeli self-confidence, certainty and political will.
It's second greatest victory?
The al-Qaeda Pontificator told us that. Hezbollah has replaced al-Qaeda as The Great Hope of Islamic Irredentism.
The rise of Hezbollah to the top of the Islamist/jihadist charts rebounded to Iran's advantage as the audiotape acknowledges. Bin Laden's admission comes in characteristically backhanded fashion. He accused Iran of wanting to dominate the Mideast--a charge he usually levels only at the United States.
Way to go, Nasrallah! You've pushed Iran ahead of the US at least on points.
Interestingly, the tape made no mention of the recent events in Lebanon where the US supported government failed in its attempt to rein in Hezbollah. Either the tape was made long before these events or The Grand Interpreter of Allah's Will did not want to give Hezbollah even more credit.
Hezbollah has emerged in the past two years as a major player in Mideast politics and Western anxieties. It has done this as al-Qaeda has faded.
Hezbollah has shown itself able to successfully confront Israel both directly and through proxies. It has treated with its "host" government as an equal--perhaps as something more than a mere equal.
In comparison, al-Qaeda and its Fugitive Generalissimo have managed to have their "host" government destroyed. In addition, the Peerless Band of Godly Warriors have managed to make themselves detested in Iraq, distrusted in most of the Mideast and doubted in the rest of the Muslim world.
No wonder Osama is feeling poopy and letting it show.
This leads to several questions--
The first is simply, what is al-Qaeda going to do about its diminished status? Skulk around in the mountains of the Pakistani Tribal Agencies or stage a spectacular act?
The Geek would hope for the first but prepare for the second. Al-Qaeda is down but most assuredly not out.
The second question is: Should the West, particularly the US, put Hezbollah and its chief sponsor, Iran, on the top of the International Worry List? The answer to that is self-evident.
There is a third question. What ever happened to Adam Gadhan? Was he killed along with Abu al-Laith last January in Mir Ali, Pakistan by a Predator launched Hellfire? Or is the one time California environmentalist studying for an advanced degree at some backwater madrassa?
The Geek misses Adam's translations since it means he has to improve his Arabic--a distasteful expenditure of time and energy.
Come on back, Adam (if you're still with us), we need you.
Specifically the hermit sage named names and pointed fingers.
Bin Laden pointed his Flying Finger of Blame at Hezbollah. The name he named was that of Hezbollah's capo de tutti capi, Hassan Nasrallah.
Apparently the al-Qaeda Leader In Hiding was unimpressed by the outcome of the Hezbollah vs Israeli Defense Forces match up back in 2006. From the Geek's perspective, Hezbollah did very well against the IDF. Much better than, say, Taliban against the minature US invasion force and its Northern Alliance confederates four years earlier.
Maybe Osama is bent out of shape because he is the Running Man while Nasrallah sits in front of al-Jeezera cameras.
Deep in his twenty-two minute rant, the Troglodyte Sheik rhetorically demands why Nasrallah and his Hezbollah fighters allowed the UN peacekeepers "to protect the Jews." The Mystic of the Mountains alleged Nasrallah was deficient in manliness. "If he was honest and has enough (resources), why then he did not support the fight to liberate Palestine."
Golly, Mr bin Ladan, you sure do ask the tough questions.
Perhaps Nasrallah stopped fighting when he did because he has enough brains to know that Hezbollah had won. Did you consider that, Osama?
Hezbollah did win in a substantial and meaningful way. The IDF lost heavily. Israel did not accomplish any of the goals for which its military had been employed. Hezbollah gained status with Sunnis and Shias alike. It showed to its sponsors, Iran and Syria, that their investments had been well worth the price.
Perhaps Hezbollah's greatest victory in 2006 was undercutting Israeli self-confidence, certainty and political will.
It's second greatest victory?
The al-Qaeda Pontificator told us that. Hezbollah has replaced al-Qaeda as The Great Hope of Islamic Irredentism.
The rise of Hezbollah to the top of the Islamist/jihadist charts rebounded to Iran's advantage as the audiotape acknowledges. Bin Laden's admission comes in characteristically backhanded fashion. He accused Iran of wanting to dominate the Mideast--a charge he usually levels only at the United States.
Way to go, Nasrallah! You've pushed Iran ahead of the US at least on points.
Interestingly, the tape made no mention of the recent events in Lebanon where the US supported government failed in its attempt to rein in Hezbollah. Either the tape was made long before these events or The Grand Interpreter of Allah's Will did not want to give Hezbollah even more credit.
Hezbollah has emerged in the past two years as a major player in Mideast politics and Western anxieties. It has done this as al-Qaeda has faded.
Hezbollah has shown itself able to successfully confront Israel both directly and through proxies. It has treated with its "host" government as an equal--perhaps as something more than a mere equal.
In comparison, al-Qaeda and its Fugitive Generalissimo have managed to have their "host" government destroyed. In addition, the Peerless Band of Godly Warriors have managed to make themselves detested in Iraq, distrusted in most of the Mideast and doubted in the rest of the Muslim world.
No wonder Osama is feeling poopy and letting it show.
This leads to several questions--
The first is simply, what is al-Qaeda going to do about its diminished status? Skulk around in the mountains of the Pakistani Tribal Agencies or stage a spectacular act?
The Geek would hope for the first but prepare for the second. Al-Qaeda is down but most assuredly not out.
The second question is: Should the West, particularly the US, put Hezbollah and its chief sponsor, Iran, on the top of the International Worry List? The answer to that is self-evident.
There is a third question. What ever happened to Adam Gadhan? Was he killed along with Abu al-Laith last January in Mir Ali, Pakistan by a Predator launched Hellfire? Or is the one time California environmentalist studying for an advanced degree at some backwater madrassa?
The Geek misses Adam's translations since it means he has to improve his Arabic--a distasteful expenditure of time and energy.
Come on back, Adam (if you're still with us), we need you.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Iran, The Bomb and The Candidates
George W. Bush brought the matter of Iranian nuclear ambitions back out of the closet during his speech last week to the Israeli parliament. Apparently he continues to think that the Iranians are up to something icky-poo in that area and believes something should be done about it.
That's nice.
The question of what might or should be done was not addressed by the Decider Guy.
Neither has it been addressed meaningfully by any of the senatorial trio seeking electoral preferment.
We the People know the following. One candidate, Senator Obama, would go the route of negotiations backed by incentives--including a summit meeting without preconditions. The second, Senator Clinton, would go with negotiations and incentives albeit at the sub-cabinet level until fundamental agreement had been achieved. Finally, Senator McCain eschews negotiations beyond those necessary to lower Iranian involvement in the Iraqi War and would employ sanctions to achieve an end to unacceptable Iranian nuclear programs.
Those platitudinous adumbrations fail to impress the Geek. They should fail to impress anyone well oriented as to time and place as well.
