Saturday, January 27, 2007
Why The Surgeons Are Exhausted...
"“So a man is in a horrible car accident. He is wheeled in to the OR, and the most elite, prestigious surgeon in the world goes to work. He operates, without rest, for 24 hours straight. All the man's organs are put back where they belong and the internal injuries are fixed. The surgeon collapses, exhausted, and calls for the suture doctor to come in and close the wounds. The problem is, the suture doctor is afraid of blood. He insists he won't come in and sew the guy up until the bleeding has stopped. The surgeon yells that the bleeding won't stop until the sutures are in, and he isn't trained to do it, isn't allowed to do it, and the suture doctor has the keys to the suture cabinet with all the supplies. Meanwhile, the man is dying on the table. Too bad, says the suture doctor, this isn't what I went to med school for, I made it clear when I came to work in this hospital that I don't like blood and only work when there isn't any danger that the patient will die. So now, the hospital is trying to train the exhausted surgeon, who hasn't slept in 36 hours, how to do sutures with different equipment, since the suture doctor doesn't like people touching the stuff in his cabinet. Welcome to Iraq....”"
The Influence Of The Safe Cities In Which They Reside
"It also provided a sense of the notions held by a few upper-middle-class people who earn their living thinking and writing in comfortable neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.; Princeton; Cambridge; Palo Alto; and other non-war zones in the United States where water, food, rule of law, and utilities are taken for granted. What one wonders after reading the issue is, of the 16 views published, why the editors chose not to publish any perspectives by a) Iraqis -- Sunni, Shia, or Kurd; b) American military personnel who served in Iraq; or c) anybody who lives and works in the neighboring countries. Wouldn't Iraqis and American military personnel be in a position to test the viability of the ideas expressed in The New Republic by writers who have negligible direct experience with the realities of this war? What your magazine does is publish articles by people with fine academic credentials who believe in the superiority of their thoughts and who do not realize how limited they are by the combination of their privileged experiences, their inadequate knowledge of the region and circumstances, and the influence of the safe cities in which they reside."
The Dictatorship Plan. All forgotten now of course. Doesn't fit in today's 4 minute long historical memories...
Today's Compelled Virtue Update
"The idea of placing humanity under one religion irrespective of their color, gender, language, class and ethnicity is a gift given by Islam to humanity."
He Voted Against It Before He Was For It -- Part 89235 (Updated)
"The outrageousness of Kerry’s statements is multiplied by the fact that he himself voted against the Kyoto Protocol—as did every single member of Congress." [ I believe the Senate vote was 95-0 with 5 abstentions. (It's the Senate that votes on treaties of course, not all of "Congress".) And the vote was held while Clinton was in office -- not under Bush. -ed. ]
UPDATE -- HE GETS EVEN MORE IGNORANT: "He took the time to scold the Bush administration for its lack of effort on AIDS and other diseases in Africa. However, Bush has already spent more on these issues than the last Democratic administration did in eight years. Humanitarian aid to Africa comprised $1.4 billion a year at the end of the Clinton administration, but Bush has tripled that to $4 billion per year -- and wants to more than double it over the next two years:
So not only is John Kerry a hypocrite, he's also an ignoramus. However, we have noticed that the Davos forum has become, over the years, a convention of sorts for both. Kerry should feel right at home." [ There were few Democrats available who were capable of losing badly to George Bush in 2004. Obviously, Kerry was one of them. It tells one a lot about the sad state of intellect and lack of accountability in our two major political parties that this was the choice we were given.
UPDATE: Oh, and we're an "international pariah" too. The MSM is now madly working to send it down the memory hole lest the rubes get riled up. Too late. -ed. ]
UPDATE -- HE GETS EVEN MORE IGNORANT: "He took the time to scold the Bush administration for its lack of effort on AIDS and other diseases in Africa. However, Bush has already spent more on these issues than the last Democratic administration did in eight years. Humanitarian aid to Africa comprised $1.4 billion a year at the end of the Clinton administration, but Bush has tripled that to $4 billion per year -- and wants to more than double it over the next two years:
President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S.
military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and
less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic
increase in U.S. aid to Africa.
The president has tripled direct
humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent
since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010
-- to nearly $9 billion. ...
Bush has increased direct development and humanitarian aid to Africa to more than $4 billion a year from $1.4 billion in 2001, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And four African nations -- Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt and Uganda -- rank among the world's top 10 recipients in aid from the United States.
So not only is John Kerry a hypocrite, he's also an ignoramus. However, we have noticed that the Davos forum has become, over the years, a convention of sorts for both. Kerry should feel right at home." [ There were few Democrats available who were capable of losing badly to George Bush in 2004. Obviously, Kerry was one of them. It tells one a lot about the sad state of intellect and lack of accountability in our two major political parties that this was the choice we were given.
UPDATE: Oh, and we're an "international pariah" too. The MSM is now madly working to send it down the memory hole lest the rubes get riled up. Too late. -ed. ]
"Civilians"
"The video shows Iraqi troops beating three men who'd been caught with a bag full of mortars in their car. I don't defend the beatings, which at least one American tries fecklessly to stop, but calling people captured with mortars "civilians" is a bit of a distortion, no?"
Rushdie Redux 2: Deep Trouble, Deep Trouble...
"And I have found one of the most strange things about the last, you know, 20 years or so that I’ve been involved in all this, is that the left and the liberal intelligentsia have not been good on this. And that in many cases you find yourself agreeing with people that you’ve never agreed with in your life before. The wrong people are on your side. And the “right people”—or in other words, the left people—are on the wrong side because there has been on the left for a long time this view that, Third World, good; First World, oppressive and bad. And that kind of Third Worldism has led to some very strange intellectual mistakes here, part of which is a kind of infantilization of people to say that they don’t know any better, which would not happen if you were dealing with anyone else who was not brown of skin.
There’s also the colossal mistake of cultural relativism, which is, you know, the bastard child of multiculturalism. I mean multiculturalism it seems to me is a completely defensible idea because we do all live in a multicultural society. There is no way that you can walk around the streets of New York City and argue with that fact. It simply is the case and what’s more it’s not going to stop being the case. In the same way as whether you like globalization or not, you cannot deglobalize the planet, in the same way you cannot demulticulturalize the planet. This is the world in which we now live. We all live jumbled up with each other and that’s just how it is and we have to deal with it.
That’s one thing. You say that, and you look at its consequences, good and bad, and that’s so. But there has been, entirely on the left I have to say, a mistake and extension of that, to say —there’s a British politician who said this recently— -that in order to be fair you have to treat people differently according to their cultural background. That’s to say things are OK if they’re your culture. If your culture happens to include stoning adulteresses to death, then hey, it’s your culture. If it includes female circumcision, which of us can argue with that, you know?
You see, the moment you begin to look at it, it doesn’t stand up, cultural relativism, because what it does is it absolves us as individuals and as groups from making any kind of moral choices. And you live in a world, therefore, where there is no such thing as morality; there’s only relative values. There’s only, you know, what’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. And at that point you genuinely arrive at what is called decadence, when you lose the ability to decide as individuals and groups, as a society, to agree about and sometimes agree about what is right and what is wrong. When you lose that ability, you’re in deep trouble, deep trouble.."
There’s also the colossal mistake of cultural relativism, which is, you know, the bastard child of multiculturalism. I mean multiculturalism it seems to me is a completely defensible idea because we do all live in a multicultural society. There is no way that you can walk around the streets of New York City and argue with that fact. It simply is the case and what’s more it’s not going to stop being the case. In the same way as whether you like globalization or not, you cannot deglobalize the planet, in the same way you cannot demulticulturalize the planet. This is the world in which we now live. We all live jumbled up with each other and that’s just how it is and we have to deal with it.
That’s one thing. You say that, and you look at its consequences, good and bad, and that’s so. But there has been, entirely on the left I have to say, a mistake and extension of that, to say —there’s a British politician who said this recently— -that in order to be fair you have to treat people differently according to their cultural background. That’s to say things are OK if they’re your culture. If your culture happens to include stoning adulteresses to death, then hey, it’s your culture. If it includes female circumcision, which of us can argue with that, you know?
You see, the moment you begin to look at it, it doesn’t stand up, cultural relativism, because what it does is it absolves us as individuals and as groups from making any kind of moral choices. And you live in a world, therefore, where there is no such thing as morality; there’s only relative values. There’s only, you know, what’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. And at that point you genuinely arrive at what is called decadence, when you lose the ability to decide as individuals and groups, as a society, to agree about and sometimes agree about what is right and what is wrong. When you lose that ability, you’re in deep trouble, deep trouble.."
Rushdie Redux: Not My Understanding Of The Team I'm On
"It seemed wrong I thought to demand that the Pope apologize. Believe me, I am not usually on the Pope’s side. This is not my understanding of the team I’m on. And I remember at the time of the Khomeini fatwa against my work, one of the most at that time surprising things to me was the fact that the then Pope, Wojtyla, made a statement saying that he perfectly understood Khomeini’s point of view and failed to say anything about how it was a bad idea to kill people for their work. And after that, when many, many Italian writers like Umberto Eco and many others demanded that he clarify his position, he never really did. And that he was joined in this sort of approval of Khomeini by the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and by the Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York.
And I remember thinking at the time that oh there is a kind of a team here. The God Squad is not just some kind of phrase that people use—it really is there. I think the thing that’s interesting to me about Ratzinger is that he clearly doesn’t think that. He doesn’t think he’s on the same team as the other guys. He’s prepared to say that he thinks his religion is better than their religion, which is very unusual these days, except of course Muslims who say it all the time. I mean it seemed to me what was behind that fuss was that suddenly the religious consensus was breaking down. But appalling of The New York Times to demand that the Pope not be allowed to say what he felt like in a really seriously worked-out theological essay."
And I remember thinking at the time that oh there is a kind of a team here. The God Squad is not just some kind of phrase that people use—it really is there. I think the thing that’s interesting to me about Ratzinger is that he clearly doesn’t think that. He doesn’t think he’s on the same team as the other guys. He’s prepared to say that he thinks his religion is better than their religion, which is very unusual these days, except of course Muslims who say it all the time. I mean it seemed to me what was behind that fuss was that suddenly the religious consensus was breaking down. But appalling of The New York Times to demand that the Pope not be allowed to say what he felt like in a really seriously worked-out theological essay."
A RECURRING CLASSIC: ""Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities." -- Winston Churchill"
Roots
"Eli: That’s just it, at the end. And you asked me about getting rid of Hezbollah. Surely getting rid of all the Hezbollah fighters is not the solution. You have to get it from the root. And the root of the Hezbollah is, in the end, it’s the road toward Syria, and from Syria toward Iran. They are the big funders and the people who give Hezbollah the ok. In the end.
MJT: It looks like it’s an unresolvable problem without dealing with Syria and Iran in some way, somehow.
Eli: It’s a matter of time. Because the way I see it, the way I look at the situation now in Lebanon, at the parliament there, that within a few months or a year, I don’t know, the Hezbollah are getting stronger again. And they might push out the Lebanese government. They’ll take over the government there. And they’ll ask the UN peacekeepers to leave. And they will have to leave. And then we’ll have it all over again. "
MJT: It looks like it’s an unresolvable problem without dealing with Syria and Iran in some way, somehow.
Eli: It’s a matter of time. Because the way I see it, the way I look at the situation now in Lebanon, at the parliament there, that within a few months or a year, I don’t know, the Hezbollah are getting stronger again. And they might push out the Lebanese government. They’ll take over the government there. And they’ll ask the UN peacekeepers to leave. And they will have to leave. And then we’ll have it all over again. "
Friday, January 26, 2007
Helping The Poor?
"January 26, 2007: While China is shipping the same amount of oil to North Korea, in 2006, as it did in 2005, food exports are down by about half (some 210,000 tons less). A lot less food is getting into North Korea, and because last years crops were below average, the population is expected to come through this Winter in very bad shape. Planners in South Korea now fear a flood of three million starving refugees (headed into China and South Korea), if the North Korean government collapses in the near future. Plans are being made on how to deal with such large numbers of malnourished refugees.
January 22, 2007: In response to U.S. accusations, the UN has halted transfers of hard currency to North Korea, and begun an audit of how UN aid money is spent in North Korea. The UN acted so promptly largely because North Korea has an extensive history of government sponsored, and directed, criminal behavior.
