Support Iran's Progressive Theocracy--Urge Bush's Army to Leave Iraq

There is no government like Iran's holy mullahs. The Iranian government believes that Allah created nuclear weapons to be used--by Allah!! And if Allah chooses to let his servants do the dirty work, then, by Allah! the mullahs of Iran stand ready to do whatever it takes. One thing stands in the way--the pesky Bush and his Army, parked in Iraq. So if you value the progressive theocracy in Iran, and everything it stands for--tell Bush to get the fuck out of Iraq!!!

Al Qaeda is not our only enemy in Iraq, however. Iran has chosen to fight a proxy war against us there, determined to work our defeat for its own purposes. Iranian weapons and even advisers flow into Iraq and assist our enemies, both Sunni and Shia, to kill our soldiers and attempt to establish control over Iraq itself. This Iranian support is not the result of a misunderstanding that could be worked out if only we would talk to the mullahs. It is the continuation of nearly three decades of cold war between Iran and the United States that began in 1979 with an Iranian attack on the sovereign American soil of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The states of the Arabian Gulf are watching closely to see who will win. If Iran succeeds in driving America from Iraq, Iranian hegemony in the region is likely. If that success is combined with the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon, then Iranian hegemony is even more likely. Dominance of the Middle East by this Iranian regime would be very bad for America. And a nuclear arms race in which Arab states tried to balance against Iranian power would also be very bad for America.

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The funny thing is, western leftists, college professors, and feminists are lining up to defend Iran's mullahs and mad dog Ahmadinejad, while foaming in the mouth in hatred at Bush. That shows that the mainstream media has done its job well, because otherwise the popular backlash against these pseudo-intellectual circular jerkulators would be frightening.

But the media--who almost never leave their hotel rooms and hotel barrooms in Iraq, have gotten together and decided to tell a story about Iraq that most of the coalition service members who have actually been to Iraq (not hiding under their beds like the "journalists" do) say is not true.

Gotta love the people who join the popular chorus without understanding who is pulling their strings and waving their baton.

If you love Iranian mullahs, and Iranian power--you've gotta tell Bush to bring the troops home--even if they volunteered to do exactly what they're doing.

Are they Truly Antiwar? Or Just on the Other Side?

Passion for political causes is cheap, if one makes his living via his passion (eg Al Sharpton, David Duke, Al Gore, etc.). When it comes to the anti-war movement, the same rule applies. Because when deciding whether a war is better than the alternative, one has to override passion long enough to rationally understand what the alternative to a war is. Only a victim of faulty brain function fails to understand that the alternative to a particular war is not always peace.

The terrorists are encouraged by the reports of American politicians seeking to have U.S. troops withdrawn. Most Iraqi Sunni Arabs see that as a disaster, but the terrorists see it as an opportunity to take on the security forces without having to worry about the much more capable American forces. But with U.S. troops gone, the Iraqi security forces will be inclined to wage war the traditional way. That means massive use of firepower against civilians in any neighborhood where the Sunni Arab terrorists show up, or are found.

....So far this year, many more parts of central Iraq have been cleared of terrorists, and the remaining ones know they have to maintain their visibility to survive. Setting off several bombs a day keeps the terrorists in the news, even if the explosions take place in a smaller and smaller area of Iraq. The terrorists play more to the international media, than they do to anyone inside Iraq. The terrorists are already hated and feared throughout the country, even in Sunni Arab areas. There, the terrorists must increasingly divert resources to terrorize Sunni Arabs, and keep them in line. They are aided by Islamic conservatives, who see all the unrest as an opportunity to impose Taliban like rules on the population. If the terrorists accomplish nothing else, they will have shown how to manipulate the mass media, and divert attention from the true origins of the terrorists, and their objectives. It's been a masterful job which, of course, the mass media will have no interest in examining anytime soon. In a generation or so, there will be books and articles about it, but the subject will never get a lot of media attention.

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War is always a horrible state. Peace under a bloody oppressive regime or theocracy might be seen as worse, to many people.