The Iranians and their nuclear ambitions are not going to just evaporate no matter how hard any of us might wish they would. The mullahocracy is not going to have a sudden change of heart and mind.
They are going to need an effective kick in their collective rear end to mend their troublemaking ways. Perhaps a hard kick.
Now, don't go thinking that the Geek has joined up with the neocon ninnies and their hallucination of improving the world through force imposed regime change. He hasn't.
The Iranians have already preempted the next offer of inducements by the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, PRC and Germany) by their letter to EU negotiator Solana and UN SecGen Ban Ki-moon. In it the Tehran regime allows that it might join an international consortium provided that its domestic enrichment program goes on as scheduled. With an arrogance that is breathtaking, the letter goes on to demand that any discussions also consider a remarkable range of irrelevant matters including the Balkans, the Mideast, Africa and Latin America!
The Geek is of the opinion that had the California Supreme Court issued its ruling on gay marriages a few days earlier, the Iranian letter would have placed that on the agenda as well.
The EU in its attempts to show Washington how real diplomats do the job has offered Tehran train loads of carrots with the results best illustrated by Iranian progress in deploying more improved centrifuges in their enrichment cascade. With this reality establishing the context, it is easy to see why the Tehran regime exhibited such intransigence and arrogance in their letter.
Senators Obama and Clinton, particularly the former, should think long and hard over the experience of the European Union before embracing inducement based negotiations.
In addition that Nice Young Man From Chicago, B.H. Obama, might take a cold hard look at the personality of the current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Leaving aside Ahmadinejad's jeremiads against Israel, attention might be given to the Iranian Chief Executive's statements regarding the direct involvement of the Twelfth Imam in the daily actions of the government (a position rejected by many clerics in the mullahocracy) or his comment that his country's economic problems might be solved if more Iranians followed a "culture of martyrdom." Whatever that might mean.
Check out one Western account of the call for martyrdom from the French press agency, a good source, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jelVVHDZfukEAiK80qF88B6Q1Tpg.
On balance, Ahmadinejad gives the impression of being off balance.
To date the various rounds of sanctions imposed by the UN and followed with varying degrees of enthusiasm by countries and companies around the world have hurt Iran.
But hurt isn't enough. The hurt hasn't worked. The centrifuges keep on spinning.
This doesn't mean that sanctions will not work if more are applied with greater precision in targeting and greater compliance by corporate and government agencies.
Get a grip on these unpleasant (for the Iranians) realities. PRESS TV admits the inflation rate in Iran ran twenty-four percent for the year ending last April. The outlet quotes the Central Bank in its coverage. (http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=54275§ionid=351020102) Ahmadinejad responded by firing some financial wallahs and claiming that the inflation rate was lower, only about nineteen percent and claiming Iran's "enemies" were responsible anyway.
Then there is the unemployment problem. About one out of every four young Iranians doesn't have a job. http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast&item=080512115831.nd5ex4ol.php. In urban areas the figure is over twenty-eight percent. That's a right large passel of unemployed, frustrated teens and twenty somethings. Worrisome for any government.
But wait! There's more.
As if massive unemployment, exo-atmospheric inflation, chronic shortages and periodic "wage holidays" weren't enough, the Iranian government is proceeding with its "privatization" program. Over the past three years privatization has been an ad hoc affair, but as of 15 May, it went official, organised with the release of five or so percent of Republic Shipbuilding to the public.
The well-off, well-connected (or the sons thereof) will do even better than they did under the previous fit-and-start approach.
The idea apparently is to sop up some of the excess liquidity which has driven so much of the inflation to date. But, like previous attempts sponsored by Ahmadinejad, including housing construction and an order that banks lower interest rates to say nothing of directed increases in government salaries and pensions, this stab at privatization will prove counterproductive.
The economic difficulties confronting Iran suggest that strengthened sanctions calculated to hit the Iranian commercial class and sagging infrastructure may yet prove effective. This will take a greater effort on the part of the P5+1--particularly the PRC.
To accomplish the goal of more effective sanctions more effectively implemented will require more patience on the part of the current, lame duck US administration. Even that won't be enough.
For the sanction approach to work it is necessary that Tehran be allowed no comfort in the thought that barely more than six months from now a new administration, presumably with new policies and approaches, will take office.
Only John McCain to date has refused to give Tehran that comfort.
"What about oil prices?" You ask.
"What about the new Iran-Venezuela axis?" You object.
The Geek buys gas and LPG. He knows the pain in the skinny wallet all too well.
But, he also knows history. The US has been through periods of (at the time) astronomical oil and gasoline prices. During the previous oil shocks in 1973 and 1979-80 and the late '90s, the US was hurt badly by rising prices. But, we muddled our way through. The market forces eventually worked.
They will again. Provided the wallahs in Congress can hold their emotions (and driving need to be re-elected) under control. While not an unreconstructed free marketeer by any stretch of the imagination, the Geek cannot help by notice that the market has worked better than government actions in limiting and eventually reversing the damage of shocks to the economy.
Taking a quick look at Iran's attempt to horizontally escalate its confrontation with the US by linking with Venezuela (a subject for a later post), the Geek gives it a thumbs up.
What!
Yes, the Geek thinks it couldn't happen to a better bunch of guys. Hugo Chavez is clearly as deep an economic thinker as Ahmadinejad and the mullahs as his latest nationalization scheme shows. Venezuela is expected to have an inflation rate of twenty-six percent. http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=70644, http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/05/07/en_eco_art_inflation-at-1.7-per_07A1561241.shtml. Food prices have jumped over forty percent--and it isn't because of the oil price boom. http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/05/14/en_eco_art_venezuela-records-th_14A1576685.shtml.
With a meeting of such potent economic minds as those running Iran and Venezuela, the outcome can only be beneficial to those who live in other countries.
The next administration will have a full foreign policy plate whether they want to eat it or not. The incompetent neocon ninnie cooks in the current regime have made sure of that. We the People had best demand full, candid explanations of goals and means of acquiring those goals from the candidates.
We must not let any of the wannabe residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue glide on by with a handful of poorly thought out but nice sounding campaign platitudes.
Unless we want to see us and the rest of the world slide further down the slope so well greased by the Bush-Cheney regime.
That's nice.
The question of what might or should be done was not addressed by the Decider Guy.
Neither has it been addressed meaningfully by any of the senatorial trio seeking electoral preferment.
We the People know the following. One candidate, Senator Obama, would go the route of negotiations backed by incentives--including a summit meeting without preconditions. The second, Senator Clinton, would go with negotiations and incentives albeit at the sub-cabinet level until fundamental agreement had been achieved. Finally, Senator McCain eschews negotiations beyond those necessary to lower Iranian involvement in the Iraqi War and would employ sanctions to achieve an end to unacceptable Iranian nuclear programs.