January 21, 2007: South Korean and American commanders are beginning to make plans for the possible collapse of the North Korean government. There is increasing Chinese diplomatic and political activity inside North Korea, and many rumors that officers from the North Korean security forces, backed by China, are plotting to overthrow the government. Interestingly, even with all these stories going around, there have been no arrests in the north. There is, however, a growing unease on the streets, among the North Korean people." [ I have to admit that I'm quite stumped why those who shout the loudest about helping the poor are indistinguishable from mute on the situation in North Korea. Sadly, my best guess is that they can't figure out how to harvest any votes out of it... -ed. ] 
Today's Apocalypse Update (Laser Edition)
"January 26, 2007: It had to happen eventually. The American Northrop Grumman Corporation has just opened the first ray-gun factory. Officially, the plant will build high-energy, solid-state lasers and figure out how to install them in military vehicles. The first weapon being produced is the JHPSSL (Joint High-Power Solid State Laser), a 100 kW solid-state laser. The JHPSSL is to be mounted on armored vehicles and in aircraft. JHPSSL is basically an anti-aircraft and anti-missile system. It has already demonstrated that it can destroy artillery and mortar shells, as well as rockets and cruise missiles. Israel is interested in using JHPSSL as part of its rocket defense system. Ray guns have long been a staple of science fiction, and when the first lasers appeared in the 1950s, science fiction writers just assumed that many of their ray guns were "lasers." All this is not quite science fiction any more, mainly because it will take another decade or so before you have a hand held laser." [ Cool you say! Just like I grew up expecting. It's finally here! In the short run this may be good news for the West, just as Fat Man and Little Boy were "good" for the survival of the West in WWII. However, for reasons I will explain in forthcoming posts, the "handheld laser" part of this merged with the rapid evolution of computing and sensor technology could evolve into a surprisingly close level of danger (see "Today's Tinfoil Apocalypse Update: Understanding the Concept of Button") to what is already rearing its ugly head with the proliferation of WMD. Ironically, one of the best hopes we have to avoid this particular danger is for there NOT to be a breakthrough in high density portable power sources like batteries -- which would mean the slowed arrival of plug-in hybrids and pure battery powered vehicles ... and keep us in extended dependency on Islamic oil. Life is full of difficult trade-offs. -ed. ]
Gobbling Turkey
"Turkey's educated elite is in much the same position as Germany's elite during Hitler's rise to power. Imagining that the Islamists would sputter out, progressive Turks failed to act. Now Turkish civilization - so great for so many centuries - is unraveling the way Germany's did in the 1930s. Turkish intellectuals made the classic error of underestimating the common man's capacity for hatred and lust for blind revenge.
As for the spectacularly virulent and dishonest anti-Americanism in the Turkish media - we need never have a "Who lost Turkey?" debate: The Turks lost it for themselves. Instead of maturing into the Western culture of responsibility, Turks succumbed to the Arab world's culture of blame.
Having looked down on Arabs for centuries, Turks are now becoming functional Arabs, reclining into fantasies of greatness as surreal as a Sufi mystic's hashish dreams. Ataturk's revolutionary vision for a modern Turkish state - betrayed by his own corrupt successors - is fading into the reality of yet another retarded Muslim satrapy.
An even more accurate parallel case than 1930s Germany is today's Pakistan. Turkey is on the way to becoming another extremist-poisoned garrison state held together solely by its military.
On my last visit, I got a madman's lecture from a Turkish customs officer on the resurrection of the Ottoman Empire. But instead of returning to that empire's undeniable glories, 21st- century Turkey appears determined to replay the miserable Ottoman twilight.
I wish we could save Turkey. But we can't. That's up to the Turks."
Killing The Troops With PC
""We tiptoe around cultural issues so greatly that the Iraqi Army laughs at us," said Major West. He explained the difficulties in arresting women involved with the insurgency. In one case, it was well known a woman that was sheltering and aiding foreign fighters, and the evidence of her guilt was solid. In order to arrest her, the MTT needed permission from a general's staff. The Iraqi troops stood in wonderment at this absurd decision making process."
Part 2: And Don't Hold The Fear And Self-Deception
"It comes from fear. Fear may be a poor counselor, but when it comes to educating the masses, there is no more effective tool. Mao famously said: "Strike one to educate one hundred" -- an axiom that helped him solidify his power.
It is not respect for other cultures which influences behavior, but rather the awareness of just how fanatic and ruthless our adversaries are. The wilder and more brutal they appear to be, the more likely they are to attract attention and gain respect. Whether venturing into unfamiliar territory means taking a walk in a different neighborhood or visiting a foreign culture, our natural tendency is to avoid conflict.
"Nowadays acts of terrorism are not committed for their own sake, but in the name of an ideology one could call Nazi-Islamism," Romanian-American author Norman Manea told the German daily Die Welt in March 2004. The only difference, in Manea's view, is "that this ideology invokes a religion, whereas the Nazis were mythical without being religious." Manea believes that what he calls a "World War III" has already begun. "The Europeans are putting off the recognition -- as they did in the 1930s -- of the tremendous tragedy that awaits them and that has, in fact, already arrived."
This sounds like an extreme exaggeration, conjuring up visions of a Day of Judgment, of an Apocalypse Now! Of course, in 1938 hardly anyone could have imagined where the policy of appeasing the Nazis would lead. History does not repeat itself, and yet there are parallels that do not bode well. The willingness to submit to self-deception is as widespread today as it was in the years leading up to World War II."
It is not respect for other cultures which influences behavior, but rather the awareness of just how fanatic and ruthless our adversaries are. The wilder and more brutal they appear to be, the more likely they are to attract attention and gain respect. Whether venturing into unfamiliar territory means taking a walk in a different neighborhood or visiting a foreign culture, our natural tendency is to avoid conflict.
"Nowadays acts of terrorism are not committed for their own sake, but in the name of an ideology one could call Nazi-Islamism," Romanian-American author Norman Manea told the German daily Die Welt in March 2004. The only difference, in Manea's view, is "that this ideology invokes a religion, whereas the Nazis were mythical without being religious." Manea believes that what he calls a "World War III" has already begun. "The Europeans are putting off the recognition -- as they did in the 1930s -- of the tremendous tragedy that awaits them and that has, in fact, already arrived."
This sounds like an extreme exaggeration, conjuring up visions of a Day of Judgment, of an Apocalypse Now! Of course, in 1938 hardly anyone could have imagined where the policy of appeasing the Nazis would lead. History does not repeat itself, and yet there are parallels that do not bode well. The willingness to submit to self-deception is as widespread today as it was in the years leading up to World War II."
Why Not 9 While We're At It?
"Objectively speaking, the cartoon controversy was a tempest in a teacup. But subjectively it was a show of strength and, in the context of the "clash of civilizations," a dress rehearsal for the real thing. The Muslims demonstrated how quickly and effectively they can mobilize the masses, and the free West showed that it has nothing to counter the offensive -- nothing but fear, cowardice and an overriding concern about the balance of trade. Now the Islamists know that they are dealing with a paper tiger whose roar is nothing but a tape recording.
As different as the West's reactions to the Muslim protests were, what they had in common were origins in feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Critical souls who only yesterday agreed with Marx that religion is the opium of the masses suddenly insisted that religious sensibilities must be taken into account, especially when accompanied by violence. The representatives of open societies reacted like the inhabitants of an island about to be hit by a hurricane. Powerless against the forces of nature, they stocked up on supplies, nailed doors and windows shut and hoped that the storm would soon pass. Of course, whereas such a reaction may be an appropriate response to natural disasters, such a lack of resistance merely encourages fundamentalists. It completely justifies their view of the West as weak, decadent and completely unwilling to defend itself.
Should the age of consent be 12?
Those who react to kidnappings and beheadings, to massacres of people of other faiths, and to eruptions of collective hysteria with a call for "cultural dialogue" don't deserve any better.
"The West should desist from engaging in all provocations that produce feelings of debasement and humiliation," says psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter. "We should show greater respect for the cultural identity of Muslim countries. ... For Muslims, it is important to be recognized and respected as equals." In Richter's view, what the Muslims need is "a partnership of equals."
But Richter neglects to describe what this partnership might look like. Does achieving such equality mean that we should set up separate sections for women on buses, as is the custom in Saudi Arabia? Should the marrying age for girls be reduced to 12, as is the case in Iran? And should death by stoning be our punishment for adultery, as Shariah law demands? What else could the West do to show its respect for the cultural identity of Islamic countries? Would it be sufficient to allow Horst-Eberhard Richter to decide whether, for example, a wet T-shirt contest in a German city rises to a level of criminal provocation that could cause the Muslim faithful in Hyderabad to feel debased and humiliated?
The discussion over which provocations WE should put an end to so that THEY do not feel upset inexorably leads to the realm of the absurd."
As different as the West's reactions to the Muslim protests were, what they had in common were origins in feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Critical souls who only yesterday agreed with Marx that religion is the opium of the masses suddenly insisted that religious sensibilities must be taken into account, especially when accompanied by violence. The representatives of open societies reacted like the inhabitants of an island about to be hit by a hurricane. Powerless against the forces of nature, they stocked up on supplies, nailed doors and windows shut and hoped that the storm would soon pass. Of course, whereas such a reaction may be an appropriate response to natural disasters, such a lack of resistance merely encourages fundamentalists. It completely justifies their view of the West as weak, decadent and completely unwilling to defend itself.
Should the age of consent be 12?
Those who react to kidnappings and beheadings, to massacres of people of other faiths, and to eruptions of collective hysteria with a call for "cultural dialogue" don't deserve any better.
"The West should desist from engaging in all provocations that produce feelings of debasement and humiliation," says psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter. "We should show greater respect for the cultural identity of Muslim countries. ... For Muslims, it is important to be recognized and respected as equals." In Richter's view, what the Muslims need is "a partnership of equals."
But Richter neglects to describe what this partnership might look like. Does achieving such equality mean that we should set up separate sections for women on buses, as is the custom in Saudi Arabia? Should the marrying age for girls be reduced to 12, as is the case in Iran? And should death by stoning be our punishment for adultery, as Shariah law demands? What else could the West do to show its respect for the cultural identity of Islamic countries? Would it be sufficient to allow Horst-Eberhard Richter to decide whether, for example, a wet T-shirt contest in a German city rises to a level of criminal provocation that could cause the Muslim faithful in Hyderabad to feel debased and humiliated?
The discussion over which provocations WE should put an end to so that THEY do not feel upset inexorably leads to the realm of the absurd."
Down The Memory Hol[iness]
"Today, many people who have never heard of The Deputy are sincerely convinced that Pius XII was a cold and evil man who hated the Jews and helped Hitler do away with them. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov, the unparalleled master of Soviet deception, used to tell me, people are more ready to believe smut than holiness."
The Cripple's Mine!
"Throughout my years in Romania, I always took my KGB bosses with a grain of salt, because they used to juggle the facts around so as to make Soviet intelligence the mother and father of everything. But I had reason to believe Agayants’s self-serving claim. He was a living legend in the field of desinformatsiya. In 1943, as the rezident in Iran, Agayants launched the disinformation report that Hitler had set up a special team to kidnap President Franklin Roosevelt from the American Embassy in Tehran during the Allied Summit to be held there. As a result, Roosevelt agreed to be headquartered in a villa within the “safety” of the Soviet Embassy compound, which was guarded by a large military unit. All the Soviet personnel assigned to that villa were undercover intelligence officers who spoke English, but, with few exceptions, they kept that a secret so as to be able to eavesdrop. Even given the limited technical capabilities of that day, Agayants was able to provide Stalin with hourly monitoring reports on the American and British guests. That helped Stalin obtain Roosevelt’s tacit agreement to let him retain the Baltic countries and the rest of the territories occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939-40. Agayants was also credited with having induced Roosevelt to use the familiar “Uncle Joe” for Stalin at that summit. According to what Sakharovsky told us, Stalin was more elated over that than he was even over his territorial gains. “The cripple’s mine!” he reportedly exulted." [ It's a sad state of affairs when I consider FDR -- in spite of this little gem -- to be head and shoulders above our current war leadership of either party. And don't forget this one to add some perspective to your day. -ed. ]
Those Reassuring Russians
"None of the U.S. officials would confirm the weight of the seizure or its quality, but Merabishvili said it was about 3.5 ounces of uranium enriched by more than 90 percent.
Uranium enriched at 90 percent is weapons grade.
A nuclear bomb of a design similar to the one exploded over Hiroshima in 1945 would require about 110 pounds of uranium enriched at over 90 percent, according to Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate who focuses on nuclear theft and terrorism at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Bunn said that a more sophisticated implosion type nuclear bomb would require 33 to 40 pounds.
