HIV Death Rates Rising in Muslim Countries & Russia

“[Muslim] People are becoming more sexually active with no proper education or awareness,” said Johnny Tohme, a social worker with Marsa, the only Lebanese clinic that offers free HIV testing. Between 1,500 and 3,500 people are living with HIV in Lebanon today, according to figures from Marsa and UNAIDS.

“And with the growth of new infections, if no proper-follow up is administered, the infection is going to spread faster,” he said.

The Arab-wide picture is just as bleak. The Middle East and North Africa maintain just one percent of the world’s HIV caseload, with approximately 300,000 adults and children living with the virus, according to the United Nations.

But the fatality rate for AIDS patients has increased significantly in recent years, while in most of the rest of the world deaths have either stayed the same or dropped. _Global Post

From North Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia, HIV death rates have risen almost 20% across the traditional Muslim homelands.

...two regions saw significant increases – AIDS-related deaths went up by 17 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and by more than 20 percent across Eastern Europe and Central Asia...

...New HIV cases in Russia:

The public health office says more than 60,000 people tested positive for HIV in the first 10 months of 2012 – up 12.5 percent on the previous year
Almost 2/3 of those who tested positive were male – the overall sickness rate was highest in the 30-40 age group
The mortality rate in this same period grew by 14 percent _Al Jazeera

The New York Times reveals that the problem in the Muslim world has been growing for some time:

AIDS is on the rise in many Muslim countries, driven by men having sex with other men in secret because of homophobia, religious intolerance and fear of being jailed or executed, according to a new study.

...Accurate statistics on some aspects of health are hard to get from governments in some Middle Eastern countries. For example, international health authorities say that the world’s highest rates of birth defects are in Muslim countries where cousins sometimes marry, but that governments are reluctant to admit it. _NYT

The problem of inaccurate statistics may be even worse -- much worse -- in the sub Saharan African countries, which are supposedly experiencing significant drops in HIV incidence and mortality. But the numbers are only as good as the methods used to acquire them, and in nations such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, the public health apparatus has fallen on hard times.

Wall Street Journal

Another important public health problem knocking on the door for both the Muslim world and the more modern region of Europe, is tuberculosis -- TB.

All along the edges of Western Europe, new and hard-to-defeat strains of tuberculosis are gaining a foothold, often moving beyond traditional victims—alcoholics, drug users, HIV patients—and into the wider population. _WSJ

A Global Decline; A US Choice

China's banking system is a mess. And it is not reassuring to foreign observers that China's super-rich are exiting the country in record numbers.

If China continues to scale down its importation of commodities, a large part of the support for inflated oil prices will be removed. Should that happen, the main thing holding up oil prices would be continued fears over a war between Iran and Israel.

But it is more likely that Israel will wait and see what is likely to happen in Syria, before it pulls the trigger on an all-out attack against Iran's nuclear bomb-making facilities. Much of the Arab and Muslim worlds appear to be self-destructing, and no one knows how things will look if the dust finally settles.

Iran is being held together by bubble gum and baling wire, with a bit of duct tape around the edges for appearance' sake. Without the support of Russia and China, the main axis of Islamic terror -- Syria and Iran -- would collapse. Should that happen, dismantling Saudi support for global Islamic terrorism should be relatively easy, using modern tools of information warfare.

But the relationship between Russia and China is beginning to show signs of strain, as China increasingly eyes the resource riches of Eastern Siberia -- while the population of Russia shrinks and Russia's military decays.

Things could go very badly wrong if the leaders of China and Russia react irrationally to the changes in fortune which seem to be approaching for both nations.

Someone needs to tell Putin that Russia is not Stalinist USSR any longer. And someone needs to tell China's leaders that the current state of politico-economic limbo is unsustainable.

Europe is heading into recession. Unless Germany retreats from its insane Energiewende policy, Europe is headed into catastrophe.

And finally, the US faces a choice in November between a chic stasis and a staid dynamism. If the US makes the dynamic choice, the rest of the world is likely to fall in line. If the US chooses stasis, the resulting power vacuum will likely lead to dire global consequences, as already bad choices grow worse.

Much Ado About Egypt: Islam is about Submission, not Freedom

How odd that in support of the brave secular protestors in the streets of Cairo, we are already talking about not demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood — the existential enemies of every idealist now trying to win a free society from Mubarak, the dictator/non-dictator who must go now!, very soon, after he transitions a new government in the summer, when a new president is elected in the fall, or, as future events dictate, not at all. _VDH_PJMedia

Western journalists and pundits -- to say nothing of politicians -- have missed one crucial core fact about recent unrest in Egypt: It is largely backed by Islamists, and Islam is about submission -- not freedom! This is no Tiananmen Square moment for Egypt. It is far closer to an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary moment, a la Jimmy Carter and other clueless leftists of the time.

Hillary was right about her 3AM slur, and Obama is acting as any 2-year Senate veteran might in such a crisis. There is no consistent support from the left for democracy movements overseas. Strongmen like Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad, and Assad are weirdly seen as either untouchable or genuine in a way a Mubarak or a Jordanian king is not. And the latter are vulnerable only when it looks like they may fail; if they seem stable, we hear not a peep from Obama about their human rights records.

In short, the left has not yet sorted out its adherence to multiculturalism and its supposed support for human rights, which are usually antithetical. It apparently believes that any pro-democratic criticism of Obama’s tepidness is not worth the damage that might accrue to his agenda of universal health care, more entitlements, and left-wing domestic appointments. Whereas on the right there are three fissures over Egypt — neocon support for the protestors, realist support for Mubarak to keep a lid on things and change slowly, isolationist desires to keep the hell out of another costly obligation — on the left these days it is basically trying to explain postfacto Obama’s herky-jerky policies as coherent, successful, and idealist.