Those platitudinous adumbrations fail to impress the Geek. They should fail to impress anyone well oriented as to time and place as well.
The Iranians and their nuclear ambitions are not going to just evaporate no matter how hard any of us might wish they would. The mullahocracy is not going to have a sudden change of heart and mind.
They are going to need an effective kick in their collective rear end to mend their troublemaking ways. Perhaps a hard kick.
Now, don't go thinking that the Geek has joined up with the neocon ninnies and their hallucination of improving the world through force imposed regime change. He hasn't.
The Iranians have already preempted the next offer of inducements by the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, PRC and Germany) by their letter to EU negotiator Solana and UN SecGen Ban Ki-moon. In it the Tehran regime allows that it might join an international consortium provided that its domestic enrichment program goes on as scheduled. With an arrogance that is breathtaking, the letter goes on to demand that any discussions also consider a remarkable range of irrelevant matters including the Balkans, the Mideast, Africa and Latin America!
The Geek is of the opinion that had the California Supreme Court issued its ruling on gay marriages a few days earlier, the Iranian letter would have placed that on the agenda as well.
The EU in its attempts to show Washington how real diplomats do the job has offered Tehran train loads of carrots with the results best illustrated by Iranian progress in deploying more improved centrifuges in their enrichment cascade. With this reality establishing the context, it is easy to see why the Tehran regime exhibited such intransigence and arrogance in their letter.
Senators Obama and Clinton, particularly the former, should think long and hard over the experience of the European Union before embracing inducement based negotiations.
In addition that Nice Young Man From Chicago, B.H. Obama, might take a cold hard look at the personality of the current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Leaving aside Ahmadinejad's jeremiads against Israel, attention might be given to the Iranian Chief Executive's statements regarding the direct involvement of the Twelfth Imam in the daily actions of the government (a position rejected by many clerics in the mullahocracy) or his comment that his country's economic problems might be solved if more Iranians followed a "culture of martyrdom." Whatever that might mean.
Check out one Western account of the call for martyrdom from the French press agency, a good source, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jelVVHDZfukEAiK80qF88B6Q1Tpg.
On balance, Ahmadinejad gives the impression of being off balance.
To date the various rounds of sanctions imposed by the UN and followed with varying degrees of enthusiasm by countries and companies around the world have hurt Iran.
But hurt isn't enough. The hurt hasn't worked. The centrifuges keep on spinning.
This doesn't mean that sanctions will not work if more are applied with greater precision in targeting and greater compliance by corporate and government agencies.
Get a grip on these unpleasant (for the Iranians) realities. PRESS TV admits the inflation rate in Iran ran twenty-four percent for the year ending last April. The outlet quotes the Central Bank in its coverage. (http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=54275§ionid=351020102) Ahmadinejad responded by firing some financial wallahs and claiming that the inflation rate was lower, only about nineteen percent and claiming Iran's "enemies" were responsible anyway.
Then there is the unemployment problem. About one out of every four young Iranians doesn't have a job. http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=mideast&item=080512115831.nd5ex4ol.php. In urban areas the figure is over twenty-eight percent. That's a right large passel of unemployed, frustrated teens and twenty somethings. Worrisome for any government.
But wait! There's more.
As if massive unemployment, exo-atmospheric inflation, chronic shortages and periodic "wage holidays" weren't enough, the Iranian government is proceeding with its "privatization" program. Over the past three years privatization has been an ad hoc affair, but as of 15 May, it went official, organised with the release of five or so percent of Republic Shipbuilding to the public.
The well-off, well-connected (or the sons thereof) will do even better than they did under the previous fit-and-start approach.
The idea apparently is to sop up some of the excess liquidity which has driven so much of the inflation to date. But, like previous attempts sponsored by Ahmadinejad, including housing construction and an order that banks lower interest rates to say nothing of directed increases in government salaries and pensions, this stab at privatization will prove counterproductive.
The economic difficulties confronting Iran suggest that strengthened sanctions calculated to hit the Iranian commercial class and sagging infrastructure may yet prove effective. This will take a greater effort on the part of the P5+1--particularly the PRC.
To accomplish the goal of more effective sanctions more effectively implemented will require more patience on the part of the current, lame duck US administration. Even that won't be enough.
For the sanction approach to work it is necessary that Tehran be allowed no comfort in the thought that barely more than six months from now a new administration, presumably with new policies and approaches, will take office.
Only John McCain to date has refused to give Tehran that comfort.
"What about oil prices?" You ask.
"What about the new Iran-Venezuela axis?" You object.
The Geek buys gas and LPG. He knows the pain in the skinny wallet all too well.
But, he also knows history. The US has been through periods of (at the time) astronomical oil and gasoline prices. During the previous oil shocks in 1973 and 1979-80 and the late '90s, the US was hurt badly by rising prices. But, we muddled our way through. The market forces eventually worked.
They will again. Provided the wallahs in Congress can hold their emotions (and driving need to be re-elected) under control. While not an unreconstructed free marketeer by any stretch of the imagination, the Geek cannot help by notice that the market has worked better than government actions in limiting and eventually reversing the damage of shocks to the economy.
Taking a quick look at Iran's attempt to horizontally escalate its confrontation with the US by linking with Venezuela (a subject for a later post), the Geek gives it a thumbs up.
What!
Yes, the Geek thinks it couldn't happen to a better bunch of guys. Hugo Chavez is clearly as deep an economic thinker as Ahmadinejad and the mullahs as his latest nationalization scheme shows. Venezuela is expected to have an inflation rate of twenty-six percent. http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=70644, http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/05/07/en_eco_art_inflation-at-1.7-per_07A1561241.shtml. Food prices have jumped over forty percent--and it isn't because of the oil price boom. http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/05/14/en_eco_art_venezuela-records-th_14A1576685.shtml.
With a meeting of such potent economic minds as those running Iran and Venezuela, the outcome can only be beneficial to those who live in other countries.
The next administration will have a full foreign policy plate whether they want to eat it or not. The incompetent neocon ninnie cooks in the current regime have made sure of that. We the People had best demand full, candid explanations of goals and means of acquiring those goals from the candidates.
We must not let any of the wannabe residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue glide on by with a handful of poorly thought out but nice sounding campaign platitudes.
Unless we want to see us and the rest of the world slide further down the slope so well greased by the Bush-Cheney regime.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
History Challenged Politicos Do It Again!
The Decider and Commander Guy got it wrong again in his speech to the Knesset the other day. His analogy between talking with "terrorists" and the so-called "appeasement" of Adolph Hitler by the United Kingdom and France at the Munich Conference seventy years ago was as wrong as a cat barking.
The Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator B. H. Obama, was no less wrong in his shrill, quasi-hysterical response accusing the current administration of sins ranging from the usual "failed policies" to the ludicrous, "fear mongering." The Geek senses that what the NYMFC wanted to say was that the Commander Guy is actually a "war monger slavering after breaking things and killing people throughout the Mideast." Senator Obama's remark was another cat barking.