According to an IAEA database, there have been 16 previous confirmed cases in which either highly enriched uranium or plutonium have been recovered by authorities since 1993.
Russian cooperation ‘critical’
In most cases the recoveries have involved smaller quantities than the Tbilisi case. But in 1994, 6 pounds of highly enriched uranium intended for sale were seized by police in the Czech Republic. In 2003, Georgian border guards using detection devices provided by the United States caught an Armenian man with about 5 ounces of HEU, according to the State Department.
Fleming said examples of stolen or missing bomb-grade nuclear material, including highly enriched uranium and plutonium, are rare and troubling.
David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said that lacking help from Russia, the CIA may be looking to other allies to help identify who has access to lost nuclear material.
“Russian cooperation in answering these questions is critical, but it has not been forthcoming,” he said. “One way to identify who is active in trading these materials is to conduct sting operations.” "
Uranium enriched at 90 percent is weapons grade.
A nuclear bomb of a design similar to the one exploded over Hiroshima in 1945 would require about 110 pounds of uranium enriched at over 90 percent, according to Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate who focuses on nuclear theft and terrorism at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Bunn said that a more sophisticated implosion type nuclear bomb would require 33 to 40 pounds.
According to an IAEA database, there have been 16 previous confirmed cases in which either highly enriched uranium or plutonium have been recovered by authorities since 1993.
Russian cooperation ‘critical’
In most cases the recoveries have involved smaller quantities than the Tbilisi case. But in 1994, 6 pounds of highly enriched uranium intended for sale were seized by police in the Czech Republic. In 2003, Georgian border guards using detection devices provided by the United States caught an Armenian man with about 5 ounces of HEU, according to the State Department.
Fleming said examples of stolen or missing bomb-grade nuclear material, including highly enriched uranium and plutonium, are rare and troubling.
David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said that lacking help from Russia, the CIA may be looking to other allies to help identify who has access to lost nuclear material.
“Russian cooperation in answering these questions is critical, but it has not been forthcoming,” he said. “One way to identify who is active in trading these materials is to conduct sting operations.” "
And You'll Learn Something New About Iraq (And Iran) Too...
"For some reason, this is a lesson that the US seems to have to learn anew every war. It wasn’t until 1863, for example, that the Union Army finally came to understand that the army of the CSA would not be defeated until it had been vanquished in the field one time after another, over and over again. U.S. Grant was the first Union general to understand this fact, for which President Lincoln rewarded him with command of all the Union armies in the field. “I can’t fire this man,” Lincoln told critics, “he fights.” "
Guts Gone Missing
"Meanwhile, a question for Chuck Hagel, et al.: "Rather than back a non-binding resolution of disaproval, why didn't the gutsy Senators, like Chuck Hagel, who are riding the surf of public opinion opposed to the troop surge and taking on a president with approval ratings at the freezing level vote aginst General Petraeus' confirmation? Their convictions hold that he has endorsed a wholly unjustified escalation and will be leading troops on a futile mission. They want a role in the conduct of the war and with the need to win Senate confirmation of Gen. Petraeus the Constitution has given them one, but they have taken a pass. " If Petraeus succeeds, they'll be bragging that they voted for him. If he fails, they'll note that they opposed the surge. As John F. Kennedy noted, political courage is scarcer than physical courage . . . ."
Two Americas Update
It turns out that I may be becoming convinced that there ARE "Two Americas" after all... And apparently he got all the way through law school without learning the meaning of the word hypocrisy...
Thursday, January 25, 2007
More Gramscian Damage
"In March 2006 an Italian parliamentary commission concluded “beyond any reasonable doubt that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the pope Karol Wojtyla,” in retaliation for his support to the dissident Solidarity movement in Poland. In January 2007, when documents disclosed that the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, had collaborated with Poland’s Communist-era political police, he admitted the accusation and resigned. The following day the rector of Krakow’s Wawel Cathedral, the burial site of Polish kings and queens, resigned for the same reason. Then it was learned that Michal Jagosz, a member of the Vatican’s tribunal considering sainthood for the late Pope John Paul II, has been accused of being a former Communist secret police agent; according to the Polish media, he had been recruited in 1984 before leaving Poland for an assignment to the Vatican. Currently, a book is about to be published that will identify 39 other priests whose names have been found in Krakow secret police files, some of whom are now bishops. Moreover, this seems to be just scratching the surface."
Pigs Spotted Flying Today At Al-Reuters
"We actually had access to this speech, and heard the president’s words verbatim from our own TV footage. We stand behind our translation. In this case, he used the word “mahv,” which in Farsi means “wiped off”: Editor"
Landis on the Augean First Draft
"There has been much discussion of whether or not the MSM has been unfair to Israel, including formal investigations into particularly obnoxious organizations like the BBC, and, by and large the answer is, “well, maybe… but it’s not so bad.” And Israelis, like the protagonist in Richard Farina’s novel, have been down so long it looks like up to them. “It could be worse… it has been worse… it’s getting better.”
But all of this is not nearly good enough. The MSM are the eyes and ears of modern civil societies. Without them we cannot know what is going on outside of our personal sphere, with them we can make our democratic choices in elections, assess foreign policy, intervene humanely in the suffering around the globe. But as any paleontologist will tell you, any creature whose eyes and ears misinform it about the environment, will not long survive. So it is with our civic experiment: especially in this period, where predators grow increasingly bold: a MSM that misinforms us, betrays the very people it is supposed to serve.
Let me cut to the chase. If this wondrous experiment in human freedom that was launched on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 18th century survives to the middle of the 21st century, historians will look back on the performance of the MSM in the first decade of that century, in particular its coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and give the journalists’ “first draft of history” an F.
***
So when historians look back, I think they will identify the MSM’s appalling performance as one of the main sources the West’s vulnerability to Global Jihad at the beginning of this century. How else can we explain the astounding success of what, only a decade ago, seemed like a racist bad joke: Islam wants to take over Europe? You must be kidding.
Apparently not.
The free Western press encouraging the victory of totalitarianism? You must be kidding.
Unfortunately, whether they mean it or not, the MSM today has fallen into so many bad habits, so many pervasive compromises, that like the Augean Stables of old, they have encrusted layers of manure that resist any effort to clean. And unlike the old Augean Stables, which stank up the only the Peloponnesus, thanks to new technology, the MSMs failures stink the world over.
Which brings me to the basic problem Israel and the Jews face in this young and so-far deeply disturbing 21st century. They have been the major target of the Jihadi assault, and the main victims of the MSM’s failures. And so far, the response has been to take the same stance of concession and placation, to the Western media that the Western media take towards the Muslims: don’t criticize, don’t challenge, placate, mollify. Whatever you do, don’t attack.
“We don’t dare start a war with the media,” said one MFA official, “we can only lose.”
“Don’t expect the Israelis to fight back,” warned a prominent diaspora lawyer, “They won’t. They just won’t.”
Nor is this merely a problem of Israeli official hasbarah. The Jewish leaders in the diaspora, playing by the positive-sum rules of the late 20th century, responded painfully slowly to the sudden zero-sum turn of direction at the end of 2000. Indeed, like the Israeli government, they discouraged those – leaders or rank and file – who started to fight back.
I understand the arguments, the concerns, the kinds of damage that can come if the media turns on us. But that’s beginning to sound more and more like the joke about the two Jews in line for the showers at Auschwitz. One sneezes and the other whispers sharply, “Hush, Yankl, you’ll make it worse for us.”
I understand. When Israel has tried to defend itself, it made it worse; they have antagonized those who, if they want to, could do Israel even greater damage than they are already doing. As the Israelite leaders who had pleaded in vain with Pharoah for mercy reproached Moses: “You put a sword in his hand to slay us.” And as Moses complained to God: “Why will they listen to me? And I am uncircumcised of lips!” " [ What's that you say? You've never visited the Second Draft site and checked out Landis' documentaries? Go. Right. Now. ]
But all of this is not nearly good enough. The MSM are the eyes and ears of modern civil societies. Without them we cannot know what is going on outside of our personal sphere, with them we can make our democratic choices in elections, assess foreign policy, intervene humanely in the suffering around the globe. But as any paleontologist will tell you, any creature whose eyes and ears misinform it about the environment, will not long survive. So it is with our civic experiment: especially in this period, where predators grow increasingly bold: a MSM that misinforms us, betrays the very people it is supposed to serve.
Let me cut to the chase. If this wondrous experiment in human freedom that was launched on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 18th century survives to the middle of the 21st century, historians will look back on the performance of the MSM in the first decade of that century, in particular its coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and give the journalists’ “first draft of history” an F.
***
So when historians look back, I think they will identify the MSM’s appalling performance as one of the main sources the West’s vulnerability to Global Jihad at the beginning of this century. How else can we explain the astounding success of what, only a decade ago, seemed like a racist bad joke: Islam wants to take over Europe? You must be kidding.
Apparently not.
The free Western press encouraging the victory of totalitarianism? You must be kidding.
Unfortunately, whether they mean it or not, the MSM today has fallen into so many bad habits, so many pervasive compromises, that like the Augean Stables of old, they have encrusted layers of manure that resist any effort to clean. And unlike the old Augean Stables, which stank up the only the Peloponnesus, thanks to new technology, the MSMs failures stink the world over.
Which brings me to the basic problem Israel and the Jews face in this young and so-far deeply disturbing 21st century. They have been the major target of the Jihadi assault, and the main victims of the MSM’s failures. And so far, the response has been to take the same stance of concession and placation, to the Western media that the Western media take towards the Muslims: don’t criticize, don’t challenge, placate, mollify. Whatever you do, don’t attack.
“We don’t dare start a war with the media,” said one MFA official, “we can only lose.”
“Don’t expect the Israelis to fight back,” warned a prominent diaspora lawyer, “They won’t. They just won’t.”
Nor is this merely a problem of Israeli official hasbarah. The Jewish leaders in the diaspora, playing by the positive-sum rules of the late 20th century, responded painfully slowly to the sudden zero-sum turn of direction at the end of 2000. Indeed, like the Israeli government, they discouraged those – leaders or rank and file – who started to fight back.
I understand the arguments, the concerns, the kinds of damage that can come if the media turns on us. But that’s beginning to sound more and more like the joke about the two Jews in line for the showers at Auschwitz. One sneezes and the other whispers sharply, “Hush, Yankl, you’ll make it worse for us.”
I understand. When Israel has tried to defend itself, it made it worse; they have antagonized those who, if they want to, could do Israel even greater damage than they are already doing. As the Israelite leaders who had pleaded in vain with Pharoah for mercy reproached Moses: “You put a sword in his hand to slay us.” And as Moses complained to God: “Why will they listen to me? And I am uncircumcised of lips!” " [ What's that you say? You've never visited the Second Draft site and checked out Landis' documentaries? Go. Right. Now. ]
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Ethanol Is Good -- Right?
"Soaring international demand for corn has caused a spike in prices for Mexico's humble tortilla, hitting the poor and forcing President Felipe Calderon's business-friendly government into an uncomfortable confrontation with powerful monopolies.
Tortilla prices have jumped nearly 14 percent over the past year, a move the head of Mexico's central bank called "unjustifiable" in a country where inflation ran about 4 percent.
Economists blame increased U.S. production of ethanol from corn as an alternative to oil. The battle over the tortilla, the most basic staple of the Mexican diet, especially among the poor, demonstrates how increasing economic integration is felt on the street level."
Tortilla prices have jumped nearly 14 percent over the past year, a move the head of Mexico's central bank called "unjustifiable" in a country where inflation ran about 4 percent.
Economists blame increased U.S. production of ethanol from corn as an alternative to oil. The battle over the tortilla, the most basic staple of the Mexican diet, especially among the poor, demonstrates how increasing economic integration is felt on the street level."
A More Credible Justification Of Human Hubris?
"If Ruddiman's work demonstrates major flaws in the politically correct theories of recent human responsibility for climate change, it by no means should leave us complacent. Human civilization has flourished for the last 8000 years precisely because of a benign and stable climate in many parts of the world, a climate which was the result (if Ruddman's hypothesis is correct) of human activity (warming) balanced against the natural cycles of the earth in its orbit around the sun (at present, cooling). But Ruddiman notes that the human side of the equation has accelerated. CO2 levels in 2006 have reached levels the earth hasn't seen since the age of the dinosaurs. We are, Ruddiman says, heading into terra incognita. His work has, however, given new insights into climate change and, as his hypothesis is evaluated in detail, may help to inform policy decisions around the world."