Predictions? I think unfortunately we may go the 1940s “we can work with Mao”/1970s “no inordinate fear of communism”/2000s “jihad can mean a personal struggle” route, where liberals believe that totalitarian nationalists somehow admire the American Revolution and our lack of a colonial heritage, and, as closet moderates, wish to work with us. That translates into a backdoor courtship with the Muslim Brotherhood, in the fashion we did with Khomeini, and ends in a decade or so with a Sunni Ahmadinejad and the betrayal of the present protestors — again, in the manner we did the Iranian moderate reformers in 1979-80 and again in 2009. _PJMedia

There is not much the US can do to help the Egyptian people at this time. Egypt is a low-IQ society permeated by religious fanaticism and ethnic and political hatred against outsiders. Resentment is never far beneath the surface for huge numbers of Egyptians.

Part of the problem is proximity to Gaza and the many decades long influx of Palestinians bearing deep resentments and grudges. Part of the problem is decades of oppressive government and many centuries intermittently under fanatical Islamic clerics. And a big part of the problem is a killing poverty associated with a human capital that is irrevocably sinking into a permanent Idiocracy.

If you can think of something that will help the Egyptian people, by all means, let everyone know about it.

Any Analysis That Neglects Intelligence Is Sham

The respected magazine The Economist often presents economic and political analyses of various countries and regions. The Economist's looks at "Arab Backwardness" over the years neglect a very important consideration: intelligence of Arab populations.

Here are some Middle Eastern IQ and literacy rates to look at:

COUNTRY .... LITERACY RATE......AVERAGE IQ

Bahrain................. 85 ................... 83
Egypt ................... 51 ................... 83
Iran ..................... 71 ................... 84
Iraq ..................... 58 ................... 87
Israel ................... 95 ................... 94
Jordan .................. 86 .................. 87
Kuwait .................. 79 .................. 83
Lebanon ................ 83 .................. 86
Oman .................... 64 .................. 83
Qatar .................... 79 .................. 78
Saudi Arabia ........... 71 .................. 83
Syria ..................... 70 .................. 87
Turkey ................... 82 .................. 90
United Arab Emirates . 79 .................. 83

Canada has a 97% literacy rate, the USA has a literacy rate of 99%.
Canada has an IQ average of 97 and the USA has an average of 98. Source

The religion of Islam is a perfect fit for illiterate and unintelligent tribal peoples, such as arabs. Please be aware that the Arab world is genetically diverse and based upon the speaking of Arabic and / or the dominance of Islam. It is the legacy of past conquests and bloodshed.

Cousin inbreeding of low intelligence tribal people combined with rigid tribal and religious customs create and perpetuate a population of superstitious and violence - prone persons. Expressing surprise at the backwardness of such people without acknowledging such obvious underpinnings reveals The Economist as devious, manipulative, and / or incredibly credulous. But The Economist shares such traits with the most esteemed of modern academic and think tank geopolitica.

This "half blind" method of global and regional analysis typifies the modern approach to scholastic research. The next level will leave it all in the dust, of course. But for now, this willful ignorance is one of the great shames of modern human between-levels civilisation.

Backward and unintelligent people will conquer nations of far more intelligent and civilised people, if given the chance. The current government of the US appears intent on making such conquest appear easy. Whether such an appearance will be valid or not, it will lead such primitive people to believe that they can topple the "Great Satan." This makes war and violence far more likely than not.

Al Qaida Losing Friends in Iraq?

A recent Time article by Joe Klein describes some of the recent "turning away" by Sunni insurgents, from an earlier alliance with Al Qaida in Iraq.

After the briefing I asked Colonel Antonia if he'd asked the Sunnis why they had turned against al-Qaeda. "They said it was religious stuff," he said. "AQI demanded that the women wear abayas, no smoking and they preached an extreme version of Islam in the mosque. They'd also spent the winter without food and fuel because of the violence al-Qaeda was causing. One guy said to me, 'We fought against you because you invaded our country and you're infidels. But you treat us with more dignity than al-Qaeda,' and he said they'd continue to work with us. I've been involved in many operations here and this is a first—usually everybody's shooting at us. This is the first time we've had any of them on our side." (In web postings, the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade has denied it is cooperating with the Americans.)

Odierno later told me similar anti-al-Qaeda rebellions were happening throughout the country, including some neighborhoods of Baghdad. "Iraqis notice things. They noticed what happened when we began to support the Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda in al-Anbar. And al-Qaeda seems to have overplayed its hand."

Source

Does this mean the US is "winning" the war in Iraq? Of course not. Iraq is a battlefield where "soldiers" from many nations are fighting for their own reasons, while the Iraqis themselves are divided by tribe, clan, ethnicity, religion, and goals for the future. Perhaps the Kurdish region of Iraq has a future, but the Arab parts of Iraq are cursed with the historical tendency of Arabs to cut their own throats while trying to cut the throats of everyone around them. Still, if the tribes of Iraq can agree to eradicate the religious extremists among them--both Sunni and Shia--perhaps even the Arabs can find some peace eventually.

Iraq in Vivid Complexivision

Iraq is not as simple as the media wants you to believe. Here are a few of the complexities involved.