Other commentators in the political, journalistic and blogging worlds damned Senator McCain over an alleged "flip-flop" in that the presumptive Republican nominee allowed as how Hamas would have to be brought into negotiations a few months ago and more recently has said his administration would not "negotiate" with terrorists. "Oy veh!" thinks the Geek.
"Appeasement" is a favored pejorative in the American political lexicon. It is one of those blobs of mud that is hurled with great emotion, some effect and absolutely no knowledge. Back during the Vietnam War, LBJ as well as supporters of our armed effort in Southeast Asia used it time after time. So there is no surprise that the Commander Guy has brought the golem back out its crypt in recent years.
Time out!
Time to get a grip.
Admittedly the Munich Conference happened a long time ago. It predates both Bush and Obama. It even predates the Geek. John McCain was barely out of three cornered pants when the Munich Conference gave the word "appeasement" its connotation of cowardly betrayal on 30 September 1938.
That's a long, long time ago.
Time to go to the videotape. The conference was brought about by the German dictator Adolph Hitler's desire to engulf the most important part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudentenland. In a perfect world the existence of mutual aid agreements between the threatened state and France and indirectly with the UK would have deterred the German ambition.
But the world in 1938 was far from perfect. Neither France nor the UK had either the military ability nor the political will to use force in support of policy. The German dictatorship knew that.
(Even the Soviet Union, whose capo, Joseph Stalin, was bent out of shape over having not been invited to sit at the Munich table, lacked the ability to use military force. The purges assured that the Red Army was a headless, brainless force. The Germans knew that as well.)
The Munich Agreement was not a cowardly betrayal of the Prague government even though then and now that is the way the Czechs and Slovaks define it. Rather, it was the product of military and political exigency.
The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, whose name and signature umbrella have become an icon for snivelling sell-out and his counterpart the French Premier Daladier were not brainless. They were not bereft of backbone.
Neither did either man believe that tossing steak to a wolf would result in the wolf becoming a vegetarian.
They signed the Munich Agreement, which not only transferred the Sudentenland and its German majority population to Berlin but opened the strategic door to the rest of Czechoslovakia. The Agreement also announced that the western democracies were uninterested in what happened to the rump state--a virtual invitation to Hitler to gulp down the rest of Czechoslovakia at his pleasure.
Any number of sinister interpretations can be put on the Anglo-French action. Most have, including the favorite: both governments saw Stalin's Soviet Union as a threat far greater than Hitler's Germany and hoped to urge the Beast of Berlin to bare his fangs in an easterly direction.
At bottom there were real reasons why neither the British nor the French had any option other than the one taken.
The French people still suffered the pernicious anemia of World War I. The lives lost, ruined or blighted to say nothing of the destruction of the industrial plant of northeast France by the war had blighted French politics, French society, the French economy to an extent that war was simply not a thinkable option.
The British might have had more political will than the French, but not by much. Even if the Brits had been pawing the ground for war, there was still one small problem. The British Army would have been hard pressed to take on the Albanian Girl Scouts. The Royal Air Force might have been able to bomb Iraqi tribesmen effectively but that was all they could do with their collection of obsolescent aircraft. The Royal Navy was flatly irrelevant.
If your people don't have the will to fight on behalf of a diplomatic policy (or even in their own longer term interest) or if your country's armed forces lack the ability to fight effectively, what choices do you have when it comes to diplomatic put-up or shut-up?
That's right, bucko.
You acknowledge reality and buy time. Time during which political will might be mobilized or military competence developed.
That's exactly what Chamberlain and Daladier did at Munich. They practiced the hardest, most bitter form of realpolitick. That neither man effectively used the time purchased at the expense of the Czechs and Slovaks is another story.
The US has the military ability to confront "terrorist groups" and rogue states. It might not have sufficient troops to contemplate adventures in regime change with attendant occupations. But it has more than sufficient capacity to break things and kill people if such becomes necessary.
Anyone well oriented in time and place knows that and takes it into account.
Arguably the American public has the political will to accept the use of force in support of policy provided a rational, credible and truthful explanation as to the necessity is forthcoming from the president. States and non-State actors who wish the US ill know this and probably factor it into their plans.
This is why Bush's equation was wrong. If the US chooses to negotiate with any State or pretender to statehood it does so from an automatic position of strength. It is asymmetrical diplomacy.
The Nice Young Man From Chicago is wrong in his characterization of Bush's remarks as the mongering of either fear or war. His quick and shrill response underscores a reality that has already become apparent during the campaign: The Senator does not understand the nature and character of diplomatic conversations.
Diplomacy, no matter how private, no matter how tentative, works only when there is a goal and a process agreeable to all parties. A further precondition is that all parties must be open to compromise in the achievement of a solution to a mutually perceived problem.
Appeasement, correctly understood, is simply capitulation spelled differently. Surrender with a diplomatic cover. Absent the preconditions for effective negotiation, there are only two possible outcomes: surrender or a further hardening of positions and ramping up of warlike preparations.
Those who dump on McCain for the alleged sin of "flip-flopping" fail to differentiate between the demands of diplomacy on the one hand and the requirements for domestic political campaigning on the other. The Geek has no doubt but Senator McCain well recognises that some day the US will have to deal with Hamas and possibly some other equally unsavory gangs of thugs and assassins at the conference table.
Much as none of us may like the idea, Hamas is currently what the Israelis call a "fact on the ground." Calling it a "terrorist group" might be both correct and politically necessary in the context of a domestic campaign, but the fact will have to be dealt with realistically both at the conference table and, if necessary, over the sights of a gun.
History shows clearly that refusing to talk to states or groups because they are morally or politically distasteful is counterproductive. History shows that talking without preconditions is like masturbating with steel wool--neither productive nor pleasant.
Finally, history shows that the great type case of appeasement, the Munich Conference and Agreement, is actually a type case of the effects of political and military realities upon the capacity of governments to do the right and necessary thing.
We can only hope that We the People do not place a future American government into having no option other than that presented to Chamberlain and Daladier.
The Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator B. H. Obama, was no less wrong in his shrill, quasi-hysterical response accusing the current administration of sins ranging from the usual "failed policies" to the ludicrous, "fear mongering." The Geek senses that what the NYMFC wanted to say was that the Commander Guy is actually a "war monger slavering after breaking things and killing people throughout the Mideast." Senator Obama's remark was another cat barking.
Other commentators in the political, journalistic and blogging worlds damned Senator McCain over an alleged "flip-flop" in that the presumptive Republican nominee allowed as how Hamas would have to be brought into negotiations a few months ago and more recently has said his administration would not "negotiate" with terrorists. "Oy veh!" thinks the Geek.