Barnett On Gap Space
"Progressively shrinking the Gap will be this country's primary global-security task in the 21st Century. Our long-term export of security into those Gap areas -- namely, Central Asia and the Mideast -- that present the greatest potential disruptions to the Core's economic functioning will inevitably rival our Cold War efforts in Europe and Northeast Asia. To accomplish this task, we must be explicit with both friends and foes alike about how we will necessarily differentiate between our security role within the Core's burgeoning security community and the one we assume whenever we intervene militarily in the Gap. Seeking two sets of rules for these different security roles is not being hypocritical but honest and realistic." [ But we may only have the Golden Hour to do it -- and we have no certain way to know how many precious few seconds are left... ]
Rethinking Time And Space (Special Mitterand Torture Edition)
"What lesson from that conflict is relevant today? The paramount lesson seems this: "First-world'' armies and "third-world'' guerrillas have different notions of time and space, and therefore of what constitutes defeat and victory. A "first-world'' army can defeat "first-world'' guerrillas and a "third-world'' army can defeat "third-world'' guerrillas because in both cases the army and the enemy operate under similar notions of time and space. The Italian security forces were able to defeat the Red Brigades, just as Germany's security forces were able to defeat the Baader-Meinhof Gang, because they were at war with each other under similar time and space horizons. Equally, Alberto Fujimori's dictatorship was able to defeat the Shining Path in Peru in the 1990s and Venezuela's Romulo Betancourt destroyed the Castro-inspired guerrillas in the 1960s because the warring sides shared a common idea of where and when they were fighting. That is not to say that in all such cases the army will triumph. Castro's victory in 1959 proves that the opposite can happen. But as long as the established power commands enough civilian support, which is usually the case against a terrorist insurgence, the security apparatus enjoys a big advantage.
In Algeria, the occupying force's notion of space was purely physical and military: The French paratroopers thought that as long as they smoked the terrorists out of the Casbah -- the Muslim quarter in Algiers -- they would win. The insurgents' notion of space was historic and civilian: As long as they gave the oppressed masses a sense of the anomaly that the century-old French presence in their land constituted, the liberation struggle would go on. The French army's notion of time was narrow, while the insurgents had a broad time horizon. The French won the battle of Algiers but in 1962 they had to give up the colony."
In Algeria, the occupying force's notion of space was purely physical and military: The French paratroopers thought that as long as they smoked the terrorists out of the Casbah -- the Muslim quarter in Algiers -- they would win. The insurgents' notion of space was historic and civilian: As long as they gave the oppressed masses a sense of the anomaly that the century-old French presence in their land constituted, the liberation struggle would go on. The French army's notion of time was narrow, while the insurgents had a broad time horizon. The French won the battle of Algiers but in 1962 they had to give up the colony."
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
How Many Hums Can A Ho-Hum Hum?
"The Iranian news agency Mehr reported that in light of the increasing U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf, and the continuing Iranian nuclear crisis, Iranian Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezai has said that “the Iranian nation will strike 10 slaps to the face of America, in such a way that it will no longer be able to get up on the stage.”"
Ho-Hum Part 87823
"Western intelligence agencies have reported an increase in the number of North Korean and Iranian scientists travelling between the two countries.
The increased co-operation on nuclear issues began last November when a team of Iranian nuclear scientists met their North Korean counterparts to study the technical and political implications of Pyongyang's nuclear test.
The Iranians are reported to have been encouraged by the fact that no punitive action was taken against North Korea, despite the international outcry that greeted the underground firing.
This has persuaded the Iranian regime to press ahead with its own nuclear programme with the aim of testing a low-grade device, which would be difficult for international inspectors to detect."
Whew! Luckily they don't really mean all those statements like:
"Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying."
Move along now. Nothing to see here.
And luckily there's no reason to get out our history books. What was it the holocaust survivor said when asked what he learned from the experience? Oh, yes: "When a man says he wants to kill you ... you should believe him."
The increased co-operation on nuclear issues began last November when a team of Iranian nuclear scientists met their North Korean counterparts to study the technical and political implications of Pyongyang's nuclear test.
The Iranians are reported to have been encouraged by the fact that no punitive action was taken against North Korea, despite the international outcry that greeted the underground firing.
This has persuaded the Iranian regime to press ahead with its own nuclear programme with the aim of testing a low-grade device, which would be difficult for international inspectors to detect."
Whew! Luckily they don't really mean all those statements like:
"Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying."
Move along now. Nothing to see here.
And luckily there's no reason to get out our history books. What was it the holocaust survivor said when asked what he learned from the experience? Oh, yes: "When a man says he wants to kill you ... you should believe him."
The Ostrich Position -- Both Sides Now
"Scott Johnson recently wrote about one such case in the Weekly Standard. It’s the story of a very big lie, the lie according to which Yasser Arafat was not involved in the ghastly murders of two American diplomats and a Belgian colleague in Sudan in the early seventies. It was a blatant lie, and it’s been repeated by American spokesmen for more than thirty years. Indeed, it was repeated very recently to Scott Johnson by a State Department official—whom he names in the Weekly Standard article—with great conviction and more than a tinge of contempt at Scott’s nerve for continuing to ask about it.
Unlucky! State Department historians published the proof that we had known, right from the beginning, that Arafat had personally authorized the murders. Everyone from Kissinger to the present has either been lied to or has wittingly repeated the old lie.
Why? For two reasons. First, because CIA had made a deal with the PLO, or rather CIA had appeased the PLO. CIA agreed to provide the Palestinian terrorists with intelligence, in exchange for a PLO promise not to kill American diplomats. Second, because Kissinger and the other master strategists of the Nixon Administration wanted to advance a “peace process,” and they had to have PLO compliance for that to have any hope of success, and the American public would never support it if they knew Arafat had ordered the assassination of our diplomats.
Bob Baer, a longtime CIA case officer in the Middle East, had a similar experience. He had lost close friends in the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut in the early eighties, and every time he tried to find out who had killed them, he ran into a stone wall. He was constantly told that we just did not know. But he persisted, just as Scott Johnson did, and he too arrived at the truth: the bombing of the Embassy had been an act of war by the Iranian regime, using Palestinian terrorists to carry out the actual suicide mission. He too found that “we” had known about it all along, but the truth had been suppressed for two decades.
Why? Because those who controlled the information didn’t want the top policy maker—Ronald Reagan—to know it, since they “knew” he would not let it pass, and they didn’t want trouble with Iran.
I, too, had a similar experience. I helped organize meetings in Rome in December, 2001, with Pentagon Iran experts and knowledgeable Iranians. They provided information about Iranian killers in Afghanistan, whose mission was to kill American soldiers. The information was accurate, and the would-be killers did not accomplish their mission (I hope they were killed, but I am not privy to that information). Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, with the agreement of Director of Central Intelligence Tenet, demanded that all such contacts be terminated. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld gave orders that no Pentagon employee speak to “Iranians” (which prompted one Iranian-American official to ask if conversations with parents were included in the order).
Why? Because they did not want trouble with Iran, and they “knew” that if President Bush had that information, he would not let it pass.
We have now had further examples of this sort of lie. We now know that top American officials have known all along that Iran has been waging war on us in Iraq, but this information has been suppressed.
Why? Because they, too did not want trouble with Iran. Military leaders did not want a two-front war (even though it should have been obvious, even before the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that we were engaged in a regional war, whatever our wishes were), and the spooks and diplomats convinced themselves that we could cut a deal with the mullahs.
Lots of lying, as you see, but the biggest lie of all is the lie the liars told themselves: the monstrous lie that we can arrive at peace with our enemies without first defeating them.
I am told that we have discovered truly explosive information about the Iranian role in Iraq in the recent raids in Baghdad and Irbil, the raids that led to the arrest of high officers in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. I believe we are all entitled to that information. To be sure, some of it may be “actionable intelligence,” which must be kept secret—even from the New York Times—until we have acted on it. But the American people are entitled to know the big picture, which is the one some of us have been painting for many years: Iran is waging war on us, killing our soldiers, slaughtering Iraqis, enabling Hizbollah in Lebanon, empowering Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their war against Israel.
The American people cannot properly judge our performance in this war unless they know its true dimensions. The president must provide us with that basic truth."
Unlucky! State Department historians published the proof that we had known, right from the beginning, that Arafat had personally authorized the murders. Everyone from Kissinger to the present has either been lied to or has wittingly repeated the old lie.
Why? For two reasons. First, because CIA had made a deal with the PLO, or rather CIA had appeased the PLO. CIA agreed to provide the Palestinian terrorists with intelligence, in exchange for a PLO promise not to kill American diplomats. Second, because Kissinger and the other master strategists of the Nixon Administration wanted to advance a “peace process,” and they had to have PLO compliance for that to have any hope of success, and the American public would never support it if they knew Arafat had ordered the assassination of our diplomats.
Bob Baer, a longtime CIA case officer in the Middle East, had a similar experience. He had lost close friends in the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut in the early eighties, and every time he tried to find out who had killed them, he ran into a stone wall. He was constantly told that we just did not know. But he persisted, just as Scott Johnson did, and he too arrived at the truth: the bombing of the Embassy had been an act of war by the Iranian regime, using Palestinian terrorists to carry out the actual suicide mission. He too found that “we” had known about it all along, but the truth had been suppressed for two decades.
Why? Because those who controlled the information didn’t want the top policy maker—Ronald Reagan—to know it, since they “knew” he would not let it pass, and they didn’t want trouble with Iran.
I, too, had a similar experience. I helped organize meetings in Rome in December, 2001, with Pentagon Iran experts and knowledgeable Iranians. They provided information about Iranian killers in Afghanistan, whose mission was to kill American soldiers. The information was accurate, and the would-be killers did not accomplish their mission (I hope they were killed, but I am not privy to that information). Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, with the agreement of Director of Central Intelligence Tenet, demanded that all such contacts be terminated. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld gave orders that no Pentagon employee speak to “Iranians” (which prompted one Iranian-American official to ask if conversations with parents were included in the order).
Why? Because they did not want trouble with Iran, and they “knew” that if President Bush had that information, he would not let it pass.
We have now had further examples of this sort of lie. We now know that top American officials have known all along that Iran has been waging war on us in Iraq, but this information has been suppressed.
Why? Because they, too did not want trouble with Iran. Military leaders did not want a two-front war (even though it should have been obvious, even before the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that we were engaged in a regional war, whatever our wishes were), and the spooks and diplomats convinced themselves that we could cut a deal with the mullahs.
Lots of lying, as you see, but the biggest lie of all is the lie the liars told themselves: the monstrous lie that we can arrive at peace with our enemies without first defeating them.
I am told that we have discovered truly explosive information about the Iranian role in Iraq in the recent raids in Baghdad and Irbil, the raids that led to the arrest of high officers in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. I believe we are all entitled to that information. To be sure, some of it may be “actionable intelligence,” which must be kept secret—even from the New York Times—until we have acted on it. But the American people are entitled to know the big picture, which is the one some of us have been painting for many years: Iran is waging war on us, killing our soldiers, slaughtering Iraqis, enabling Hizbollah in Lebanon, empowering Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their war against Israel.
The American people cannot properly judge our performance in this war unless they know its true dimensions. The president must provide us with that basic truth."
Now You See It...
Via Baron: What I'm suspecting the Islamists will soon find a way to remove from YouTube... And oh how you need to see it...
Monday, January 22, 2007
Britain: 18% And Soon Over?
"I have always thought that if the general population knew what I knew, then the political scene would change. I was sadly mistaken, and not just about the population at large. What should have triggered outrage was ignored by all, including the so-called highbrow newspapers. The Guardian refused to even mention it, whilst the rest of the British media were interested in one thing and one thing only, Big Brother.
“Undercover Mosques” is perhaps the most important programme to have been made in the UK since the invention of the television. It is not the time to detail the transcript here, but it was chilling, terrifying stuff. That the British, in their entirety, ignored it in favour of the appalling and degrading Big Brother, possibly the worst programme ever made is cause for concern, yet could the pathologically suicidal British fall any lower? Well yes, they could.
***
Vladimr Bukovsky is on record as stating that Communism never died and is now being inflicted incrementally on the West via the European Union. Do the British know anyting of Bukovsky, or indeed of Communism? No, they do not, the BBC et al refuse to talk to him, after all, as an imprisoned and tortured dissident what does he REALLY know about Communism in comparison to the utopian, idealistic British liberal elites who run our government, media, civil service, police and educational institutions.