The terrorists have changed tactics, and so has the United States, and that says much about where the battle for Iraq is going. There are fewer bombs going off in Baghdad, so the bombers are trying to make each one count more. Thus, in the last week, three truck bombs took out bridges and overpasses, seeking to make life miserable for an many Iraqis as possible. This is because, despite all the dismal news from Iraq, what doesn't get reported is that most of the country is quiet, and there has been 4-5 percent growth in the overall economy for the past four years. Actually, there was a huge jump in economic growth, about 40 percent, in the year after Saddam fell. That has now settled down. Anyone who has been to Iraq, particularly American soldiers, can't help but notice the traffic jams, shops full of goods, and all those Iraqis walking around with their new cell phones. Yes, it's a war zone, but it's also a growing economy.

Source

And then there's this:

Our soldiers are fighting brilliantly, and history will record they are defeating the enemy while suffering historically low casualties. But if the sacrifice of American youth is not tied — daily, hourly — to larger strategic and humanitarian goals by eloquent statesmen who believe in the mission, then cynicism follows and, with it, despair.

The establishment of consensual government in Iraq, with the concomitant defeat of jihadists, will have positive ripples that will undermine Islamism and help to cleanse the miasma in which al Qaeda thrives. But again, unless explained, most Americans will not see a connection between the ideology of the head-drillers and head-loppers we are fighting in Iraq and those who try to do even worse at Fort Dix and the Kennedy airport. The war to remove Saddam was won and is over; the subsequent and very different war in Iraq that followed is for nothing less than the future of the Middle East — and now involves everything from global terrorism and nuclear proliferation to the world’s oil supply and the future of Islam in the modern world.

Source

Then there is the viewpoint of the jarhead (US Marine) on the ground:

After my fifth trip to Iraq to report on Marines, I've concluded that, at least among Marines, morale remains high — high not despite the public's disaffection with the war but possibly because of it. The declining poll numbers and rising political upheaval appear to have driven Marines closer together.

Marines, for instance, continue to exceed their reenlistment goals; a recent study showed that those who have deployed twice to Iraq are more likely to reenlist again than those who have only gone once — and that the Marine least likely to reenlist is one who has not deployed to Iraq.

....As Cpl. Alexander Lengle, 21, of Lancashire, Pa., said of the debate that dominates much of the news: "That's political. It's not our part of the spectrum. We've got a job to do."

At chow halls at the larger bases, there are usually televisions at opposite ends, one set to sports, one to news. The TV showing sports gets the larger audience, particularly among the young enlisted troops. "It's like noise in the background," Lance Cpl. Jacob Holmes, 21, of Tallahassee, Fla., said of the news channels.

When the 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment needed volunteers to extend their enlistments so they could return to Iraq and mentor younger Marines making their first deployment, the talk was not of foreign policy but of loyalty to each other. Two hundred Marines — 25% of the battalion — volunteered to return to war-torn Ramadi.

"It's not for everybody, but it's definitely for me," said Sgt. Kemp Miller, 25, of Philadelphia, making his third deployment.

Source

While the moronic Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid insist that the US may as well cut and run from Iraq, since the war is lost, the marines who are actually there have a different opinion.

Of course the Bush administration is swimming upstream in an attempt to change the arab mindset in Iraq. The Kurds seem ready to sign on to modernism and democracy, but the arabs are considerably more primitive in outlook. It takes more than a few years to enlighten a stone-age people.

There simply may not be enough time on the US political clock for the transition to occur. Certainly Iran's bloody theocracy is staking its future on preventing Iraq from succeeding.

Walid Shoebat Exposes Palestinian Hatred and Indoctrination

Arabs Will Be Arabs

Things have not changed much, since the days of TE Lawrence. Westerners keep expecting their arab allies to think in a rational, western manner. Arabs, however, will be arabs.

A day earlier some Iraqi Police officers stumbled upon a suspected weapons cache and exchanged a few rounds with some AQIZ operatives.

As is often the case, the IPs did not immediately report what happened and even then the IP, like most Iraqis, have difficulty with spatial relationships, maps and directions.

Iraqis tend to know only one unit of measure--one kilometer. Everything is one kilometer, even if it is 200 meters or 2000 meters, it is one kilometer.

With a location figured out the paratroopers of Able Company 3-509 walked out of OP Delta in the middle of the night to search a wide swath of the area south of the river.

...The IP Lieutenant was talking with a friend of his, a retired officer from the Iraqi Army in the old regime when Captain Matthew Gregory, Commanding Officer of Able Company asked about the IED planted on the Subayot road.

It seemed everyone--the retired officer, the IP Lieutenant, the PSF--everyone but the Army and Marines knew who planted the IED.

The soldiers and Marines stood there for a moment in stunned silence.

After a few minutes of questioning and getting a few more details the Marine Lieutenant told the IP to go down there and get the guy they said planted the IED.

There was some hesitation and some hemming and hawing. It is a dangerous part of town, it is night...

The Marine Lt. had no sympathy, "You have 45 minutes to get this guy."

About an hour later the call came over the radio for an Explosive Ordinance Disposal team to come out.

The guy who planted the IED had 20 pounds of TnT, blasting caps, detonators and various other pieces of military hardware.

....An IED will go off or something will happen and the IP and PSF say Jamil, or Whalid did it. And it often turns out that Jamil and Whalid did do it, leading American officers to ask why they waited to tell us after the fact.

The answers, like many things in Iraq, are convoluted or just plain bizarre.

But, inshalla, the PSF and IP will catch the guy. Sometimes they operate for 96 hours straight catching known AQIZ operatives. Other times they can't be moved for anything other than tea, cigarettes and Maxim Magazines.

As T.E. Lawrence wrote of the Arab Army of WWI in Revolt in the Desert, 'No English officer would work so hard, to get so little out of so many.'

Source

This is as should be expected. Foreign cultures are foreign. Foreign cultures create foreign brains that think in different ways.