Would-Be Bully-Boys of Russia Are Feeling Nostalgic Toward the Soviet Past

Russia is facing several critical problems, that will only get worse if Russian leaders fail to acknowledge the massive mistakes of the Soviet past.

The current battles between Russia and Estonia (concerning the reburial of Soviet soldiers' remains) have much wider significance than just being one more spat between Russia and its former vassals.

The roots of this clash go much deeper than the gas wars against Ukraine (and then Belarus), than the war of wines against Georgia, and deeper even than Russia's struggle against the deployment of US missile defence elements in Eastern Europe.

The fundamental cause of this conflict lies in the main unsolved issue of modern Russia: the denial by the Kremlin, and by President Vladimir Putin, of the Soviet regime's criminal nature.

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Not only was the Soviet Union a criminal state, it was a hopelessly failed criminal state. The fact that Putin and his cronies seem to want to re-live the "glory days" of the USSR, suggests that they have learned nothing from the past.

If that is true, it may be necessary to pull out a page from over a generation ago, and begin to play China against Russia once again. Given the huge problem that Russia has with Chinese immigration to Eastern Siberia, that may not be too difficult.

9-11 Conspiracy Theories--A Haven for the Rabid and the Incompetent

Rosie O'Donnell is not the only nitwit to espouse 9-11 conspiracy theories publicly. In fact, there are apparently more than 800,000 web pages devoted to the deluded imaginings and wishful thinking of the lunatic left mainstream.

Increasingly, such beliefs are migrating from the fringes and into the mainstream. French author Thierry Meyssan’s The Big Lie, which argues that the U.S. military used one of its own guided missiles to attack the Pentagon, was a bestseller in France, and his claims have been widely repeated in European and Middle Eastern media. When Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to President George W. Bush in May 2006, his rambling missive included broad hints that the American government was involved in organizing the attacks. Allegations of American complicity in 9/11 have become standard fare on talk radio, and among both radical left- and radical right-wing groups. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat from Georgia, has held a Capitol Hill hearing on the topic. Celebrities have gotten into the act as well. “Why did Bush knock down the towers?” rapper Jadakiss asked in his 2004 hit “Why?” And, in an interview with conspiracy-oriented talk-show host Alex Jones, actor Charlie Sheen embraced a variety of popular conspiracy theories.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York was fond of saying. “He is not entitled to his own facts.” Sooner or later, even the wildest 9/11 theories rely on factual claims. And facts can be checked.

Popular Mechanics became involved in investigating 9/11 conspiracy theories in the fall of 2004, after an advertisement ran in the New York Times for the book Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid, demanding that the 9/11 investigation be reopened. Hufschmid’s book includes a number of tangible claims regarding 9/11. It states, for example, that because jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, the fires in the World Trade Center towers could not have caused their collapse. And it claims ample evidence exists to show that demolition-style explosives were prepositioned in the buildings.

As editors of a magazine devoted to science and technology, we saw these claims as significant. Was there hard evidence to support them? And, if so, what would be the implications for our understanding of 9/11? At the very least, we thought, someone should look into these allegations. If there were even a hint of truth to these or similar claims, then the conspiracy theorists had a point: There should be a deeper investigation.

....The magazine assembled a team of reporters and researchers and methodically began to analyze the most common factual claims made by conspiracy theorists--assertions that are at the root of the majority of 9/11 alternative scenarios. We interviewed scores of engineers, aviation experts, military officials, eyewitnesses, and members of the investigative teams--more than 300 sources in all. We pored over photography, maps, blueprints, aviation logs, and transcripts. The results of our research appeared in the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics. That cover story, “9/11: Debunking the Myths,” provoked a strong reaction on the internet and in the mainstream media. The online version of the article remains the most frequently read story on www.popularmechanics.com and has been printed out more than 850,000 times.

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As someone with limited time to waste, I have not spent very much time looking at theories that were clearly dreamed up by people several cards short of a full deck. Nevertheless, since the leftist mainstream is composed largely of academically lobotomised, psychological neotenates with pathological narcissism, such theories find a ready audience there.