Do the British in fact know anything, absolutely anything of any significance at all anymore or is the limit of their thought process set at the bar of Big Brother? We also learned this week that a pass mark of 18% is all that is necessary to gain a C grade exam pass. 50% of our schoolchildren leave school without attaining this in English and Maths, yet 100% of them know everything about TV “celebrities” who can barely speak their native language.
And so we ignore the ideology of one movement who state they wish to eradicate us and another which killed close to 100 million people, whilst we embrace the ideology of celebrity, ignorance and pathology."
“Undercover Mosques” is perhaps the most important programme to have been made in the UK since the invention of the television. It is not the time to detail the transcript here, but it was chilling, terrifying stuff. That the British, in their entirety, ignored it in favour of the appalling and degrading Big Brother, possibly the worst programme ever made is cause for concern, yet could the pathologically suicidal British fall any lower? Well yes, they could.
***
Vladimr Bukovsky is on record as stating that Communism never died and is now being inflicted incrementally on the West via the European Union. Do the British know anyting of Bukovsky, or indeed of Communism? No, they do not, the BBC et al refuse to talk to him, after all, as an imprisoned and tortured dissident what does he REALLY know about Communism in comparison to the utopian, idealistic British liberal elites who run our government, media, civil service, police and educational institutions.
Do the British in fact know anything, absolutely anything of any significance at all anymore or is the limit of their thought process set at the bar of Big Brother? We also learned this week that a pass mark of 18% is all that is necessary to gain a C grade exam pass. 50% of our schoolchildren leave school without attaining this in English and Maths, yet 100% of them know everything about TV “celebrities” who can barely speak their native language.
And so we ignore the ideology of one movement who state they wish to eradicate us and another which killed close to 100 million people, whilst we embrace the ideology of celebrity, ignorance and pathology."
Moderate Muslims = Good Germans?
"Much of "Undercover Mosque" was filmed with a hidden camera. The sound is clear, but the footage is often shaky and tentative. Ironically, this is now the predominant style for hip documentary filmmaking, which affects a nervous, frantic style. Here you have the real thing — it's nervous and frantic because it has to be. The preachers shown, including an African-American convert, are jaw-droppingly explicit in their revolutionary plans for Britain and the world.
One, Dr. Ijaz Mian, at the Regents Park Mosque in London, official seat of "moderate" Islam in Britain, talks openly about his desire to see Saudi-style religious police operating in the United Kingdom. He urges Muslims to wait until they are sufficiently numerous to make Britons surrender: "Hands Up!" Another predicts jihad will be waged against all nonbelievers and a British Islamic state established, with the flogging of drunkards, chopping off of thieves' hands, and jihad against non-Muslims all on the menu. "You have to live like a state within a state until you take over," he says. Women are "deficient," and should be marriageable before puberty because Muhammad himself married a nine-year-old. The animus against homosexuals and Jews is particularly virulent, meaning not merely condemnation, but explicit calls for their (eventual) murder. One imam even mimics a throat-cutting." [ I can't find the link right now but this puts me in mind of a bracing line from David Warren to the effect (apologies to David if I have it wrong) that "Hitler rowed his oars through a sea of good Germans". The moderate Muslims there are -- however many that is -- are quite simply too much in fear for their lives and their families to speak up. You don't need very many examples like Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali before you "get it". As Lee Harris points out (shorter article here), they are in the thrall and intimidation of "ruthless men" with an apocalyptic "fantasy ideology". -ed. ]
One, Dr. Ijaz Mian, at the Regents Park Mosque in London, official seat of "moderate" Islam in Britain, talks openly about his desire to see Saudi-style religious police operating in the United Kingdom. He urges Muslims to wait until they are sufficiently numerous to make Britons surrender: "Hands Up!" Another predicts jihad will be waged against all nonbelievers and a British Islamic state established, with the flogging of drunkards, chopping off of thieves' hands, and jihad against non-Muslims all on the menu. "You have to live like a state within a state until you take over," he says. Women are "deficient," and should be marriageable before puberty because Muhammad himself married a nine-year-old. The animus against homosexuals and Jews is particularly virulent, meaning not merely condemnation, but explicit calls for their (eventual) murder. One imam even mimics a throat-cutting." [ I can't find the link right now but this puts me in mind of a bracing line from David Warren to the effect (apologies to David if I have it wrong) that "Hitler rowed his oars through a sea of good Germans". The moderate Muslims there are -- however many that is -- are quite simply too much in fear for their lives and their families to speak up. You don't need very many examples like Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali before you "get it". As Lee Harris points out (shorter article here), they are in the thrall and intimidation of "ruthless men" with an apocalyptic "fantasy ideology". -ed. ]
Comment Of The Day 070122
"I do not think that financing will be required for what we need, especially. No more so than did the great luminaries of the past, ancient and modern, required a business model to alter the world with their divine ideas. I think it will be, in all likelihood, done by people such as yourself, who are not in this for the money, and to whom money would rightly seem a paltry reason to engage against the darkness.
There's something fundamental going on in the Information War, as far as I can tell, and it has a great deal to do with a pent up desire for honest dealings among men. This yearning is of the Spirit, and no amount of money can command it into existence or rally it. It must come by the natural will of those who are strong, knowledgeable and wise enough to speak the truth, and inspire our sense of mutual respect, love and duty to one another, and our posterity. When this happens then money will not be at issue, nor will a business model be required.
So it seems to me.
And furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed."
There's something fundamental going on in the Information War, as far as I can tell, and it has a great deal to do with a pent up desire for honest dealings among men. This yearning is of the Spirit, and no amount of money can command it into existence or rally it. It must come by the natural will of those who are strong, knowledgeable and wise enough to speak the truth, and inspire our sense of mutual respect, love and duty to one another, and our posterity. When this happens then money will not be at issue, nor will a business model be required.
So it seems to me.
And furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed."
The Same As It Ever Was...
"The meeting in London was doomed from the outset. The Arab strongman's envoy held all the cards - three craft had already been hijacked, their passengers and crew held hostage in an inhospitable and almost unreachable land. The American ambassador knew the ransom demand would be high, but even he could not have imagined just how exorbitant it would be. To meet it would require one-tenth of America's annual budget.
Lest the adventurous Yanks dare to contemplate a military attack to rescue their captured comrades, Abd al-Rahman al-Ajar provided a most unpleasant revelation: the Koran declares that any nation that does not bow to the authority of the Muslims is sinful, and it is the right and duty of Muslims to make war upon it and take prisoner any of its people they may find. Further, any Muslim slain in battle against such an enemy would be promised a place in Paradise.
"We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever," the furious but helpless ambassador relayed to his government. Congress would authorize no such fight, however, and voted instead to pay the ransom."
Lest the adventurous Yanks dare to contemplate a military attack to rescue their captured comrades, Abd al-Rahman al-Ajar provided a most unpleasant revelation: the Koran declares that any nation that does not bow to the authority of the Muslims is sinful, and it is the right and duty of Muslims to make war upon it and take prisoner any of its people they may find. Further, any Muslim slain in battle against such an enemy would be promised a place in Paradise.
"We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever," the furious but helpless ambassador relayed to his government. Congress would authorize no such fight, however, and voted instead to pay the ransom."
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Pakistan Shocka #89326
"One former Taliban commander said in an interview that he had been jailed by Pakistani intelligence officials because he would not go to Afghanistan to fight. He said that, for Western and local consumption, his arrest had been billed as part of Pakistan's crackdown on the Taliban in Pakistan. " [ Did I forget to mention that they have nukes? -ed. ]
QOTD: "Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye; forget the past and you'll lose both eyes. --Old Russian Proverb"
A Societal Thing
"Beck might be a conservative, but he is no lockstep, water-carrying Republican. Like most Americans, he is center-right. And, like most Americans, he too was fed up this past November with the vacuum of ideas coming out of Washington.
"I think the Republicans and the Democrats are both taking us to the same destination -- hell in a handbasket," Beck explained. "One of them is flying on the Concorde, and the other one's taking a very slow steam train, but the destination is the same place."
To Beck, that trip to hell does not stop with our politicians. It is societal.
"Too many people are concerned about their party, too many people are concerned about their labor union, and too many people are concerned about their own business," he says. "You see it with your own children in school, where you see a child that has been misbehaving and they're called on the carpet, and the parent immediately says, 'Not my child!' It is because it's no longer about the collective; it's about 'me.' "
"I think the Republicans and the Democrats are both taking us to the same destination -- hell in a handbasket," Beck explained. "One of them is flying on the Concorde, and the other one's taking a very slow steam train, but the destination is the same place."
To Beck, that trip to hell does not stop with our politicians. It is societal.
"Too many people are concerned about their party, too many people are concerned about their labor union, and too many people are concerned about their own business," he says. "You see it with your own children in school, where you see a child that has been misbehaving and they're called on the carpet, and the parent immediately says, 'Not my child!' It is because it's no longer about the collective; it's about 'me.' "
Sweetly Touching Hillary
"This isn't a question about whether you think the plan will work, but whether you want it to work. And nearly 40 percent of respondents either don't know or are actively rooting for failure. Which is to say: more dead American troops and more dead Iraqi civilians. Asked whether they want the surge to succeed, 34 percent of Democrats answered ''No,'' and so did 19 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans. What were the numbers like for D-Day?
The problem isn't that our politics is ''bitter'' and ''partisan,'' so much as that it's post-modern. In Congress, Democrats have decided to chip away at the war with various symbolic postures but not to oppose it outright: That way, if things go well, they can muscle in on the credit, but if things go badly, they'll be able to say they told you so without getting stuck with the blame. Over on the other side, the usual Republican squishes (Olympia Snowe et al.) have decided that ''the facts on the ground'' have mysteriously changed and their position on the war is now ''evolving.'' By ''the facts on the ground,'' they mean the ground around the polling booths back home rather than any ground in Baghdad or the Sunni Triangle. Somewhere far away there is a real country called Iraq where real people live and die. But Iraq in domestic terms is now mostly a political calculation and, when it comes to calibrating the precise degree of Defeat Lite that works best for one, most Democrats and more and more Republicans are pushing the rest of the planet to the farthest fringes of the map.
Whether the rest of the planet will be content with a non-speaking part remains to be seen. But increasing numbers of the American people reject the post-9/11 paradigm, and there will be a lot of votes for the quiet-life option in 2008. A doctrinaire liberal disciplined enough to pass himself off as a blank slate with sappy soft-focus multiculti bona fides would seem to offer the most symbolically appealing repudiation of the war years. And all we have to do is whistle: We don't have to say anything and we don't have to do anything, which suits us just fine.
And if Hillary thinks everyone's going to pursue stories about some long-ago madrassah, she has a sweetly touching faith in the American media."
The problem isn't that our politics is ''bitter'' and ''partisan,'' so much as that it's post-modern. In Congress, Democrats have decided to chip away at the war with various symbolic postures but not to oppose it outright: That way, if things go well, they can muscle in on the credit, but if things go badly, they'll be able to say they told you so without getting stuck with the blame. Over on the other side, the usual Republican squishes (Olympia Snowe et al.) have decided that ''the facts on the ground'' have mysteriously changed and their position on the war is now ''evolving.'' By ''the facts on the ground,'' they mean the ground around the polling booths back home rather than any ground in Baghdad or the Sunni Triangle. Somewhere far away there is a real country called Iraq where real people live and die. But Iraq in domestic terms is now mostly a political calculation and, when it comes to calibrating the precise degree of Defeat Lite that works best for one, most Democrats and more and more Republicans are pushing the rest of the planet to the farthest fringes of the map.
Whether the rest of the planet will be content with a non-speaking part remains to be seen. But increasing numbers of the American people reject the post-9/11 paradigm, and there will be a lot of votes for the quiet-life option in 2008. A doctrinaire liberal disciplined enough to pass himself off as a blank slate with sappy soft-focus multiculti bona fides would seem to offer the most symbolically appealing repudiation of the war years. And all we have to do is whistle: We don't have to say anything and we don't have to do anything, which suits us just fine.
And if Hillary thinks everyone's going to pursue stories about some long-ago madrassah, she has a sweetly touching faith in the American media."
Did I Forget To Mention It Was Greeley Where Things Went South?
Dean's not a big fan of Dinesh D'Souza's new book for at least one reason that I agree wholeheartedly with and have the inside scoop on for you:
"In D’Souza’s view, beleaguered, socially conservative Islamacists feel besieged by the American culture. Especially offensive to the Islamic world is our “blue state” culture that has brought things like homosexuality, abortion, cruddy reality shows and insipid pop artists to the doorstep of a Muslim world that treasures nothing more than traditional values. D’Souza further theorizes that if right thinking Americans can somehow control the pathologies of the American left or at the very least let the Muslim world know that the rest of us consider them pathologies also, the Muslim world will no longer hate America.