Such differences allowed westerners to colonise large parts of the world. Then the differences inevitably created schisms leading to the de-colonisation of the world. The jury is out concerning which regime benefitted the third worlders the most--colonisation or post-colonisation. In many ways, it probably made very little difference.

Time for Arabs to Grow Up?

These are remarkable words from an Iraqi politician. What would prompt this man who lives with daily threats to his life, to speak these words that will surely bring more religious assassins to his door?

If the Kurds succeed in building a civilised society in Kurdistan, what will that say about the arabs? Iraqi arabs have an opportunity that no other arabs have had--the opportunity to master their own fate through a representative government, and a modern system of laws.

If Iraqi arabs behave as arabs typically behave, they will throw the chance away, and descend into a bloody chaos of clan/tribal/ethnic/sectarian violence. But if Iraqi arabs do decide to join the civilised world--what an amazing thing that would be!

There is not a lot of time left for the arabs to decide. It is time for them to grow up.

New Arab Design for Baby Car Seat--Air Bag Built In

Hat tip Daily Kross blog

The Modern North American University Statement of Purpose?

The revolutionary and progressive characteristics of this university are due to the revolutionary and progressive characteristics of its staff and its courses.

The educational principles of the university are: ‘Correct political orientation, plain, hard-working style, flexible strategy and tactics’.

We must overcome difficulties, contact the masses, and heighten our militancy. Anyone who is not politically correct does not deserve to be a student of this university, for he acts against the rules of this university.

To the class of graduates: ‘You must be brave, resolute, and tenacious. You must learn through struggles and be prepared to sacrifice your freedoms for the liberation of the world.

Written for the Production Drive of the university ‘Study on the one hand, agitate on the other; overcome ideological adversaries and unnerve the enemies.’ ‘Now study and agitate. In future you will rule over the counter-revolutionaries.’

The style of the university: ‘Unity, alertness, earnestness, and political correctness.’

Paraphrased from Mao's words of wisdom.

Well, anyway, it seems to be the accepted approach to education at the University of New Mexico Law School.

Strong Leftist Bias in University Threatens Ability of Schools to Educate

Education is meant to instill in the student both the love of learning and the ability to sort through ideas and evidence in order to arrive at the most workable solutions and systems of thought and action. But if the information available to students in university is so skewed toward a particular point of view--excluding the broad spectrum of ideas prevalent in the real world--the university cannot perform its vital function for the student.

This 2005 study by researchers at Smith College, University of Toronto, and Center of Media and Public Affairs, should put to rest the claims by leftist professors that the university is not skewed to the left.

The study shows that in the arts and social sciences, and soft sciences, the faculty is almost certain to consist of mostly leftists. The proportion of leftist to mainstream is closer to 50:50 in the harder sciences and engineering faculties--where competence must be demonstrated, and where training is more rigorous and demanding.

It is no surprise that leftists tend to flock to areas where competence-testing is rare, and based upon subjective peer appraisal rather than unforgiving objective criteria, as in harder sciences and engineering. This allows them to pretend to be knowledgeable and expert in an area without actually needing to demonstrate any competence--except to other members of their in-group. Circular jerkulating is the rule in those departments of university.

Read the study before commenting, as a favour to others.

An Arab Woman Speaks from her Heart About Dysfunctional Arab Culture

Brigitte Gabriel lived through the demographic changes in Lebanon that brought Beirut and the country from being the "Paris of the middle east" to being another one of the hellholes of the middle east.

Follow this link to view a talk given by Ms. Gabriel detailing many events from her own life that led her to her current occupation as a warning voice against encroaching barbarism.

Test yourself to see if you can handle the truth. If you can hear Ms. Gabriel out, perhaps you can.

Hat tip to Gandalf at Infidel Bloggers.

Arabs--It's Frightening How Alien They Really Are!

Here is a fascinating account of the experience of someone who recently spent a year teaching English in Saudi Arabia. Read it and you will begin to understand the huge cultural gulf between the modern world and the arab world. Simply amazing.

Role-Playing Islam in Schools--Stop Pussy-Footing And go Hard Core!

There are some public school districts inside the US that have implemented a 3-week program of Islamic role-playing, as a way of teaching american students about other cultures. But in the truest traditions of multiculturalism, they watered Islam down into an inoffensive, wimpish, unrecognizable sissy-culture that has nothing to do with the real world.

The 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled that muslim role-playing exercises in tax funded schools are okay:

In a recent federal decision that got surprisingly little press, even from conservative talk radio, California's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it's OK to put public-school kids through Muslim role-playing exercises, including:

Reciting aloud Muslim prayers that begin with "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful . . . ."

Memorizing the Muslim profession of faith: "Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger."

Chanting "Praise be to Allah" in response to teacher prompts.

Professing as "true" the Muslim belief that "The Holy Quran is God's word."

Giving up candy and TV to demonstrate Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Designing prayer rugs, taking an Arabic name and essentially "becoming a Muslim" for two full weeks.

Parents of seventh-graders, who after 9-11 were taught the pro-Islamic lessons as part of California's world history curriculum, sued under the First Amendment ban on religious establishment. They argued, reasonably, that the government was promoting Islam.

But a federal judge appointed by President Clinton told them in so many words to get over it, that the state was merely teaching kids about another "culture."

So the parents appealed. Unfortunately, the most left-wing court in the land got their case. The 9th Circuit, which previously ruled in favor of an atheist who filed suit against the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, upheld the lower court ruling.

The decision is a major victory for the multiculturalists and Islamic apologists in California and across the country who've never met a culture or religion they didn't like — with the exception of Western civilization and Christianity. They are legally in the clear to indoctrinate kids into the "peaceful" and "tolerant" religion of Islam, while continuing to denigrate Judeo-Christian values.