"Appeasement" is a favored pejorative in the American political lexicon. It is one of those blobs of mud that is hurled with great emotion, some effect and absolutely no knowledge. Back during the Vietnam War, LBJ as well as supporters of our armed effort in Southeast Asia used it time after time. So there is no surprise that the Commander Guy has brought the golem back out its crypt in recent years.
Time out!
Time to get a grip.
Admittedly the Munich Conference happened a long time ago. It predates both Bush and Obama. It even predates the Geek. John McCain was barely out of three cornered pants when the Munich Conference gave the word "appeasement" its connotation of cowardly betrayal on 30 September 1938.
That's a long, long time ago.
Time to go to the videotape. The conference was brought about by the German dictator Adolph Hitler's desire to engulf the most important part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudentenland. In a perfect world the existence of mutual aid agreements between the threatened state and France and indirectly with the UK would have deterred the German ambition.
But the world in 1938 was far from perfect. Neither France nor the UK had either the military ability nor the political will to use force in support of policy. The German dictatorship knew that.
(Even the Soviet Union, whose capo, Joseph Stalin, was bent out of shape over having not been invited to sit at the Munich table, lacked the ability to use military force. The purges assured that the Red Army was a headless, brainless force. The Germans knew that as well.)
The Munich Agreement was not a cowardly betrayal of the Prague government even though then and now that is the way the Czechs and Slovaks define it. Rather, it was the product of military and political exigency.
The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, whose name and signature umbrella have become an icon for snivelling sell-out and his counterpart the French Premier Daladier were not brainless. They were not bereft of backbone.
Neither did either man believe that tossing steak to a wolf would result in the wolf becoming a vegetarian.
They signed the Munich Agreement, which not only transferred the Sudentenland and its German majority population to Berlin but opened the strategic door to the rest of Czechoslovakia. The Agreement also announced that the western democracies were uninterested in what happened to the rump state--a virtual invitation to Hitler to gulp down the rest of Czechoslovakia at his pleasure.
Any number of sinister interpretations can be put on the Anglo-French action. Most have, including the favorite: both governments saw Stalin's Soviet Union as a threat far greater than Hitler's Germany and hoped to urge the Beast of Berlin to bare his fangs in an easterly direction.
At bottom there were real reasons why neither the British nor the French had any option other than the one taken.
The French people still suffered the pernicious anemia of World War I. The lives lost, ruined or blighted to say nothing of the destruction of the industrial plant of northeast France by the war had blighted French politics, French society, the French economy to an extent that war was simply not a thinkable option.
The British might have had more political will than the French, but not by much. Even if the Brits had been pawing the ground for war, there was still one small problem. The British Army would have been hard pressed to take on the Albanian Girl Scouts. The Royal Air Force might have been able to bomb Iraqi tribesmen effectively but that was all they could do with their collection of obsolescent aircraft. The Royal Navy was flatly irrelevant.
If your people don't have the will to fight on behalf of a diplomatic policy (or even in their own longer term interest) or if your country's armed forces lack the ability to fight effectively, what choices do you have when it comes to diplomatic put-up or shut-up?
That's right, bucko.
You acknowledge reality and buy time. Time during which political will might be mobilized or military competence developed.
That's exactly what Chamberlain and Daladier did at Munich. They practiced the hardest, most bitter form of realpolitick. That neither man effectively used the time purchased at the expense of the Czechs and Slovaks is another story.
The US has the military ability to confront "terrorist groups" and rogue states. It might not have sufficient troops to contemplate adventures in regime change with attendant occupations. But it has more than sufficient capacity to break things and kill people if such becomes necessary.
Anyone well oriented in time and place knows that and takes it into account.
Arguably the American public has the political will to accept the use of force in support of policy provided a rational, credible and truthful explanation as to the necessity is forthcoming from the president. States and non-State actors who wish the US ill know this and probably factor it into their plans.
This is why Bush's equation was wrong. If the US chooses to negotiate with any State or pretender to statehood it does so from an automatic position of strength. It is asymmetrical diplomacy.
The Nice Young Man From Chicago is wrong in his characterization of Bush's remarks as the mongering of either fear or war. His quick and shrill response underscores a reality that has already become apparent during the campaign: The Senator does not understand the nature and character of diplomatic conversations.
Diplomacy, no matter how private, no matter how tentative, works only when there is a goal and a process agreeable to all parties. A further precondition is that all parties must be open to compromise in the achievement of a solution to a mutually perceived problem.
Appeasement, correctly understood, is simply capitulation spelled differently. Surrender with a diplomatic cover. Absent the preconditions for effective negotiation, there are only two possible outcomes: surrender or a further hardening of positions and ramping up of warlike preparations.
Those who dump on McCain for the alleged sin of "flip-flopping" fail to differentiate between the demands of diplomacy on the one hand and the requirements for domestic political campaigning on the other. The Geek has no doubt but Senator McCain well recognises that some day the US will have to deal with Hamas and possibly some other equally unsavory gangs of thugs and assassins at the conference table.
Much as none of us may like the idea, Hamas is currently what the Israelis call a "fact on the ground." Calling it a "terrorist group" might be both correct and politically necessary in the context of a domestic campaign, but the fact will have to be dealt with realistically both at the conference table and, if necessary, over the sights of a gun.
History shows clearly that refusing to talk to states or groups because they are morally or politically distasteful is counterproductive. History shows that talking without preconditions is like masturbating with steel wool--neither productive nor pleasant.
Finally, history shows that the great type case of appeasement, the Munich Conference and Agreement, is actually a type case of the effects of political and military realities upon the capacity of governments to do the right and necessary thing.
We can only hope that We the People do not place a future American government into having no option other than that presented to Chamberlain and Daladier.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Evo Morales--The Chicken Becomes a Fox
The Geek has to admire a slick job when he sees one. Bolivian president Evo Morales has pulled off one super slick trick. No doubt about it.
Morales, Bolivia's first Indio president has signed a recall election bill into law. Pushed by his "white" opponents who hallucinated that the soccer playing one time peasant had been weakened by the results of the Santa Cruz provincial autonomy referendum on 4 May could be removed from office through a recall vote.
The bill which Morales signed provides for himself and all nine provincial governors to face recall in a special election on 10 August. So far, so good. Or so it seems.
The devil, of course, was hiding in the details. Apparently so blinded by the glorious vision of removing the uppity Indian from office, the opposition didn't look closely at the precise wording of the new legislation.
To be removed from office Morales or any of the nine governors must receive a "no" vote total that is greater in both absolute numbers and percentage of the vote cast than the votes they received in the last general election.
The Geek tips his hat to the shrewd high school dropout president.
Get a grip on this. Morales received approximately 1.5 million votes, or more than fifty-three percent of those cast. To be removed from office the "no" vote total must be greater than 1.5 million and the percentage must exceed the 53.7 percent.