When a person's personal and political ideology is comprised largely of hate and anger, he becomes an easy target for such poorly reasoned treatises which try to deny a worldwide problem of surplus jihad-aged muslim males trained to kill for religion, and lay all the world's problems at the feet of the hated US government.

No wonder Al Gore is doing so well with his little propaganda film. It all fits, if you focus your hatred clearly enough on the chosen scapegoat.

al Zawahiri Wants to Kill 300,000 US Troops--Nancy Pelosi Believes He Already Has . . .

From al qaida's number 2 man (probably #1 man still alive) comes a recent video where Zawahiri sarcastically regrets that the US will probably slink away from Iraq before al qaida has a chance to give the US forces a "really good whipping." By a good whipping, Zawahiri means killing at least 200,000 to 300,000 US troops.

It reminds me of the good whipping the #1 man of al qaida predicted that he would give the US forces in Afghanistan--presumably something on the scale of another Vietnam. Al Qaida and the other arab jihadists and supremacists have never lacked for boastful rhetoric, in any conceivable situation. Remember "the mother of all battles?" The arab supremacist who predicted that ominous condition for US forces was reportedly "well-hung," and not in the genital sense.

Of course, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi feel that the nation of Iraq should change its name to Vietnam, to reflect the enormous US losses that have occurred, to date, in the tri-partite middle eastern nation. Political speculator George Soros apparently feels the same way, and is not above spreading his money around liberally to attempt to cause as many US voters agree with him as possible.

There are many significant differences between the low level war in Iraq, and the much higher level war that was fought in Vietnam. But the most significant one in my opinion, is that any threat from spreading communism in Southeast Asia was not deduced from a major terror attack on US soil. The threat from spreading jihadism is quite real, and was revealed by multiple attacks on both US soil and on US military and diplomatic assets overseas.

The concomitant demographic in Europe, Russia, Africa, South Asia, promise to provide a fertile growing field for future jihadis. In other words, what is seen in south Lebanon and Palestine, were only previews of coming attractions for the currently non-muslim parts of the world where muslims were procreating much faster than non-muslims.

In my opinion, the best reason for the US military to be in Iraq, is to learn to fight jihadis. Because what is happening in Gaza today, will be happening in Paris and London tomorrow, as muslim populations grow. Given that the US military is the only effective military in the western world, the very least it could do to prepare for the real and growing clash of civilisations, is to learn to fight this war--not Vietnam.

The Middle East in Sunni and Shia

Strategy Page blog often provides a useful insight or two into the underlying realities of conflict in various parts of the world.

The Saudis are not happy with the links between terrorists inside Saudi Arabia, and Iraqi Sunni Arabs. The Saudis have told the Iraqi Sunni Arabs that the Sunni Arab nations in the regions will not bail them out, and that they must make peace with the Shia Arab majority. Many Sunni Arabs, throughout the region, do not agree with this. But they are a small minority. Most Sunni Arabs are appalled at the body count the Sunni Arab terrorists have created in Iraq. While most of the dead are Shia Arabs, a growing number are Sunni Arabs, killed either by the suicide bombers, or by Shia Arab death squads looking for revenge. While most Sunni Arabs would like to see Sunni Arabs running Iraq, there was revulsion at Saddam Husseins methods, and even greater distaste for the subsequent mayhem by his followers.

Saudi investigators also discovered that there were also terrorist training camps in northern Yemen, an area controlled by Shia Arab tribes that are hostile to the Sunni Arab Yemeni government. The connection with both Syria and Yemen is Iran, which subsidizes Syria, and supports the Shia tribes in Yemen. Saudi Arabia sees Iran has its primary enemy, not the Shia form of Islam (which most Iranians, who are not Arabs, and most Iraqis, who are, follow). The Iranians take advantage of the fact that al Qaeda has become the place to go if you believe in a very conservative version of Islam, and are certain that the sorry state of the Moslem world is all due to a plot by evil infidels (non-Moslems, especially Christians, Hindus and Jews) to destroy Islam. Even though al Qaeda considers Shia Moslems to be heretics, and worthy of persecution and execution, the Iranians are willing to cooperate if it will lead to problems for the Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia. Politics, ethnic antagonisms and religious beliefs produce a strange brew in the Middle East.