This view of things is dangerously misguided, and dangerously ignorant. The Radical Islamic world doesn’t hate us because our TV shows are too racy or our women too provocative. The Radical Islamic world hates us not for what we are but for what we aren’t. Specifically, the haters at issue loathe us because we’re not Muslims. [ Unfortunately true. -ed. ]
Here’s how the Ayatollah Khomeini put it:
I have other complaints with the book. There are many instances that suggest either sloppiness or intellectual dishonesty on D’Souza’s part. To give us insight into the Jihadist loathing for American culture, D’Souza relies on the writings of the father of modern Radical Islam, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb spent two years in America and then returned to the Middle East thoroughly disgusted by American culture. He spent the rest of his life chronicling his hatred for America’s decadent society in assorted writings.
Here’s where D’Souza is dishonest or careless: He informs the reader that Qutb died in 1966. He fails to inform the reader that the time Qutb spent in America was between 1948 and 1950. [ Yes! This is the "The Local Root Cause" I wrote of quite a while back. If you want a real eye-opener overview of Al-Qaeda, Qtub and Greeley, you should check out 5280 Magazine's "Al Qaeda's Greeley Roots". It's a little longish but well worth the investment. The point toward the end about enforced virtue not being a virtue at all deserves special attention. I couldn't agree with it more. -ed. ]
Since D’Souza blames our culture for much of the Islamic world’s animus towards America, this is no small matter. The culture of the 1940’s wasn’t what it is today. Perhaps Qutb was scandalized by pop culture products of the time like the overt raciness of “The Best Years of Our Lives” or the raw sexuality contained on the typical Bing Crosby record; the man was after all a lunatic. But the culture of the late 1940’s contained none of the things that D’Souza so obviously deplores and that he postulates are inflaming the Muslim world. The 1940’s had no filthy hippies, no gangsta rap, no gay weddings." [ In other words, they also hate us for what we were before we became what we are. That is, even before we became something that D'Souza fantasizes we could retract. How I wish it weren't so... -ed. ]
"In D’Souza’s view, beleaguered, socially conservative Islamacists feel besieged by the American culture. Especially offensive to the Islamic world is our “blue state” culture that has brought things like homosexuality, abortion, cruddy reality shows and insipid pop artists to the doorstep of a Muslim world that treasures nothing more than traditional values. D’Souza further theorizes that if right thinking Americans can somehow control the pathologies of the American left or at the very least let the Muslim world know that the rest of us consider them pathologies also, the Muslim world will no longer hate America.
This view of things is dangerously misguided, and dangerously ignorant. The Radical Islamic world doesn’t hate us because our TV shows are too racy or our women too provocative. The Radical Islamic world hates us not for what we are but for what we aren’t. Specifically, the haters at issue loathe us because we’re not Muslims. [ Unfortunately true. -ed. ]
Here’s how the Ayatollah Khomeini put it:
“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as theyOne of the things that makes “The Enemy at Home” so strange is that D’Souza never grapples with this side of Islam. Especially odd is the fact that even though D’Souza quotes Khomeini at several points, he never cites this particular speech. This is almost inexplicable; the above quote comes from a 1942 Khomeini work that is more or less the equivalent of the madman’s Gettysburg Address. It’s his signature piece. It defies belief that D’Souza delved even superficially into the Khomeini collection and these comments didn’t catch his eye. [ Definitely a huge blooper. -ed. ]
would kill you all! Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter their armies.” [ Yes. Westerners are all just like Khomeini's minion's. I know the very first thing I do upon waking up is think of how I can go kill me some Muslims. Sigh. -ed. ]
I have other complaints with the book. There are many instances that suggest either sloppiness or intellectual dishonesty on D’Souza’s part. To give us insight into the Jihadist loathing for American culture, D’Souza relies on the writings of the father of modern Radical Islam, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb spent two years in America and then returned to the Middle East thoroughly disgusted by American culture. He spent the rest of his life chronicling his hatred for America’s decadent society in assorted writings.
Here’s where D’Souza is dishonest or careless: He informs the reader that Qutb died in 1966. He fails to inform the reader that the time Qutb spent in America was between 1948 and 1950. [ Yes! This is the "The Local Root Cause" I wrote of quite a while back. If you want a real eye-opener overview of Al-Qaeda, Qtub and Greeley, you should check out 5280 Magazine's "Al Qaeda's Greeley Roots". It's a little longish but well worth the investment. The point toward the end about enforced virtue not being a virtue at all deserves special attention. I couldn't agree with it more. -ed. ]
Since D’Souza blames our culture for much of the Islamic world’s animus towards America, this is no small matter. The culture of the 1940’s wasn’t what it is today. Perhaps Qutb was scandalized by pop culture products of the time like the overt raciness of “The Best Years of Our Lives” or the raw sexuality contained on the typical Bing Crosby record; the man was after all a lunatic. But the culture of the late 1940’s contained none of the things that D’Souza so obviously deplores and that he postulates are inflaming the Muslim world. The 1940’s had no filthy hippies, no gangsta rap, no gay weddings." [ In other words, they also hate us for what we were before we became what we are. That is, even before we became something that D'Souza fantasizes we could retract. How I wish it weren't so... -ed. ]
I Feel Anxious To Provide Them With Better Conditions
On those few occasions when I'm not killing them like bugs or standing around looking stupid... (Also see here.)
AP All Propaganda Update
"It seems rather obvious by now that the AP relied on a source for over 60 stories over a seven-month period that manipulated the wire service in order to get insurgent propaganda broadcast around the world. Instead of following its own rules regarding the identification of sources and acquiring confirmation -- rules expressly intended to avoid getting manipulated in this manner -- the editors at the AP rushed these stories to print, cognizant of their inflammatory nature.
Those are the facts. That's what the AP is supposed to report. They blew it, and they erode their credibility every day they continue to deny it."
Those are the facts. That's what the AP is supposed to report. They blew it, and they erode their credibility every day they continue to deny it."
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Today's (Second) Holocaust Update
"Still, the second holocaust will be different in the sense that Ahmadinejad will not actually see and touch those he so wishes dead (and, one may speculate, this might cause him disappointment as, in his years of service in Iranian death squads in Europe, he may have acquired a taste for actual blood). And, indeed, there will be no scenes like the following, quoted in Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent The Lost, A Search for Six of Six Million, in which is described the second Nazi action in Bolechow, Poland, in September 1942:
A terrible episode happened with Mrs. Grynberg. The Ukrainians and Germans, who had broken into her house, found her giving birth. The weeping and entreaties of bystanders didn’t help and she was taken from her home in a nightshirt and dragged into the square in front of the town hall.
There… she was dragged onto a dumpster in the yard of the town hall with a crowd of Ukrainians present, who cracked jokes and jeered and watched the pain of childbirth and she gave birth to a child. The child was immediately torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown - It was trampled by the crowd and she was stood on her feet as blood poured out of her with bleeding bits hanging and she stood that way for a few hours by the wall of the town hall, afterwards she went with all the others to the train station where they loaded her into a carriage in a train to Belzec.
In the next holocaust there will be no such heart-rending scenes, of perpetrators and victims mired in blood (though, to judge from pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the physical effects of nuclear explosions can be fairly unpleasant).
But it will be a holocaust nonetheless.
[The writer is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University.]"
A terrible episode happened with Mrs. Grynberg. The Ukrainians and Germans, who had broken into her house, found her giving birth. The weeping and entreaties of bystanders didn’t help and she was taken from her home in a nightshirt and dragged into the square in front of the town hall.
There… she was dragged onto a dumpster in the yard of the town hall with a crowd of Ukrainians present, who cracked jokes and jeered and watched the pain of childbirth and she gave birth to a child. The child was immediately torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown - It was trampled by the crowd and she was stood on her feet as blood poured out of her with bleeding bits hanging and she stood that way for a few hours by the wall of the town hall, afterwards she went with all the others to the train station where they loaded her into a carriage in a train to Belzec.
In the next holocaust there will be no such heart-rending scenes, of perpetrators and victims mired in blood (though, to judge from pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the physical effects of nuclear explosions can be fairly unpleasant).
But it will be a holocaust nonetheless.
[The writer is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University.]"
What our brilliant MSM can't be bothered to tell you about the "surge". Or is that doesn't want you to know?
Sixty Billion Here, Tens of Millions There
"Has North Korean leader Kim Jong Il subverted the United Nations Development Program, the $4 billion agency that is the U.N.’s main development arm, and possibly stolen tens of millions of dollars of hard currency in the process? According to a top official of the U.S. State Department — using findings made by the U.N.’s own auditors — the answer appears to be a disturbing yes, so far as UNDP programs in North Korea itself are concerned. And just as disturbingly, the U.N. aid agency bureaucracy has kept the scamming a secret since at least 1999 — while the North Korean dictator and his regime were ramping up their illegal nuclear weapons program and making highly publicized tests of intermediate range ballistic missiles."
Friday, January 19, 2007
Read. Ledeen. Now.
"Is it not shameful to see Secretary Rice knocking herself out to defend the terrorist state in would-be Palestine, and doing virtually nothing to defend the fledgling democracy in Lebanon?
A fine mess you’ve got us into, I think Laurel once said to Hardy. And the hell of it is that we could win this thing simply by sticking to our own announced principles, and support democratic revolution. I sometimes think that compassionate conservatives are the last true Marxists, because they seem to have a touching faith in vast, impersonal forces that will change the world. The truth is that men and women create change, if they will only fight for it. Which, alas, it seems we are not.
Where does all this lead? If the Democrats have their announced way, we will be humiliated in Iraq and leave in disgrace, thereby enhancing the global charisma of the jihad, enormously strengthening the terror masters, and ensuring the success of the Iranian nuclear project. How could any self-respecting fanatic not then believe that the moment of reconquista was at hand? We would then face terror on an epic scale, here and everywhere.
Alternatively, it leads to military war against Iran and Syria. This president may have decided he will not leave scenario #1 to his successor, nor to his biographers. If so, he will go after the nuclear project, and perhaps against Iran’s armies and navy as well. It would be the proof of an utterly failed strategy, and earn him, and us, the condemnation of most of the world.
That’s what happens when you don’t do what you should have done for years on end."
A fine mess you’ve got us into, I think Laurel once said to Hardy. And the hell of it is that we could win this thing simply by sticking to our own announced principles, and support democratic revolution. I sometimes think that compassionate conservatives are the last true Marxists, because they seem to have a touching faith in vast, impersonal forces that will change the world. The truth is that men and women create change, if they will only fight for it. Which, alas, it seems we are not.
Where does all this lead? If the Democrats have their announced way, we will be humiliated in Iraq and leave in disgrace, thereby enhancing the global charisma of the jihad, enormously strengthening the terror masters, and ensuring the success of the Iranian nuclear project. How could any self-respecting fanatic not then believe that the moment of reconquista was at hand? We would then face terror on an epic scale, here and everywhere.
Alternatively, it leads to military war against Iran and Syria. This president may have decided he will not leave scenario #1 to his successor, nor to his biographers. If so, he will go after the nuclear project, and perhaps against Iran’s armies and navy as well. It would be the proof of an utterly failed strategy, and earn him, and us, the condemnation of most of the world.
That’s what happens when you don’t do what you should have done for years on end."
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Hanging Themselves
"The mystery deepens. Turning the newspaper page, we find that, under demented Kyoto arrangements, Germany’s Dresdner Bank is now brokering an arrangement by which European companies will pay 15 billion euros to the corrupt and autocratic Russian state monopoly, Gazprom, in return for “carbon credits” to continue selling oil and gas to European customers on the open market. This money in turn will help Russia’s dark, authoritarian regime to invest further in its ability to hold Europeans who depend on Russian heating oil through the winter to ransom when it has political demands.
They start by opposing capital punishment. They end by insisting on hanging themselves. "
They start by opposing capital punishment. They end by insisting on hanging themselves. "
So There Ya Go -- I'm Hitler!
"So there ya’ go. Stalin was less Marxist than others, mind readers have determined that he had a crush on Hitler, and he kinda looked like a conservative. Ergo, Stalin was a conservative. Impeccable logic.