Source.

The pathetically diluted form of "Islam" presented to school children said nothing about it being okay to rape girls who do not wear the hijab. The absurdly unrealistic "role-playing" did not include honour killings or shahid suicide bombings of civilian women and children. Somehow they forgot to teach the children about going away to Iran, Syria, or Pakistan to learn terrorist tactics, or ways of betraying your fellow american citizens to a supremacist, alien culture.

Why did the public school system's particular style of role-playing choose to omit some of the most salient aspects of the most expansive forms of Islam in existence at this time? Why not role-play a "consciousness raising session" where the masses are driven to a homicidal frenzy over a few cartoons? Why not teach Sharia in its pure and undiluted form? Were they afraid that genuine exposure to a foreign culture would not fit into "multicultural ideals?"

Why not role-play a school fire where religious policemen forbid the girls from leaving the burning building because they were not properly attired for public viewing--resulting in the burning deaths of several girls? Why not role-play a child caught shoplifting candy and given a sentence of hand amputation for the crime? Why not role-play a girl's honour killing for innocently talking to a boy in public who is not a family member? Why not simulate a child walking into a pizza shop full of civilian teenage boys and girls, and blowing himself up and killing dozens and wounding dozens more? Why not role-play a thirteen year old girl being married to a much older cousin for economic reasons, and being taught to submit to her husband in all things.What is the problem with accurate depiction of a death-worshiping culture, if you are going to teach multiculturalism? Why not get real--go hard core?

What would the 9th Circuit Court say about a role-playing exercise that follows the reality of the death-loving culture much more closely? What would most school districts in the US say about such an exercise?

Arabs are a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel

Lawrence was describing the arabs of the early 20th century, all the way back to antiquity. And he may as well have been describing modern arabs. The recent raids for hostages by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel, are prototypical arab tribal raids, a throwback to prehistoric raiding cultures.

At one time, arabs in the Mecca/Medina area made progress toward civilisation, by moving away from raids and blood feuds--the tribal ethic--toward trade and laws. Then came Muhammad, who forced the return to tribal blood feuds, raids for slaves, and other primitive tribal customs. But Muhammad wanted to lead one great tribe--the Umma. He wanted to bring primitive arab barbarism to the entire world, under the banner of a religion custom-made for that purpose, Islam.

Ancient tribal societies, especially nomadic societies, which frequently came upon other societies, were warrior societies. Warfare was a part of their culture. Men wanted to be good at it for the sake of their people and to be respected.

Men exercised their skills as warriors by raiding. Raiding happened among tribal people .... Beyond raiding, battles among tribal people were fought. People have gone to war believing that sickness of disease among them was caused by a member or members of another society having cast an evil spell on them...... In the twentieth century the Yanomami of Brazil went to war believing that an evil spirit had been cast upon them - wars for retribution or punishment. Or tribal people went to war merely because tribe had come upon tribe. We have knowledge of tribe coming upon tribe in Eastern Africa, the men of each side in ranks, posturing with their weapons and making threatening gestures, with their women watching from the sidelines, cheering them on.

The nature of war changed when tribes on the move saw advantage in holding ground and exploiting those they came upon. This happened after settled people were successful enough in agriculture to have surplus enough for conquerors to tax. With this, empire was born. A local ruler, if he survived conquest, might become a tool of the conqueror, collecting taxes and controlling the locals for the conquerors.

Wars for empire were wars for wealth. Power was the instrument for wealth and also a means of protecting oneself. In the earliest age of empire -- which included the time of the Sumerians -- the idea arose that if one did not conquer he would be conquered. A competition for power had erupted. Wars were common because a would be conqueror perceived others as weaker. And warring was accepted. Civilization had arrived but the world was still fragmented. Each conqueror had his own god - the ancient Hebrews included - and a conqueror spoke of his conquests as the conquest of his god. He saw his god as more powerful than the god of rival peoples. There was no recognized political body with rules as to which power should rule where. In such a world there were many ready to go to battle to settle petty disputes. War was often chosen over negotiation and compromise. There was fear of becoming a slave or annihilation, and there was still an inclination to see those of the other side as not worthy of the kind of trust and friendship that made agreements work.

It was not an age when people of different groupings were looked upon as equal. It was not a democratic age. It was, instead, the age described in the Old Testament, an age when authority was created and demonstrated through violence.

Source.

Muhammad wanted to place the entire world under the banner of Allah, the conqueror's god. Since Islam was born of primitive arab tribal customs, these customs would eventually rule any world that Allah's fighters conquered.

It seems clear that Muhammed became the leader of the Muslim Arabs because his personal qualities and feats as a religious, military, political, legislative, and judicial leader proved to his followers that he was the charismatic leader that he claimed to be. It is very doubtful, however, that he would have been at all successful had he not respected to an absolute degree the internal structure and independence of the tribe and its leadership. Even his own personal followers, the Muhajirun, were accepted into the Medinan tribal system as members of an individual tribe responsible directly to himself. The geneological principle obviously prevailed since their being Muhajirun never meant that they ceased to be Quraysh. Also the idea generally prevailed that the successors to the Caliphate had to be Quraysh. This failure of the early community and of Muhammed himself to overcome tribal structures other than in the terms outlined gave rise to impossible problems with the subsequent conversion of great masses of people, culturally superior to the Arab clansmen, by means of clientship. This was not due to the lack of a universal religious outlook on the part of Muhammed or his followers, but rather to the inability of the Arab mind, including that of Muhammed, to think of society other than in terms of tribal structures.

Source.