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If the US stays in Iraq--a key middle east location, geostrategically--long enough to prevent outright war between Iran and the Sunni states, it may be possible for the hotbed of violence and terrorism to settle substantially. Many uninformed folks blame George Bush for the violence and terror in the mideast. Sometimes they do this from ignorance, and sometimes from disingenuous animosity. Either way, it makes them superfluous, at best, to the real problems that are occurring.

Peacetime Army vs. Wartime Army

A Quorum of Cowards in the US Congress, Yes--But Not in the US Military

While "cut and run" legislators proudly boast of their cowardice and lack of global savvy, the ever-strengthening US military has a slightly different point of view:

“We try to maintain contact with the enemy as long as possible and kill as many as we can,” Gant said. “We were going to do some serious damage that day.

“It is easy to sit in a room in safety and talk about it,” he said. “I came here to fight. I came here to kill the enemy. I knew at the time what a huge engagement it was... I also had a huge concern for my team and my Iraqis, because I love these guys. I wanted to ensure that we didn’t take unnecessary risks or have unnecessary casualties.”

He decided that he needed to get the insurgents out of their well-built positions. It was obvious to him that this complex attack was well planned. They mounted up and started to move again toward Baghdad still taking fire from both sides.

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Many bloggers share the ignorance of global dynamics with the cut and run legislators and journalists, who constitute the "squeakiest wheel" in domestic US chatter. Some of them are fairly informed and careful in other areas of their blogging. It is difficult to blame them too much for not being as informed and clearheaded as those of us better positioned to see more of the factors in play.

The world has not forgotten America's abandonment of the South Vietnamese and later the Kurds, and our allies must now fear that another abandonment is in the offing. One reason the United States is short on friends throughout the world is that we haven't stood by our allies in the past. The consequence of another hasty retreat must be considered: our reputation will suffer and those who aligned with us in Iraq will pay a heavy price.

The debate over withdrawal comes as America's allies are making important progress. The media has finally begun to notice the Anbar Salvation Front, a collection of Sunni tribesmen, Iraqi nationalists, ex-Baathists, and others who are united by the common goal of driving al Qaeda from their country. Based in the Anbar province, which was long an al Qaeda stronghold, the Anbar Salvation Front is led by Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, a charismatic tribal leader who has seen many of his family members killed by al Qaeda.

The Anbar Salvation Front provides an Iraqi-based opposition to al Qaeda, and one with local legitimacy. The Front has already yielded four distinct advantages.

First, it has started to provide stability on the ground through emergency response units (ERUs) that serve a policing function. Already, four ERUs consisting of 750 men apiece are operational, and there are enough volunteers to fill out six more--a total of 7,500 men. Although there are conflicting accounts as to how much training ERU personnel will have, high-ranking intelligence sources believe the Anbar Salvation Front is attempting to avoid past blunders in which unprepared police lost public confidence through massive human rights abuses.

Second, the Front has developed an intelligence network that gives U.S. forces unprecedented access to information about insurgent activities. In the past, Sunnis who wanted to report insurgent activity would have to tell U.S. troops directly--and the consequences of being seen with American soldiers can be fatal. Sunnis won't be killed for meeting with Anbar Salvation Front members, who have provided a means for vital information to reach the Americans.

Third, the Anbar Salvation Front has been able to mount a theological challenge to the clerics who have issued rulings in support of al Qaeda's Iraqi jihad. In early April, a committee of 40 prominent religious scholars met in Amman, Jordan to establish the "council of ulema of Iraq." This council hopes to undercut the theological legitimacy that al Qaeda in Iraq claims. Its rulings are designed to undermine those issued by clerics who favor al Qaeda's activities, such as the November 2004 edict issued by a group of Saudi Arabian scholars that lent legitimacy to the jihad in Iraq.