There ain't no way that's going to happen.
Some of the governors aren't so fortunate. Take, for example, Jose Luis Paredes the governor of La Paz and an opponent of Morales. He won the Morales supporting state with thirty-eight percent of the vote. If thirty-nine percent of the voters check the "no" box, Paredes is out and the llama herder turned president gets to appoint a replacement.
Sweet?
You bet. There is no way that Morales is going to wake up sad come morning on the 11th of August.
Slickness may be enough to keep Morales in office. It may even be enough to remove pesky governors who don't march to the tune of Evo's Populist Band.
It isn't enough to assure the best future for Bolivia. It isn't even enough to give Morales a good write up in future history texts.
Morales, like his colleagues Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa, is a populist. He came to power through the democratic process as did the other two. He, along with Chavez and, to some extent, Correa, doesn't like globalization.
More to the point, in common with the other two is the latest round of a long standing South American political disease.
The name of that disease?
Economic populism.
It is amazing how little so many South Americans fail to learn from their continent' political history.
Economic populism has a long record of abject (and often bloody) failure through the length and breadth of the continent. The narrative is always the same. It is always based on ethno-nationalism and a hyped sense that "we" (the locals, the working class, Los Indios, the peasants) are being heartlessly exploited by "them" (the ricos, the Norteamericanos, the "whites.")
The populist demagogue rouses fear and anger. Fear and anger produce enthusiasm and votes.
Badda-bing! The populist is elected. Ain't democracy grand?
Comes now the redistribution of land, the nationalization of basic industry, of financial institutions, the confiscation of wealth. Now the landless will have land. The jobless will have jobs. The poor will have wealth.
In the short term everything will look good as the history of Juan Peron in Argentina shows,
Eventually the wheels fall off the Great Socialist Vehicle. Inflation. Hyperinflation. Loss of agricultural and industrial productivity. Systemic inefficiency. Infrastructure collapse. An end to investment both foreign and domestic. Middle class flight.
The process used to take years, even decades. Now it can occur in months given the speed with which information moves and decisions made.
The Bolivian Slicky-Boy may be lucky. Lord knows, the ex-paratrooper Chavez has been.
Morales' running buddy, the inventor of "Socialism For the 21st Century" Hugo Chavez, has been a favorite son of Lady Luck. The rocketing price of oil has buoyed the more-or-less democratically elected semi-authoritarian.
While as many of the middle class as can get visas and plane tickets to Panama or points even more to the north, while the production of Venezuela's oil fields slides due to loss of skill and degradation of plant, Chavez has been able to fund the FARC insurgents in Columbia, make wink and nudge agreements with the mullahocracy in Iran and sign contracts for two gigabucks worth of Russian weapons.
Will Morales be so fortunate?
Bolivian natural gas is critical to both Argentina and Brazil. At least for the moment.
But how long will that last?
Large hydrocarbon deposits have been discovered in the waters of Brazil's Exclusive Economic Zone. With foreign direct investment and co-production agreements in the offing, Brazil will not only be able to meet its own needs but become a major exporter.
Assuming that the Brazilians do not engage in another of their recurrent flights of economic populism, the market forces will work in Brazil's favor. The country already has a firm industrial base and a fair amount of indigenous capital. Exportation of hydrocarbon, particularly natural gas, will enhance not only Brazil but countries such as Argentina who can use the resource beneficially.
For the market to work the context must be stable and predictable. This means that excesses of democracy must be avoided. It also means that the region must be free from both violence and threats of violence.
Here Evo Morales the current Fox of the Andes may be out foxing himself and his fellow Bolivians. By linking himself ideologically with Hugo Chavez who is shaping up as the The Continental Thug, Morales may be helping to assure the very instability which will undercut the potential of regional economic prosperity.
Take a look at history, Presidente Morales. Look at Argentina. At Juan Peron and the lingering effects of the Peronistas. Take a look at Mexico. Take a close look at what has happened recently in Mexico with the lack of foreign investment in the oilfields.
Take a long, hard look at history and think. Is this really in the best interests of Bolivia?
True, globalization is not an undiluted good (pace Alan Greenspan) and the "whites" have not been without major flaw, but is heavy handed, short-sighted seizure of land and resources the best way to provide the best future for all Bolivians?
Economic populism is a great way to get power. It is a piss-poor way to run a country.
Morales, Bolivia's first Indio president has signed a recall election bill into law. Pushed by his "white" opponents who hallucinated that the soccer playing one time peasant had been weakened by the results of the Santa Cruz provincial autonomy referendum on 4 May could be removed from office through a recall vote.
The bill which Morales signed provides for himself and all nine provincial governors to face recall in a special election on 10 August. So far, so good. Or so it seems.
The devil, of course, was hiding in the details. Apparently so blinded by the glorious vision of removing the uppity Indian from office, the opposition didn't look closely at the precise wording of the new legislation.
To be removed from office Morales or any of the nine governors must receive a "no" vote total that is greater in both absolute numbers and percentage of the vote cast than the votes they received in the last general election.
The Geek tips his hat to the shrewd high school dropout president.
Get a grip on this. Morales received approximately 1.5 million votes, or more than fifty-three percent of those cast. To be removed from office the "no" vote total must be greater than 1.5 million and the percentage must exceed the 53.7 percent.
There ain't no way that's going to happen.
Some of the governors aren't so fortunate. Take, for example, Jose Luis Paredes the governor of La Paz and an opponent of Morales. He won the Morales supporting state with thirty-eight percent of the vote. If thirty-nine percent of the voters check the "no" box, Paredes is out and the llama herder turned president gets to appoint a replacement.
Sweet?
You bet. There is no way that Morales is going to wake up sad come morning on the 11th of August.
Slickness may be enough to keep Morales in office. It may even be enough to remove pesky governors who don't march to the tune of Evo's Populist Band.
It isn't enough to assure the best future for Bolivia. It isn't even enough to give Morales a good write up in future history texts.
Morales, like his colleagues Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa, is a populist. He came to power through the democratic process as did the other two. He, along with Chavez and, to some extent, Correa, doesn't like globalization.
More to the point, in common with the other two is the latest round of a long standing South American political disease.
The name of that disease?
Economic populism.
It is amazing how little so many South Americans fail to learn from their continent' political history.
Economic populism has a long record of abject (and often bloody) failure through the length and breadth of the continent. The narrative is always the same. It is always based on ethno-nationalism and a hyped sense that "we" (the locals, the working class, Los Indios, the peasants) are being heartlessly exploited by "them" (the ricos, the Norteamericanos, the "whites.")
The populist demagogue rouses fear and anger. Fear and anger produce enthusiasm and votes.
Badda-bing! The populist is elected. Ain't democracy grand?
Comes now the redistribution of land, the nationalization of basic industry, of financial institutions, the confiscation of wealth. Now the landless will have land. The jobless will have jobs. The poor will have wealth.