So Muhammad led the arabs of Mecca and Medina from a more enlightened culture back into the primitive barbarism of arab tribal blood feud/slaving culture. Then he permanently fossilized this primitivism into the Islamic religion so that no one could be muslim without submitting to the primitive barbarism of ancient tribal raiding/slaving culture.

This is an ongoing horrific crime against over a billion people of the modern world, a crime that threatens the future of western civilisation and the human race itself. For if the civilised world can find no way to deal with an ascendant primitivism that arms itself with weapons of mass death, massive slaughter and destruction is inevitable.

What is Wrong with Arabs?

Arabs are lagging in education, economy, democracy and freedom of expression, and computers. 2003—In Arab countries, with a combined population of 284 million, a “best seller” may have a print run of just 5,000 copies, due to censorship and other constraints on independent publishers. Translations of foreign works into Arabic lag far behind figures in the rest of the world: five times more books are translated yearly into Greek, a language spoken by just 11 million people, than into Arabic. Just 53 newspapers per 1,000 citizens are published daily in the region, compared to 285 papers per 1,000 people in the developed nations, and there are only 18 computers per 1,000 people in the Arab world, as compared to the global average of 78 per 1,000.

The first Arab Human Development Report in 2002 was a bombshell dropped onto the entire arab world. The report notes that while oil income has transformed the landscapes of some Arab countries, the region remains "richer than it is developed." Per capita income growth has shrunk in the last 20 years to a level just above that of sub-Saharan Africa. Productivity is declining. Research and development are weak or nonexistent. Science and technology are dormant.

Intellectuals flee a stultifying -- if not repressive -- political and social environment, it says.

Arab women, the report found, are almost universally denied advancement. Half of them still cannot read or write. The maternal mortality rate is double that of Latin America and four times that of East Asia.

The followup report in 2003 showed the situation to be no better. A group of Arab intellectuals issued a report yesterday that found the Arab world lacking in three areas they deemed fundamental to development: freedom of expression, access to knowledge and women's rights.
The group, criticized by Arab officials for a similar report last year, said the challenges caused by the deficiencies "may have become even graver" since 2002.
After dismal reports in 2002, 2003, and 2004, the UN HDR appears to have given up on the arab world. Who can blame them? Since World War II, the Arab world has lagged the rest of the planet in economic growth. For example, 300 million Arabs, and all that oil, generate less economic activity than Spain, and its population of 40 million. The main problem has been bad government. Too many dictators, and too much government restrictions on the economy. Too much corruption and waste. Even higher oil prices don't help, as it simply provides more money to be wasted on consumption, rather than business investment.

An Economist article, titled "Self-Doomed to Failure," captures the pathetic state of the arab world. The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources, concludes the report, but the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and womanpower. Not having enough of these amounts to what the authors call the region's three “deficits”. It is these deficits, they argue, that hold the frustrated Arabs back from reaching their potential—and allow the rest of the world both to despise and to fear a deadly combination of wealth and backwardness.

•Freedom. This deficit, in the UNDP's interpretation, explains many of the fundamental things that are wrong with the Arab world: the survival of absolute autocracies; the holding of bogus elections; confusion between the executive and the judiciary (the report points out the close linguistic link between the two in Arabic); constraints on the media and on civil society; and a patriarchal, intolerant, sometimes suffocating social environment.

The area is rich in all the outward trappings of democracy. Elections are held and human-rights conventions are signed. But the great wave of democratisation that has opened up so much of the world over the past 15 years seems to have left the Arabs untouched. Democracy is occasionally offered, but as a concession, not as a right.


....•Knowledge. “If God were to humiliate a human being,” wrote Imam Ali bin abi Taleb in the sixth century, “He would deny him knowledge.” Although the Arabs spend a higher percentage of GDP on education than any other developing region, it is not, it seems, well spent. The quality of education has deteriorated pitifully, and there is a severe mismatch between the labour market and the education system. Adult illiteracy rates have declined but are still very high: 65m adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. Some 10m children still have no schooling at all.

One of the gravest results of their poor education is that the Arabs, who once led the world in science, are dropping ever further behind in scientific research and in information technology. Investment in research and development is less than one-seventh of the world average. Only 0.6% of the population uses the Internet, and 1.2% have personal computers.

....•Women's status. The one thing that every outsider knows about the Arab world is that it does not treat its women as full citizens. The report sees this as an awful waste: how can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential? After all, even though women's literacy rates have trebled in the past 30 years, one in every two Arab women still can neither read nor write. Their participation in their countries' political and economic life is the lowest in the world.

Governments and societies (and sometimes, as in Kuwait, societies and parliamentarians are more backward than their governments) vary in the degrees of bad treatment they mete out to women. But in nearly all Arab countries, women suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements. The UNDP has a “gender-empowerment measure” which shows the Arabs near the bottom (according to this measure, sub-Saharan Africa ranks even worse). But the UN was able to measure only 14 of the 22 Arab states, since the necessary data were not available in the others. This, as the report says, speaks for itself, reflecting the general lack of concern in the region for women's desire to be allowed to get on.

...With so many paths closed to them, some are now turning their dangerous anger on the western world.

Meanwhile in an ethnically divided Iraq with sectarian divisions, the first tentative steps have been taken toward democracy, as the rest of the arab world looks on with a wary curiousity. A few cautious voices believe that, in time, the Iraqi elections will put pressure on neighboring countries to democratize.

In Cairo, Hisham Qassem, chairman of a human rights organization and chief executive officer of a new Arab daily newspaper, believes that both the Iraqi and Palestinian elections have given impetus to democratic reform.
"Once people feel there are positive effects from the democratic process, they will want the same. Especially countries like Egypt who felt they were ahead of Iraq but are now lagging behind,” he said. Many arabs must be wondering if it takes an emasculating invasion from abroad and low level civil war to bring democracy to an arab country.