Finally, the Front's activities are extending beyond the Anbar province, as al-Rishawi is forming a national political party known as Iraq Awakening. In April, more than 200 Sunni sheikhs met in Anbar to form this party, which opposes al Qaeda and plans to cooperate with the government in Baghdad. Iraq Awakening will run a slate of candidates in Anbar's upcoming provincial elections and in the next parliamentary balloting in 2009.

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Too many of these loud but uninformed bloggers take a "hands waving wildly in the air in an expression of mindless abandon" attitude toward what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fronts of the Islamic terror war. Many others who take a more intelligent approach to seeking information, seek out news sources closer to the reality.

Diyala has become the main hub of al Qaeda's operations. Al Qaeda in Iraq made Baqubah the capital of its rump Islamic State of Iraq. Since the inception of the Baghdad Security Plan in mid-February, the security situation, which was deteriorating after U.S. forces pulled back last fall, has markedly worsened. Al Qaeda has prepared fighting positions, supply bases, IED traps, bomb rigged buildings, and training camps in the province.

Over 2,000 hardened al Qaeda fighters fled Baghdad and are operating in Diyala. An American intelligence official and a U.S. military officer informs us that al Qaeda is operating along the lines of Hezbollah's military structure in Lebanon. Recent al Qaeda attacks in the region bear this out. Al Qaeda is organized in small military units with infantry, mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft teams, as well as suicide and IED cells and the accompanying logistical nodes. Al Qaeda has been conducting a terror campaign to remove tribal leaders and others who oppose them, while waging a campaign of intimidation designed to cower the local population.

The U.S. and Iraqi security forces have preparing the battlefield in Diyala until the full compliment of U.S. forces are in theater and able to finish securing the Baghdad "belts" - the regions surrounding Baghdad. The Diyala Campaign is only is its opening phase, with U.S. and Iraqi forces conducting raids, search and destroy missions, establishing forward operating bases and logistic nodes in preparation for the full assault sometime early this summer. The establishment of the yet to be named Diyala Salvation Front is a crucial element to establishing local intelligence networks and an auxiliary force to hunt al Qaeda.

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Even with the best of information, without the necessary cognitive experience and apparatus to process the information, most people are lost--particularly when so much disinformation is coming from the news media and politicians.

While the cut and run critics of the war to sustain western civilisation against the neo-barbarians sleep at night, smug in their self-righteousness, the warriors who fight their battles for them--making sure they have the freedom and security to criticise their defenders--are often going with little sleep and less than appetizing food. But these warriors are far from breaking, as the critics like to claim. In fact, they are steaming mad at the media for misrepresenting their reality. And they are coming back angry and motivated to settle some scores on the homefront.

Many of them will take their domestic battles into the workplace, the academy, the government, and--yes--the media. That returning warriors will take their battle to the blogosphere goes without saying, since that is already happening.

I can only hope that the cut and run types do not succeed in cutting all of our throats, which in fact is what they are unwittingly trying to do.

Major Changes in Society Necessary In Reaction to Widespread Muslim Terrorism

Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, by John Robb, suggests that the way western societies are currently structure makes them unnecessarily vulnerable to Islamic terrorism--which is likely to grow more common as muslims continue to procreate and immigrate.

"We're at the point in the curve where small groups can fight nation states, and acquit themselves pretty well. The trend will move closer and closer to the individual, to the point where one man can potentially declare war against the world, and win."

....Loose nukes, for example, may cause isolated catastrophes, but "there's no way small groups or individuals can replicate the huge manufacturing base and expertise requirements for a meaningful nuclear program."

More of a threat, says Robb, will be biological attacks. "That knowledge is more ubiquitous, and the tools for manipulating it are undergoing the same process as Moore's Law -- it's highly informational in character, and lends itself to computing power. You'll probably see the tinkering and replication that allow the development of weapons."