In the short term everything will look good as the history of Juan Peron in Argentina shows,
Eventually the wheels fall off the Great Socialist Vehicle. Inflation. Hyperinflation. Loss of agricultural and industrial productivity. Systemic inefficiency. Infrastructure collapse. An end to investment both foreign and domestic. Middle class flight.
The process used to take years, even decades. Now it can occur in months given the speed with which information moves and decisions made.
The Bolivian Slicky-Boy may be lucky. Lord knows, the ex-paratrooper Chavez has been.
Morales' running buddy, the inventor of "Socialism For the 21st Century" Hugo Chavez, has been a favorite son of Lady Luck. The rocketing price of oil has buoyed the more-or-less democratically elected semi-authoritarian.
While as many of the middle class as can get visas and plane tickets to Panama or points even more to the north, while the production of Venezuela's oil fields slides due to loss of skill and degradation of plant, Chavez has been able to fund the FARC insurgents in Columbia, make wink and nudge agreements with the mullahocracy in Iran and sign contracts for two gigabucks worth of Russian weapons.
Will Morales be so fortunate?
Bolivian natural gas is critical to both Argentina and Brazil. At least for the moment.
But how long will that last?
Large hydrocarbon deposits have been discovered in the waters of Brazil's Exclusive Economic Zone. With foreign direct investment and co-production agreements in the offing, Brazil will not only be able to meet its own needs but become a major exporter.
Assuming that the Brazilians do not engage in another of their recurrent flights of economic populism, the market forces will work in Brazil's favor. The country already has a firm industrial base and a fair amount of indigenous capital. Exportation of hydrocarbon, particularly natural gas, will enhance not only Brazil but countries such as Argentina who can use the resource beneficially.
For the market to work the context must be stable and predictable. This means that excesses of democracy must be avoided. It also means that the region must be free from both violence and threats of violence.
Here Evo Morales the current Fox of the Andes may be out foxing himself and his fellow Bolivians. By linking himself ideologically with Hugo Chavez who is shaping up as the The Continental Thug, Morales may be helping to assure the very instability which will undercut the potential of regional economic prosperity.
Take a look at history, Presidente Morales. Look at Argentina. At Juan Peron and the lingering effects of the Peronistas. Take a look at Mexico. Take a close look at what has happened recently in Mexico with the lack of foreign investment in the oilfields.
Take a long, hard look at history and think. Is this really in the best interests of Bolivia?
True, globalization is not an undiluted good (pace Alan Greenspan) and the "whites" have not been without major flaw, but is heavy handed, short-sighted seizure of land and resources the best way to provide the best future for all Bolivians?
Economic populism is a great way to get power. It is a piss-poor way to run a country.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Muhammad: The Lenin of Religion
Both Christianity and Islam are political institutions.
The Geek wants to make that clear. Both Christianity (irrespective of denomination) and Islam (regardless of sect) have sought and continue to seek the ability to directly, materially and substantially manipulate the perceptions, beliefs, and, therefore, the actions of people.
That's what politics is all about. Power.
Both Christianity and Islam use the same tool to gain, retain and expand power over people.
It's a great tool. A sovereign tool. An almost never fail tool. It's used by all who pant after power. All who in one way or another slaver over the thought of controlling others.
The tool?
Fear.
That's right. Fear. The increase of fear. The reduction of fear. Fear.
Fear, chum, yeah, it's wonderful. We all have it as the ready lever for others to yank.
There is one very big, very fundamental and very important difference between Christianity and Islam.
Jesus, the Itinerant Sage and Healer of Galilee whose kerygma was the foundation stone for the towering edifice called Christianity, did not exploit fear to gain either an audience or followers. Indeed, Jesus seemed to be of the view that fear was irrelevant to a full human life.
(Trouble accepting this? The Geek suggests the publications of the Jesus Seminar as a good starting point. On the web, http://jesusseminar.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html.)
In the message of Jesus there is no mention of hell. No words of God's Wrath. No intimations of judgement. He does not embrace suffering. Neither does he argue that humans must tremble before the deity or kneel in submission to either God or messenger.
Later, even much, much later, as the words of the Wandering Sage and Healer were transmogrified into an institution, a Church seeking authority. Power was the lever of fear pulled. Pulled long and hard.
Jesus didn't seek power. He sought only to deliver a message. A simple, profound message that was easy to hear, easy to understand but hard to live.
Churches, Catholic and protestant alike were and are institutions. They exist to exercise power. Whether the power is used for good or ill is less relevant than the fact that churches are political institutions trafficking in the power business. They must have dogma and creed, liturgy and rituals, rules and standards of membership. They must define themselves by exclusion even as they seek to convert. In all that they do the basic tool is fear. Raise fear. Lower fear.
In this respect churches are just like governments. The difference resides in the ability of governments to use coercion in the here-and-now while churches must rely upon an eschatological system of rewards and punishment.
In short: follow the rules, follow the creed, follow the liturgy, follow Authority and you will be rewarded postmortem. Otherwise--that's right, the eternal cooker for you, pal.
Muhammad was to Jesus as Lenin was to Robert Owen, the gentle Nineteenth Century Utopian socialist.
Muhammad sought to create a political movement, a movement which would successfully unite under a single banner the fractionated society of the Arabian Peninsula. Without commenting on its theological attributes, suffice it to say that the Koran is a political document exploiting fear.
The content of the Koran is well rooted in the Arabian Peninsula's cultural context and is largely derivative in its theology. These aspects are not to be held against either the Koran or the collected sayings of Muhammad. Quite the contrary they are part of the core strength of Islam as a religio-political movement.
The consistency of the creedal statement with a recurrent emphasis upon the unity of religion with social and political life, the need for submission to the deity and the visions of rewards and, more importantly, punishments postmortem have given Islam its ideological power. In this department Islam trumps Christianity.
The pornography of hellfire and brimstone winds through Christianity like a river in the desert, occasionally disappearing for a stretch only to reemerge in full flow.
But, in Islam, hell is right there. In your face. Up close and personal. It even outranks paradise as a subject of lovingly detailed description. Even the Geek feels little shakes and shudders run up his back as he reads the travelogue of perdition.
Like the old theatrical saying has it: The villain gets the best lines.
Lenin said the purpose of terror is to terrorise.
Muhammad must have believed that the purpose of hell is to terrorise.
Of course he was right. Fear of death is a biggie on the chart of human apprehensions. Fear of what happens after death is right up there too--particularly if gruesome visions of hell have come along with mother's milk.
(Perhaps that is why Muslims so often address Allah as the Merciful and Compassionate, even in a declaration of intent to kill infidel women and children. They are hoping against hope that they will receive a little of that mercy, that compassion.)