It takes more than democracy to bring the arab world out of the stone age. It will take economic reform. Since Saddam was tossed out in 2003, the economy has been governed by Western rules. As a result, GDP per capita doubled by the end of 2005, and the GDP is expected to grow another 49 percent by 2008. All this despite continued attacks by Sunni Arab rebels on oil facilities and other economic targets. It's much easier to start a business in Iraq now, even though there's still a lot of corruption. The big change is that now the corruption is illegal, and there is even progress in prosecuting the government officials who take bribes or try to shake down businessmen. Lebanon is the only other Arab state to run its economy in a Western fashion, and they have thrived.

It takes education reform and freedom of expression and the press. It will take implementation of full freedoms for women. Finally, it will take religious reform. Stone aged customs, traditions, and religious restrictions virtually guarantee that arabs will remain backward, laggards of the world.

Update: Here is more from a recent World Bank report. Arabs living in the middle east and north africa are oddly resistant to modernisation and transitioning out of the stone age. Very strange, when you see how successful arabs can be when they migrate to a free environment. I suppose blaming the US and Israel will gain them at least another half century of stone age existence.

Dreams of Lost Arab Glory: Living the "Long War"

The US president Bush has chosen to make a stand in the desert country of Iraq. A curious choice perhaps? Afghanistan made more sense on the surface of things. Disrupting the jihadists' base of operations and training was logical. No more large scale jihadi terror attacks have taken place. The Madrid and London train bombings were much more modest in scale, more local in execution. The world jihad movement appears in disarray, under attack even in Saudi Arabia, the very heartland of jihad.

Iraq sits atop large oil reserves, but the oil production infrastructure is so decrepit in Iraq, that gearing up oil production there may take decades. Do Bush and his neo-con friends actually plan for decades in advance? In that period of time anything at all might happen. It is certainly more likely that their goals are more proximate.

Is Iraq truly part of the global jihad? Before Saddam's Baathist was toppled, what part did Iraq play in the global jihad? Was it truly necessary to invade and disrupt the center of the Arab world, the most powerful arab nation, the flagship nation of arab ambition?

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya function as jihadist institutions of propaganda. These satellite networks appear to conflate jihadist ambitions with the goals of the arab world. It is as if much of the elite in the arab world have taken sides with the jihadists. When did this happen? Before Saddam's removal? Before September 11, 2001? Before the Gulf War of 1990/1991?

If one looks carefully at the history of the arabs, and the history of jihadist Islam, there appears to be a waxing and waning along parallel paths for the two entities. There is an unhealthy interdependency between arabs as a culture and jihadist Islam as a movement. The September 11 attacks were merely one more group of attacks in a long series of jihadist attacks dating back to the mid 20th century. Before that, there were other clusters of attacks going back millenia in time. A waxing and waning of the jihidast movement, along with arab cultural ambitions.

The glory days of the arabs was during the height of the jihadist wars, before the Mongols and the Turks subdued the arabs. After the Turks, the European colonials divided the arab lands. Arabs have been humiliated for centuries now. The tide appears to be turning, since the newfound oil wealth of the 20th century is finding its way to devout and fanatical believers in the oil rich societies. The wealth is being diverted to those who show an aptitude for indoctrinating the young to jihad, and supplying them with weapons of mass murder. Every nation in the world where a mosque is located is also the cradle of jihadist indoctrination. Infiltration, subterfuge, covert preparation for jihad.

Under the rule of law in developed nations, there is really no way to stop this process. Combining the stealth infiltration of jihadist indoctrination with the cultural decline of the west, and demographic trends of high birthrates among muslim immigrants and low birthrates among indigenous non-muslims, and one can see that Europe's days are rapidly slipping away. Europe is destined to come under Islamic subjugation within decades.

What about the Anglosphere? What about North America and Oceania? What about Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, and Singapore? There will be outposts of free thought, of rational activity, long after Europe surrenders.

The US and the UK have chosen to confront the jihadist in the heartland of Islam. Realizing perhaps that direct experience of war with the jihadist was the only way to toughen their troops enough for the long war ahead, the US and UK chose to take the war to the place that they knew the jihadists could not ignore, the center of the Sunni arab pride.

Some say the purpose was to bring democracy to the arab lands. That may have been a long shot gamble, a side purpose. Others say the purpose was access to oil. But we have seen how far in the future any meaningful oil production in Iraq will be. More likely the purpose was to bring a familiarity with the jihadist tactics to the military commanders, in preparation for the inevitable conflict to come. Europe's leaders had already decided on surrender long before September 11. There was no question of Europe preparing for the long war. The will to fight against oppression had been drained from Europeans half a century ago.

The post-modern concept of war is that all war is immoral. Any justification for war is mere obfuscation, excuses by the ruling classes to shed the blood of the underclasses for their own gain. This is the wisdom of the post-modernist in regard to war. There is no real post-modern wisdom regarding oppression originating from third world entities such as the jihadists. Such a thing is considered unlikely in the extreme and not worth analysing. That is the weakness of the post-modern. Ideological hatred for western civilisation to the point of denying the uniqueness and liberating aspects of western civilisation, while simultaneously denying the barbarism and mindless homicidal tendencies of virtually every other civilisation ever known to history.

Iraq is a target of opportunity. Iraq was invaded because Iraq was there, at a particular time and place and state of being. Iraq was chosen by Bush as a place to make a stand. It was a multitude of gambles thrown together in one large toss of the dice. A monumental disruption to the overall scheme of things, such a challenge as not to be ignored by the jihadist, or the arab supremacists who stand one hundred strong behind every single jihadist.