Another area of concern: attacks on infrastructure, like the recently-foiled plot to destroy Saudi oil fields. "I don't think attacks are coming directly to our shores as quickly as people fear," he says. "I think most attacks will be on systems, from a distance. Al Qaeda is focused on systems disruptions." But much-predicted efforts to cripple Internet may be less likely, because of its resilient nature and because the terrorists need it themselves.

....What can we do? Technology is a key template. "We need more resilience at the community level," says Robb. "Backup systems and alternative sources of supply. A bird flu epidemic could mean six months with nobody in the office -- are you set up for that kind of remote work?"

His advice: simplify and plan to route around problems. "We focus on economies of scale and reward specialization, but there's not a control system complex enough to manage the whole global system. You can dampen the shocks by simplifying your processes and planning to switch around as needed."

More centralization of government power is a road to ruin, he says. "We need a more resilient approach, that allows for more community participation in security, and more connectivity." Special ops forces, cooperation, and rapid response to threats are all critical as well.

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This suggests that community-level defenses against mass-casualty terrorism is not only important---it is absolutely vital. Any governor or mayor that does not make local defense against terrorism an important part of his campaign should be shunned and rejected harshly. The local incompetence seen in Louisiana and New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath should no longer be acceptable to the intelligent voter. It is time to throw the bums out on the street and elect people who care more about the defense of the people than lining their own pockets from tax money.

Murder in Black and White--The Colour of Crime

Perhaps you have heard of a horrifying crime that occurred in Wichita, Kansas, in December of 2000. The crime has been labeled "The Wichita Massacre," but the horrific details of the crime must be read to be believed.

Most of you will have never heard of this crime. The level of hatred toward the victims revealed by the methods of the perpetrators, is reminiscent of primitive tribal genocide of Palestinians against Israelis, or actions of other violent third world tribes and clans.

But these crimes were committed by the Carr brothers, seen below, against total strangers, in a small city located in a US state that is known for its strong abolitionist views prior to the US civil war. What was the motive???
I have given this Kansas atrocity some thought, and felt that it was an aberration within developed countries such as the US. So it came as a great shock to me to hear about a fairly recent similar crime committed in the small US city of Knoxville, Tennessee.
The rather average looking couple pictured above were described by family members as a “clean-cut and faithful couple—good kids.” What happened to them was not at all average, and not the least bit expected.

The group of five defendants pictured below reveals nothing in their snapshots to suggest the viciousness that was unleashed upon the above couple, out of the blue.

What was their motive? Again, such violence may be commonplace in third world vendettas, and organised crime vendettas. But these crimes had nothing at all to do with such "rational" mindless violence. No, these were total strangers who were chosen for this debased and inhuman violence.
Actually, the most outrageous thing about these crimes is the conspiracy of silence by the US national press, not to report what had happened.

The entire world knows what happened to James Byrd and Matthew Shepherd. News coverage of these vicious crimes was exhaustive and unrelenting for years, and are still frequently referred to by civil rights and gay rights activists.

One may be excused for believing that a high level of black on white violent crime does not exist in the US, or that blacks are more frequently the victims of interracial crime than whites. Such is hardly the case--although the US media appears to be united in avoiding an exposure of the true magnitude and asymmetry of interracial crime.

But it is not the magnitude of black on white violent crime that worries me the most. It is not even the silence of the media when it should be confronting this urgent and divisive problem that causes me the most unease. No, the thing that worries me the most is something quite obvious, but never stated. I will let you think about it for a while.

"We Turks are not Arabs, who are backward and primitive"

Turkey is experiencing internal conflict between an Islamist government and a largely secular, ultra-nationalist elite, who do not wish the basis of their power threatened by a new elite.

The AKP has thrown Turkey open to foreign investment. Last year almost $20 billion rolled in, twice the amount of the previous year. It has deregulated the economy; since the AKP took power, it has grown by a third. It has tamed inflation, stabilized the currency and presided over a jump in per-capita income from $2,598 in 2002 to $5,477 today. The state sector, controlled by the secular bureaucracy, has been reduced. Margaret Thatcher would not have disapproved.