From a practical perspective it is impossible to argue with Muhammad's approach. It gave him the organizing methodology for a highly successful political movement. The same approach is still at work today.
It is just as effective today. Fear of death and dread of hell are the tools of choice for assorted mullahs and ayatollahs today. It gives the ambitious a clear avenue to power. It gives individuals a reason to die in the hopes of paradise rather than to live under the threat of damnation.
The power of hell to stimulate political action including violent jihad is alive and well as we all know all too well. Quite possibly the suicide bombers and their ilk seek death not because they are enchanted by the possibilities of paradise with cool water and waiting soulless virgins but because living with the nagging image of the fire-filled pit becomes impossible.
Lenin terrorised his way to power. Stalin terrorised his way to expanded power. But terror has its limits. Humans become inured to it. It loses its black magic. It fades away into the background noise of life and the risks of life.
At some point fear reaches its limits as well. This is the ultimate weakness of a religion which relies too much upon it. Life is for living--not obsessing on eternity either with or without burning sulfur.
For awhile relief from fear may be found in hatred or joining with others to chant, "Death to (fill in the blank.)" For a while fear can be defeated by jihad, either violent or not. For a bit the fear might be limited by tossing acid in the face of an unveiled woman.
But not for ever.
The Soviets ultimately found that Lenin's dictum had very real limits. The Islamists who exploit the hellfire of the Koran to their political advantage will find limits as well.
Life is for living and as Jesus reputedly said, "Let the dead bury their dead."
The Geek wants to make that clear. Both Christianity (irrespective of denomination) and Islam (regardless of sect) have sought and continue to seek the ability to directly, materially and substantially manipulate the perceptions, beliefs, and, therefore, the actions of people.
That's what politics is all about. Power.
Both Christianity and Islam use the same tool to gain, retain and expand power over people.
It's a great tool. A sovereign tool. An almost never fail tool. It's used by all who pant after power. All who in one way or another slaver over the thought of controlling others.
The tool?
Fear.
That's right. Fear. The increase of fear. The reduction of fear. Fear.
Fear, chum, yeah, it's wonderful. We all have it as the ready lever for others to yank.
There is one very big, very fundamental and very important difference between Christianity and Islam.
Jesus, the Itinerant Sage and Healer of Galilee whose kerygma was the foundation stone for the towering edifice called Christianity, did not exploit fear to gain either an audience or followers. Indeed, Jesus seemed to be of the view that fear was irrelevant to a full human life.
(Trouble accepting this? The Geek suggests the publications of the Jesus Seminar as a good starting point. On the web, http://jesusseminar.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html.)
In the message of Jesus there is no mention of hell. No words of God's Wrath. No intimations of judgement. He does not embrace suffering. Neither does he argue that humans must tremble before the deity or kneel in submission to either God or messenger.
Later, even much, much later, as the words of the Wandering Sage and Healer were transmogrified into an institution, a Church seeking authority. Power was the lever of fear pulled. Pulled long and hard.
Jesus didn't seek power. He sought only to deliver a message. A simple, profound message that was easy to hear, easy to understand but hard to live.
Churches, Catholic and protestant alike were and are institutions. They exist to exercise power. Whether the power is used for good or ill is less relevant than the fact that churches are political institutions trafficking in the power business. They must have dogma and creed, liturgy and rituals, rules and standards of membership. They must define themselves by exclusion even as they seek to convert. In all that they do the basic tool is fear. Raise fear. Lower fear.
In this respect churches are just like governments. The difference resides in the ability of governments to use coercion in the here-and-now while churches must rely upon an eschatological system of rewards and punishment.
In short: follow the rules, follow the creed, follow the liturgy, follow Authority and you will be rewarded postmortem. Otherwise--that's right, the eternal cooker for you, pal.
Muhammad was to Jesus as Lenin was to Robert Owen, the gentle Nineteenth Century Utopian socialist.
Muhammad sought to create a political movement, a movement which would successfully unite under a single banner the fractionated society of the Arabian Peninsula. Without commenting on its theological attributes, suffice it to say that the Koran is a political document exploiting fear.
The content of the Koran is well rooted in the Arabian Peninsula's cultural context and is largely derivative in its theology. These aspects are not to be held against either the Koran or the collected sayings of Muhammad. Quite the contrary they are part of the core strength of Islam as a religio-political movement.
The consistency of the creedal statement with a recurrent emphasis upon the unity of religion with social and political life, the need for submission to the deity and the visions of rewards and, more importantly, punishments postmortem have given Islam its ideological power. In this department Islam trumps Christianity.
The pornography of hellfire and brimstone winds through Christianity like a river in the desert, occasionally disappearing for a stretch only to reemerge in full flow.
But, in Islam, hell is right there. In your face. Up close and personal. It even outranks paradise as a subject of lovingly detailed description. Even the Geek feels little shakes and shudders run up his back as he reads the travelogue of perdition.
Like the old theatrical saying has it: The villain gets the best lines.
Lenin said the purpose of terror is to terrorise.
Muhammad must have believed that the purpose of hell is to terrorise.
Of course he was right. Fear of death is a biggie on the chart of human apprehensions. Fear of what happens after death is right up there too--particularly if gruesome visions of hell have come along with mother's milk.
(Perhaps that is why Muslims so often address Allah as the Merciful and Compassionate, even in a declaration of intent to kill infidel women and children. They are hoping against hope that they will receive a little of that mercy, that compassion.)
From a practical perspective it is impossible to argue with Muhammad's approach. It gave him the organizing methodology for a highly successful political movement. The same approach is still at work today.
It is just as effective today. Fear of death and dread of hell are the tools of choice for assorted mullahs and ayatollahs today. It gives the ambitious a clear avenue to power. It gives individuals a reason to die in the hopes of paradise rather than to live under the threat of damnation.
The power of hell to stimulate political action including violent jihad is alive and well as we all know all too well. Quite possibly the suicide bombers and their ilk seek death not because they are enchanted by the possibilities of paradise with cool water and waiting soulless virgins but because living with the nagging image of the fire-filled pit becomes impossible.
Lenin terrorised his way to power. Stalin terrorised his way to expanded power. But terror has its limits. Humans become inured to it. It loses its black magic. It fades away into the background noise of life and the risks of life.
At some point fear reaches its limits as well. This is the ultimate weakness of a religion which relies too much upon it. Life is for living--not obsessing on eternity either with or without burning sulfur.
For awhile relief from fear may be found in hatred or joining with others to chant, "Death to (fill in the blank.)" For a while fear can be defeated by jihad, either violent or not. For a bit the fear might be limited by tossing acid in the face of an unveiled woman.
But not for ever.
The Soviets ultimately found that Lenin's dictum had very real limits. The Islamists who exploit the hellfire of the Koran to their political advantage will find limits as well.
Life is for living and as Jesus reputedly said, "Let the dead bury their dead."
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