Let’s review the ideological assumptions that underlie the study’s sample selection: left wing societies are best represented by contemporary Sweden, while right-wing societies are exemplified by Nazi Germany. Joseph Stalin – the same Stalin who murdered tens of thousands under the banner of Karl Marx – is a conservative, while Milton Friedman – who earned the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on consumption analysis – is a right-wing fringe activist. Meanwhile, authoritarianism does not exist on the left, or at least it can’t be located because there are no records of such things. Mao? Castro? Lenin? Guevara? Chávaz? Pol Pot? Never heard of ‘em.
Now that’s creative use of statistical outliers! The authors have built a wonderful foundation and are set to prove their point. All that’s needed to complete the job is a healthy does of confirmation bias. "
Let’s review the ideological assumptions that underlie the study’s sample selection: left wing societies are best represented by contemporary Sweden, while right-wing societies are exemplified by Nazi Germany. Joseph Stalin – the same Stalin who murdered tens of thousands under the banner of Karl Marx – is a conservative, while Milton Friedman – who earned the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on consumption analysis – is a right-wing fringe activist. Meanwhile, authoritarianism does not exist on the left, or at least it can’t be located because there are no records of such things. Mao? Castro? Lenin? Guevara? Chávaz? Pol Pot? Never heard of ‘em.
Now that’s creative use of statistical outliers! The authors have built a wonderful foundation and are set to prove their point. All that’s needed to complete the job is a healthy does of confirmation bias. "
Aborting Civilization
"Yet it is war, the real regional war we have not been willing to acknowledge. Surge or no surge, it is not possible to win this war by playing defense in Iraq alone, unless we find a way to either hermetically seal Iraq from Iranian and Syrian depredations, or convince the mullahs and the Assads to stop trying to drive us out. The hermetic seal is not in the cards, and why should our self-proclaimed enemies stop waging war on us when we pointedly leave them free to train terrorists and ship money, guidance and weapons into the battle zone? That is why some of us have advocated support for the tens of millions of Syrians and Iranians who wish to change the regimes in Tehran and Damascus, but democratic revolution has precious little support in Washington these days.
Common sense seems to dictate that we are obliged to do everything possible to protect our troops and advance the security of Iraq, but the "little bit pregnant" policy isn’t enough, as our leaders surely know. Iran has been waging war on us since 1979; will the mullahs call it off because some of their agents are arrested or killed outside Iranian borders?
No doubt the Bush administration worries about political fallout if the terrorist training camps or the IED assembly facilities are attacked. We all heard Senators Biden and Lugar, Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha demand assurances that we would not cross Iraq’s borders, even in hot pursuit of Iranian and Syrian killers. In other words, it’s quite all right for Iranians, Syrians, and jihadis to invade Iraq and kill Americans, but Americans are not permitted to respond in like manner. The administration should say that, but hasn’t.
The president would do well to remember Machiavelli’s advice to the prince: If you must inflict pain, it is best to do it all at once, and not try to mitigate it or do it bit by bit. The latter method always makes things worse, and ultimately requires greater violence, and more pain. Or, worse still, your defeat."
Common sense seems to dictate that we are obliged to do everything possible to protect our troops and advance the security of Iraq, but the "little bit pregnant" policy isn’t enough, as our leaders surely know. Iran has been waging war on us since 1979; will the mullahs call it off because some of their agents are arrested or killed outside Iranian borders?
No doubt the Bush administration worries about political fallout if the terrorist training camps or the IED assembly facilities are attacked. We all heard Senators Biden and Lugar, Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha demand assurances that we would not cross Iraq’s borders, even in hot pursuit of Iranian and Syrian killers. In other words, it’s quite all right for Iranians, Syrians, and jihadis to invade Iraq and kill Americans, but Americans are not permitted to respond in like manner. The administration should say that, but hasn’t.
The president would do well to remember Machiavelli’s advice to the prince: If you must inflict pain, it is best to do it all at once, and not try to mitigate it or do it bit by bit. The latter method always makes things worse, and ultimately requires greater violence, and more pain. Or, worse still, your defeat."
"It should also be noted that Iran is currently battling a drug problem." [ Yes, one as "big as a ball". -ed. ]
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
“At the very least,” said Mr. Bush, “Redeploying our troops to Iran should help Iranian weapons manufacturers save some money on shipping.”
Warning: Bad Language
"During the war in Kosovo, I shared a flagon of slivovitz with an especially triumphalist Kosovar Albanian who exulted at what he was seeing. Decades of being pushed around and ground down by the Serbian supremacists and then, suddenly, "Guess what? We get to f--- the Serbs and to do it with Clinton's dick!" (That twice-repulsive image took up a horrible tenancy in the trashy attic of my mind, where it is still lodged.) Matters in Kosovo had been allowed to decay to the point where one either had to watch the cleansing of the whole province by Slobodan Milosevic or, yes, allow NATO and the U.S. Air Force to become, in effect, the air force of the Kosovo Liberation Army. On balance, the latter option was better, while the geographical and demographic scale of the problem was more manageable. Matters in Iraq have degenerated much faster and much more radically than that; now the Shiite majority wants to screw the Sunnis with Bush's (more monogamous, for what that's worth) member. The picture is hardly a prettier one."
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Corruption and Ruthlessness: The Golden Hour Ticks On...
"The Iranian problem is directly linked to another fundamental one in Iraq; corruption. Many of Irans new allies in Iraq were bought, and theft of government money and assets is still seen, by too many officials, as more of a right, than an offense. The stealing, inefficiency, reluctance to make difficult decisions and general lack of personal responsibility, is nothing new. Actually, these bad habits can be considered traditions, having existed in the region for centuries. Just having a democracy does not automatically eliminate all existing problems. Saddam Hussein was the norm for this part of the world, not an aberration. Saddam was a crook, but he was a strong and efficient crook. Iraqis want a strong and efficient leader, but finding one who doesn't want to rule as a dictator, is proving very difficult. Meanwhile, Iran (run by a religious dictatorship) and Syria (run by a secular dictatorship, whose services have been purchased by Iran) are trying to buy, or bully their way to, as much influence as they can in Iraq. The other neighbors are Sunni Arab states that don't want an Iran controlled Iraq, but don't see a good way to stop it from happening. The United States is going to try and remove the Shia militias, and see what happens. No one really knows. This is all new territory, what with democracy and honest government being so rare in this part of the world."
Creeping Sanity Spotted Down South
"In October Argentine prosecutors formally charged the Iranian government and Hezbollah in the murderous attack, and called for the arrest of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others. The Iranian government, of course, has refused to extradite Rafsanjani or anyone else.
So it's reassuring that Kirchner is standing on principle by refusing to join other leaders in greeting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his current Latin American tour."
So it's reassuring that Kirchner is standing on principle by refusing to join other leaders in greeting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his current Latin American tour."
The Real Language Barrier
"INDC: What do you mean by "the same face," because Saddam was secular, he was not religious and al Qaeda is ...
Mohammed: "Because the language they use is killing. And the same people who used to be with Saddam, now they participate with the insurgency."
INDC: So their motivation for killing is what?
Mohammed: "Money and to be famous. And I think the first reason is to fight the American troops. They say, 'we can start from here and cross all the way to America to fight them.'""
Mohammed: "Because the language they use is killing. And the same people who used to be with Saddam, now they participate with the insurgency."
INDC: So their motivation for killing is what?
Mohammed: "Money and to be famous. And I think the first reason is to fight the American troops. They say, 'we can start from here and cross all the way to America to fight them.'""
Who's "No Win Situation"?
"The apparent evacuation of Baghdad by al Qaeda forces comes from direct orders issued by al-Masri, the former soldier who took control of the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda following the June 2006 bombing death of Zarqawi.
Initially, the intelligence officer informed Pajamas, the Baghdad-based AQ fighters did not want to leave. Al-Masri had to send unequivocal orders for their retreat, adding that one of the lessons from the Fallujah campaign was that Americans have learned how to prevail in house-to-house fighting. Masri said that remaining in Baghdad was a ‘no-win situation’ for the terrorists."
Initially, the intelligence officer informed Pajamas, the Baghdad-based AQ fighters did not want to leave. Al-Masri had to send unequivocal orders for their retreat, adding that one of the lessons from the Fallujah campaign was that Americans have learned how to prevail in house-to-house fighting. Masri said that remaining in Baghdad was a ‘no-win situation’ for the terrorists."
Red Cell Re-examined
"No way, you say? here is what al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith said in 2002:
Last November The SF Examiner wondered whether Americans are sleepwalking into a gathering storm, much as the British did in the 1930s. If so, a lot of the blame rests squarely in the Oval Office, whose occupant is permitting it happen. Yet the stakes could not be graver. I wrote last November why I was a single-issue voter, kicking off with David High's observation, "If we don't get the war right, the Medicare prescription plan won't matter, Social Security won't matter, nothing else will matter." The threat is real, people, so watch "24" to see what our enemies want to do. It and like media will tell you; the administration won't."
"We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children
- and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.
Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons,
so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims
because of the [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons." "America knows
only the language of force. ... America is kept at bay by blood alone."
Last November The SF Examiner wondered whether Americans are sleepwalking into a gathering storm, much as the British did in the 1930s. If so, a lot of the blame rests squarely in the Oval Office, whose occupant is permitting it happen. Yet the stakes could not be graver. I wrote last November why I was a single-issue voter, kicking off with David High's observation, "If we don't get the war right, the Medicare prescription plan won't matter, Social Security won't matter, nothing else will matter." The threat is real, people, so watch "24" to see what our enemies want to do. It and like media will tell you; the administration won't."
Monday, January 15, 2007
Just In Case You Missed That 800lb Gorilla In The Room
"One document contained a Quds assessment of the Iraqi conflict that throws fresh light on the growing battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for influence in the region. It said that because Iraq's Sunni neighbours - including Saudi Arabia - were likely to intensify their support for Sunni insurgents in Iraq, Iran should also step up its aid to those groups.
Iran has set up a network of fake import-export companies in Iraq's Anbar province to channel funds to Sunni fighters, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
At secret meetings, tribal sheikhs with close ties to the insurgents revealed details of the money-laundering to Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
"Truckloads of Iranian appliances like televisions are shipped into Iraq, apparently legitimately, and then sold for cash that can be channelled to Sunni insurgents," said Mr Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank. "The Iranians are very pragmatic about who they will deal with.
"The underlying assumption of those like Tony Blair and the Iraq Study Group, who back talks with Teheran, is that a stable Iraq is somehow in Iran's interests. But that's not so. Iran does not want a new Somalia on its borders, but nor does it want to live next to Switzerland. They are happy with managed chaos."
Iran has worked with individuals linked to al-Qa'eda-related groups responsible for some of the worst atrocities against Iraqi Shias, including the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra last February.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, the Iranian exile leader who first revealed Teheran's secret nuclear programme to the world, has compiled a dossier detailing the vast network run by Quds in Iraq. Its operations are centred on Basra and Najaf, and use a series of supposed religious and cultural organisations as well as diplomatic consulates across the country to develop, fund and arm militia and rebel groups.
Thousands of Shia militiamen have reportedly travelled to Iran for training and indoctrination, while Quds sends millions of dollars cash in the other direction each month, through diplomatic pouches and border crossings it controls.
British and American officials have also identified Iran as the source of the materials and manufacture of a new, more lethal variety of roadside bomb that has claimed coalition lives.
"New information from sources in Iran further confirms that the Revolutionary Guards Corps and its notorious Quds Force are the biggest threat inside Iraq," said Mr Jafarzadeh. "Unless Iran's influence is curbed, its agents arrested and brought to justice and its proxies exposed, a genuine national unity government cannot take shape in Iraq."" [ Iran would never help blow up the Golden Mosque you say? Well, not unless it's in their interest anyway... -ed. ]
Iran has set up a network of fake import-export companies in Iraq's Anbar province to channel funds to Sunni fighters, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
At secret meetings, tribal sheikhs with close ties to the insurgents revealed details of the money-laundering to Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
"Truckloads of Iranian appliances like televisions are shipped into Iraq, apparently legitimately, and then sold for cash that can be channelled to Sunni insurgents," said Mr Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank. "The Iranians are very pragmatic about who they will deal with.
"The underlying assumption of those like Tony Blair and the Iraq Study Group, who back talks with Teheran, is that a stable Iraq is somehow in Iran's interests. But that's not so. Iran does not want a new Somalia on its borders, but nor does it want to live next to Switzerland. They are happy with managed chaos."