The AKP was in fact elected in large part because previous secular governments had for so long, and so badly, mismanaged the economy -- before the last election, a huge banking scandal wiped out Turkish savings and sparked a complete economic collapse.

A casual observer might also expect that because the Turkish protesters are enemies of Islamic extremism, they are friends of the United States. Not so. The secularists here are if anything more hostile to the West than the AKP. (They are often just as anti-Semitic, too.) Many secularist legislators voted in 2003 to deny U.S. forces the right to pass through Turkey on their way to invade Iraq. At the recent rallies in Ankara and Istanbul, protesters held up signs denouncing "ABD-ullah Gul." This is an anti-American pun: The letters "ABD" stand for "USA" in Turkish. U.S. camera crews were abused with chants of "Go home, CIA spies." One particularly lunatic nationalist, Ergun Poyraz, has just published a book claiming that Erdogan is really an undercover Jew who is collaborating with the Mossad to destroy Turkish secularism.

Finally, it is the AKP, not the secular establishment, that is plumping for Turkey's entry into the European Union. The nationalists fear that the union will interfere with their war against Turkey's restive Kurdish separatists. The European Commission has issued a stern warning to the Turkish military: Stay out of politics or it will hurt your E.U. bid. Some threat. If you don't stop eating that ice cream, you won't get any spinach.

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So it seems that domestic Turkish politics may be as complex as politics in many European countries. The secularists may be the biggest military threat to the region, while the islamists may be the most likely to tone down the regional belligerence of the Ottoman.

Turks are certainly not arabs--not as typically tradition-bound and tribally reflexive in thinking and action. But Turks are divided, and cannot be seen through traditional European lenses. The best course is simply to observe, and to encourage any signs of economic and cultural liberalisation.

Saudi Women Strip for the Internet Behind Closed Doors

This has become something of a scandal in the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Their girls and women are stripping for strangers over the internet, to obtain an admiration and acknowledgement that they are denied in their daily life. It is one thing for this type of decadent behaviour to be performed by infidels--but your own wife or child?

The video does not reveal whether religious clerics are calling for these females to be killed or mutilated for their internet activities.

When women are treated as cattle--as property--one cannot expect them to do otherwise than to escape in any way that they can.

There are many different ways to interpret Islam. The Wahabis of KSA have chosen one of the most oppressive interpretations, creating a nation-sized prison in the process. The young men can go off and become martyrs for their aging and evil religious puppetmasters back home. Meanwhile, back in the desert villages, the pampered imams secretly watch young arab women stripping for the camera.

Latin America Sinking Into the Same Pit As Before

Latin americans are nothing if not repetitive. After brief symbolic flings with democracy and rule of law, they almost inevitably go back to strong-arm dictatorships.

Latin American Idiots have traditionally identified themselves with caudillos, those larger-than-life authoritarian figures who have dominated the region’s politics, ranting against foreign influence and republican institutions. Two leaders in particular inspire today’s Idiot: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chávez is seen as the perfect successor to Cuba’s Fidel Castro (whom the Idiot also admires): He came to power through the ballot box, which exonerates him from the need to justify armed struggle, and he has abundant oil, which means he can put his money where his mouth is when it comes to championing social causes. The Idiot also credits Chávez with the most progressive policy of all—putting the military, that paradigm of oligarchic rule, to work on social programs.

For his part, Bolivia’s Evo Morales has indigenista appeal. In the eyes of the Idiot, the former coca farmer is the reincarnation of Túpac Katari, an 18th-century Aymara rebel who, before his execution by Spanish colonial authorities, vowed, “I shall return and I shall be millions.” They believe Morales when he professes to speak for the indigenous masses, from southern Mexico to the Andes, who seek redress of the exploitation inflicted on them by 300 years of colonial rule and 200 more of oligarchic republican rule.