Western civilisation is the cradle of the next level. No other civilisation has approached to a fraction of the enlightenment of the west. All other civilisations have been based on slavery and arbitrary justice, and a far less favorable balance of power between groups and classes, than western civilisation.

Next level humans will be more intelligent. They will live ten times longer. They will balance their emotional brains with their rational brains. They will not fight wars because they will not have to. They will understand the underlying dynamics of power far better than primitive and between-levels humans.

The anti-jihadist wars may be the last wars that enlightened humans will be forced to fight. Forced to fight for the sake of the next civilisation to come. As they say, a war to end war. For that to be true, modern humans must forsake much of their leisure for the sake of learning and growth.

Link to original Al Fin article.

Arabs--Unworthy Guardians of Mecca?

Mecca has always been our locus. Islam was incomplete until Mecca embraced it. Muhammad willed himself to live only as long as Mecca was not his. For forteen hundred years we have gone to Mecca in search of God, in fulfillment of duty. We have assured that the pilgrim's path to Mecca be unimpeded. We have stepped in the footprints of Abraham in Mecca. We have kissed the black stone of Mecca. We have stoned the devil in Mecca. We have killed those like Hallaj who dared to make a Mecca in their backyard. We have told stories about the invincibility of Mecca - how no birds fly directly over the Kaba; how even an army of elephants were rent asunder on the plains outside Mecca; attempted to prove how Mecca is the center of the universe; how Adam first landed in Mecca (and not Sri Lanka); how Mecca is our everything. Source.

You can read here and here, where the Saudis are desecrating holy sites within Mecca and Medina. This problem is well known, and is one of many complaints that devout muslims have against the house of Saud, and its guardianship of the holy cities. It is not merely the house of Saud that is unworthy, however. It is actually the entire group of people known as "arabs."

Islam has outgrown the arabs, and is in need of a more cosmopolitan outlook. Wahabis and terrorists are all that arab muslims seems capable of producing. This gives Islam a bad name to the rest of the world, and induces antaqonism among the masses of unbelievers.

It is unlikely that the Qu'ran was dictated word for word in arabic to Muhammed. The Prophet was illiterate and incapable of writing or reading. It is more likely that over time the Prophet's spoken words were copied by scribes, with frequent transcription errors through the years. Recent German scholarship appears to substantiate this commonsense view.

Given that arabs are laggards of the world, and desecrators of the holy places, is it not better for the torch to be passed to more civilised muslim people? Another language can be chosen as a standard for the Qu'ran, a language spoken by more civilised people than the arabs, by a more successful and enlightened people, such as the Turks.

Turkey was the home of the most recent world caliphate, and as the most modern muslim nation on earth, Turkey is still the logical guardian of the holy places Mecca and Medina. The house of Saud may keep its dwindling oil, such as is left, but what matters is that Islam is in stable and worthy hands.

Furthermore, Mecca and Medina should be guarded by international troops, to establish the global importance of these cities. There will be no more denying of entry to non-muslims to the holy sites. That is the type of bigotry and prejudice which creates antagonism against Islam in the hearts of otherwise peaceful unbelievers.

Arabs have had over a thousand years to prove themselves worthy guardians of holy places. They have failed miserably. It is time for the torch of guardianship to pass.

Arabs--Laggards of the Modern World?

Since the 1960s, arab countries have lagged badly behind most other nations, except african nations. The Strategy Page recently offered a few comments on this issue:

Since World War II, the Arab world has lagged the rest of the planet in economic growth. For example, 300 million Arabs, and all that oil, generate less economic activity than Spain, and its population of 40 million. The main problem has been bad government. Too many dictators, and too much government restrictions on the economy. Too much corruption and waste. Even higher oil prices don't help, as it simply provides more money to be wasted on consumption, rather than business investment.

One of the things that has been changed in Iraq is the way the economy is regulated. Since Saddam was tossed out in 2003, the economy has been governed by Western rules. As a result, GDP per capita doubled by the end of 2005, and the GDP is expected to grow another 49 percent by 2008. All this despite continued attacks by Sunni Arab rebels on oil facilities and other economic targets. It's much easier to start a business in Iraq now, even though there's still a lot of corruption. The big change is that now the corruption is illegal, and there is even progress in prosecuting the government officials who take bribes or try to shake down businessmen. Lebanon is the only other Arab state to run its economy in a Western fashion, and they have thrived. However, Lebanon also interrupted their success story with a fifteen year (1975-90) civil war. Iraqis are well aware of that, and have no illusions about what happens if everyone does not get along. Another thing haunting Iraqis is the most successful economy in the region; Israel. This is also the country most like the economically successful Western states. Iraqis can't really talk about it openly, but the "Israeli Model" is discussed.

In spite of all that oil, something is holding arabs down, making them the laggards of the modern world. Humble little Spain is more an economic powerhouse than all the arabs. What is wrong with all of them?
Arabs are not adding value to their children--there is no added "human capital" in arab societies. Arabs have to import their professionals, engineers, and technicians. Measures of years of schooling in arab countries are pathetic, but do not accurately reflect the huge tragedy, since much of the schooling that does exist is counter-productive schooling in arab supremacy, religious fanaticism, and ethnic hatred. If arabs did not have dreams of bloody conquest of infidel lands, they would have only dreams of stolen glory.

When the oil does run out, the western infidel world will use other fuels besides arab oil. What do the arabs propose to do for economic output then? It seems that their oil only postponed the day of reckoning.