Iran has worked with individuals linked to al-Qa'eda-related groups responsible for some of the worst atrocities against Iraqi Shias, including the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra last February.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, the Iranian exile leader who first revealed Teheran's secret nuclear programme to the world, has compiled a dossier detailing the vast network run by Quds in Iraq. Its operations are centred on Basra and Najaf, and use a series of supposed religious and cultural organisations as well as diplomatic consulates across the country to develop, fund and arm militia and rebel groups.
Thousands of Shia militiamen have reportedly travelled to Iran for training and indoctrination, while Quds sends millions of dollars cash in the other direction each month, through diplomatic pouches and border crossings it controls.
British and American officials have also identified Iran as the source of the materials and manufacture of a new, more lethal variety of roadside bomb that has claimed coalition lives.
"New information from sources in Iran further confirms that the Revolutionary Guards Corps and its notorious Quds Force are the biggest threat inside Iraq," said Mr Jafarzadeh. "Unless Iran's influence is curbed, its agents arrested and brought to justice and its proxies exposed, a genuine national unity government cannot take shape in Iraq."" [ Iran would never help blow up the Golden Mosque you say? Well, not unless it's in their interest anyway... -ed. ]
Today's All Propaganda Kyoto Update
"Read the whole thing, and note: The United States was never bound by Kyoto, and it was not "rejected" by the Bush Administration. Once again, a webpage by unpaid amateurs is more accurate and nuanced than an effort by the Associated Press. Anyone can make a mistake, but the AP's seem to lean heavily in an anti-Bush direction." [ And did I forget to mention that from 00-05 the US increased greenhouse emissions by approximately 2% while the EU did so by approximately 4%. But admitting inconvenient facts like these would ruin the BDS lover's paranoid fantasy world now wouldn't it? -ed. ]
The Dreamer
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Revolutionary Swede
"What has Sabuni done to ruffle so many feathers? Oh, just a couple of little things: called for a ban on wearing the veil for girls under fifteen, proposed that schoolgirls be checked for evidence of genital mutilation, criticized "honor culture" mentalities, and asked that arranged marriages and the state financing of religious schools be banned. ***
Sabuni, who calls herself "Afro-Swedish, maybe," answers her critics thusly:We have a society that has failed to adapt to new times. We don’t offer people their rights, but we are also unclear about their obligations. So people end up in a kind of no man’s land, where they are neither Swedes, nor Turks nor Congolese.Hmmm--with rights come obligations. And immigrants to Sweden should end up becoming--Swedes! How revolutionary is that?"
Sabuni, who calls herself "Afro-Swedish, maybe," answers her critics thusly:We have a society that has failed to adapt to new times. We don’t offer people their rights, but we are also unclear about their obligations. So people end up in a kind of no man’s land, where they are neither Swedes, nor Turks nor Congolese.Hmmm--with rights come obligations. And immigrants to Sweden should end up becoming--Swedes! How revolutionary is that?"
The Great And Dear Leaders Crock Of Shit
"Samizdata's hope is probably misplaced. In many progressive circles North Korea is probably still regarded as a harbinger of the future; an intimation of the worker's paradise; a shining example of Communist triumph in the Third World. The fact that all these descriptions are a crock of s**t is a minor detail."
Nonsense: An Update
"There has been an inordinate amount of nonsense written about US decline, complete with Russian and Chinese designs to benefit from America's embarrassment in Iraq. The reality could not be more different. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has the remotest desire to see the US withdraw from the region or lose power, for two reasons. The first is that America's presence in the region ensures that little wars will remain little. The second is economic. America's economy and particularly the appetite of American consumers for imports remains the locomotive of the world economy, most emphatically of China's. China's trading relationship with the United States is an irreplaceable pillar of national prosperity, and the means to generate the national savings China requires to establish what President Hu Jintao calls "the harmonious society". ***
Contrary to what almost everyone has maintained for years - that the solution to the problems of the Middle East lies in the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian problem - the present civil war in Palestine proves that no one cares about the Israel-Palestinian problem. The so-called Palestinian issue has been subsumed into the broader problem of containing Persian imperialism, and the Palestinians have been left to fend for themselves, rather like the Kurds - but without the Kurds' language, 3,000-year history, and success in creating institutions of self-rule."
Contrary to what almost everyone has maintained for years - that the solution to the problems of the Middle East lies in the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian problem - the present civil war in Palestine proves that no one cares about the Israel-Palestinian problem. The so-called Palestinian issue has been subsumed into the broader problem of containing Persian imperialism, and the Palestinians have been left to fend for themselves, rather like the Kurds - but without the Kurds' language, 3,000-year history, and success in creating institutions of self-rule."
Jimmah: No Peanut Farmer After All
"But it is one of Dershowitz's sources, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, who provides the most food for thought: "seems that AIPAC's (American-Israel Political Action Committee) real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty". The sinking feeling is the realization that this is what political viewpoints might come down to."
What Torture?
"Then he told me a story about a courageous and respected Iraqi commander who’d accompanied his patrols all over Iraq for nearly a year. When the dead body of this same Iraqi commander was brought into the morgue, doctors found gruesome signs of torture. His legs were beaten by planks of wood. A drill had been used to bore holes into all of his ribs, his elbows, his knees, and into his head. Doctors estimated the man endured this torture for days. Apparently when the fun was over, or they’d extracted what they needed, or the terrorists were worried about being discovered, or they had another victim waiting for their attentions, they shot him. CSM Mellinger, with just a momentary flash of anger in his eyes, said the Iraqi forces know who did this, and it’s only a matter of time."
What (Counter)Intelligence?
"If journalists are protected from being investigated by our Counter Intelligence agents does that mean that our enemies merely have to sign up all of their agents with the New York Times? That has been done before by our last great enemy, the Soviets. Whittaker Chambers an editor of Time magazine and self confessed Soviet Agent used the tactic of hiding inside of our press corps. So given that fact shouldn’t our counter intelligence agents be all the way around possible releases of our secrets to the Press?
This story by the NY Sun is extremely disturbing not because it causes me to lose faith in our Press corps. No instead I am terrifically worried about the competency of our Counter Intelligence agencies. How exactly are we supposed to be confident of their safeguarding our secrets if they cannot prevent secrets from being released to our own citizens who likely have not the training of a foreign intelligence service. And exactly how confident are we that agents of our destruction, foreign spies, have not already embedded themselves into our Press Corp? It has happened before…"
This story by the NY Sun is extremely disturbing not because it causes me to lose faith in our Press corps. No instead I am terrifically worried about the competency of our Counter Intelligence agencies. How exactly are we supposed to be confident of their safeguarding our secrets if they cannot prevent secrets from being released to our own citizens who likely have not the training of a foreign intelligence service. And exactly how confident are we that agents of our destruction, foreign spies, have not already embedded themselves into our Press Corp? It has happened before…"
Evolving Ugly
"All I care to know is that a man is a human being -- that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. --Mark Twain ***
Anyway, one of the more controversial aspects of the book is my belief that humans have actually continued evolving over the centuries, and that most people and cultures were impossibly cruel, barbaric, and frankly crazy by today's standards. This is an unpopular notion because it doesn't appeal to either traditionalists on the right or contemporary liberals on the left. Traditionalists don't like it because it seems contrary to the idea that human beings were created by God with an unchanging nature: a man is a man is a man, whether 2500 years ago or today. And liberals don't like it for reasons of multiculturalism and moral relativism. As I wrote in the book, the humanities have become "highly politicized, vulnerable as they are to crass politicization and to the noxious practice of 'deconstruction' by various interest groups interested in normalizing abnormality." Ya think?
In other words, for the same reason feminists are silent about the horrors of female treatment in the Islamic world (and hypocritically despise the world's greatest liberator of Muslim women, George Bush), liberals in general do not judge people of the past. They pass over in silence the systematic homosexual abuse of boys in Ancient Greece, or the horrific adolescent initiation rituals of primitive cultures, or the ceaseless and sadistic warfare of so many native American tribes. Of course, the only exception they make is for barbarism perpetrated by Christians, such as the witch trials. That they judge, even though it was a relatively time-limited and proscribed aberration. Or they judge the West's involvement in the slave trade, ignoring the much wider involvement of Arabs and Africans themselves, who had no regard for human life and no opposition to slavery at all. Frankly, it wouldn't have occurred to Africans that it was problematic. That requires Christianity or Judaism. ***
A beautiful world is the occasion for constant remembrance of the Divine, whereas an ugly environs can cause us to forget our divinity and regress to barbarism (is this perhaps why leftism is primarily a phenomenon of big cities?). Perhaps contemporary art is simply the Evil One's strategy for undoing and canceling out the progress made in other human domains. It keeps his hand in the game. The other strategy would be the secular detachment of the mind from the divine intellect, so that our IQs increase even as we become metaphysically more and more blind and stupid."
Anyway, one of the more controversial aspects of the book is my belief that humans have actually continued evolving over the centuries, and that most people and cultures were impossibly cruel, barbaric, and frankly crazy by today's standards. This is an unpopular notion because it doesn't appeal to either traditionalists on the right or contemporary liberals on the left. Traditionalists don't like it because it seems contrary to the idea that human beings were created by God with an unchanging nature: a man is a man is a man, whether 2500 years ago or today. And liberals don't like it for reasons of multiculturalism and moral relativism. As I wrote in the book, the humanities have become "highly politicized, vulnerable as they are to crass politicization and to the noxious practice of 'deconstruction' by various interest groups interested in normalizing abnormality." Ya think?
In other words, for the same reason feminists are silent about the horrors of female treatment in the Islamic world (and hypocritically despise the world's greatest liberator of Muslim women, George Bush), liberals in general do not judge people of the past. They pass over in silence the systematic homosexual abuse of boys in Ancient Greece, or the horrific adolescent initiation rituals of primitive cultures, or the ceaseless and sadistic warfare of so many native American tribes. Of course, the only exception they make is for barbarism perpetrated by Christians, such as the witch trials. That they judge, even though it was a relatively time-limited and proscribed aberration. Or they judge the West's involvement in the slave trade, ignoring the much wider involvement of Arabs and Africans themselves, who had no regard for human life and no opposition to slavery at all. Frankly, it wouldn't have occurred to Africans that it was problematic. That requires Christianity or Judaism. ***
A beautiful world is the occasion for constant remembrance of the Divine, whereas an ugly environs can cause us to forget our divinity and regress to barbarism (is this perhaps why leftism is primarily a phenomenon of big cities?). Perhaps contemporary art is simply the Evil One's strategy for undoing and canceling out the progress made in other human domains. It keeps his hand in the game. The other strategy would be the secular detachment of the mind from the divine intellect, so that our IQs increase even as we become metaphysically more and more blind and stupid."
Sowell On Random Play
"What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.
The next time somebody says that the government is forced to intervene in the economy to protect the poor, ask why the government is forcing taxpayers to subsidize municipal golf courses, the ballet, opera and -- the biggest subsidy of all -- surrounding affluent communities with vast amounts of expensive "open space." ***
One of the scariest aspects of our times is how easy it is for glib loudmouths to turn us against each other, weakening the whole framework of society, on which we all depend. ***
It is hard to think of any word that has confused more issues than the word "rights." Nowadays, almost anything that anybody wants is called a "right" -- a magic word that does away with the need for evidence, logic or even common sense.
Many of the same people who are urging us to get out of Iraq are also urging us to go into Darfur. They say we should "do something" about the murderous horrors in Darfur. But you cannot simply "do something." You have to do something specific. Those who are urging intervention won't take the responsibility for specifying what we are to do -- and at what cost in American lives."
The next time somebody says that the government is forced to intervene in the economy to protect the poor, ask why the government is forcing taxpayers to subsidize municipal golf courses, the ballet, opera and -- the biggest subsidy of all -- surrounding affluent communities with vast amounts of expensive "open space." ***
One of the scariest aspects of our times is how easy it is for glib loudmouths to turn us against each other, weakening the whole framework of society, on which we all depend. ***
It is hard to think of any word that has confused more issues than the word "rights." Nowadays, almost anything that anybody wants is called a "right" -- a magic word that does away with the need for evidence, logic or even common sense.
Many of the same people who are urging us to get out of Iraq are also urging us to go into Darfur. They say we should "do something" about the murderous horrors in Darfur. But you cannot simply "do something." You have to do something specific. Those who are urging intervention won't take the responsibility for specifying what we are to do -- and at what cost in American lives."
Did I Miss Anything?
Cox and Forkum strike again. Of course, with the Army releasing stats recently on how many soldiers have been killed (nearly 200) and wounded by Iranian IEDs as well as the recent raids netting Iranian Qods forces, maybe he's finally starting to get it...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