The Idiot’s worldview, in turn, finds an echo among distinguished intellectuals in Europe and the United States. These pontificators assuage their troubled consciences by espousing exotic causes in developing nations. Their opinions attract fans among First-World youngsters for whom globalization phobia provides the perfect opportunity to find spiritual satisfaction in the populist jeremiad of the Latin American Idiot against the wicked West.

....The current revival of the Latin American Idiot has precipitated the return of his counterparts: the patronizing American and European Idiots. Once again, important academics and writers are projecting their idealism, guilty consciences, or grievances against their own societies onto the Latin American scene, lending their names to nefarious populist causes. Nobel Prizewinners, including British playwright Harold Pinter, Portuguese novelist José Saramago, and American economist Joseph Stiglitz; American linguists such as Noam Chomsky and sociologists like James Petras; European journalists like Ignacio Ramonet and some foreign correspondents for outlets such as Le Nouvel Observateur in France, Die Zeit in Germany, and the Washington Post in the United States, are once again propagating absurdities that shape the opinions of millions of readers and sanctify the Latin American Idiot. This intellectual lapse would be quite innocuous if it didn’t have consequences. But, to the extent that it legitimizes the type of government that is actually at the heart of Latin America’s political and economic underdevelopment, it constitutes a form of intellectual treason.

More at source.

When the average IQ of a voting population drops so low as to allow shameless and irrational pandering to a voter's bigotry--as in Venezuela and Bolivia--the voters will elect populist tyrants. These tyrants go on to change their constitutions and governments to allow themselves to continue in office for life--like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or Fidel Castro in Cuba. Hugo Chavez is 90% down that road, and Evo Morales appears likely to follow in the identical path downward.

Dysgenic immigration trends and differential birthrates suggest that the same fate awaits every developed western nation eventually, if current trends continue. If a government that enacts egalitarian policies fails to understand the need for investment in innovation, and the need for economic freedom and private ownership and profits, the die is set. Nothing can save such a government that chooses the downward path.

Moronic westerners schedule vacations to Caracas or Havana to witness their pet ideas in action. The smarter ones of those catch on pretty quickly when actually exposed to the strangling atmosphere of such a place. The majority of pseudo-intellectual idiots will never catch on. They will continue eating the vomit of morons such as Marx and Marcuse until they are dead.

US Democratic Party and Iraq--A Pyrrhic Victory?

“If America pulls out of Iraq, they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.

Hardly anyone in Congress seems to consider that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan might become much more severe if similar tactics are proven effective in Iraq.

“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”
Michael Totten's Journal

The US Democratic Party controls the US Congress, and is determined to use that control to destroy George W. Bush politically, beyond any hope of "rehabilitation." Apparently, the Bush Hatred goes so deep in the Democratic Party and its financial backers, that the Party leaders are willing to trigger a series of much greater catastrophes than the Iraq war, in order to destroy Bush.

The Democrats would like to see Bush impeached, but they are in no position to accomplish that feat. If they were honest, they would admit that only an assassination of the US President would make them happy. What they are left with in the end, is a strong personal and political need to destroy the legacy of Bush so completely, that even if in 20 or 30 years it is seen that much of Bush's overall strategy was sound, no one will ever know. Controlling history in order to control the future. It is the way despotic political cabals work.

Very sad to see a major political party in the United States placing itself in that position willingly.

Refuge from Perpetual Incompetence #1: Military Option

Regular readers of Al Fin blog are familiar with the concept of psychological neoteny. The societies of western developed nations and particularly North American societies, have adopted a method of child-rearing that results in the perpetual incompetence of an idle adolescence. By age-segregating children in classrooms of indoctrination, by removing children from all responsibility and exposure to the adult world of work, western societies are creating entire generations of incompetent and narcissistic know-nothings and do-nothings.

But there are notable refuges from the world of perpetual incompetence and irrelevance--one of which is the military. In the military there is no escape from responsibility, and no excuse for not developing the competencies of your current rating and assignment. You are thrown in with persons of all ages, backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, and experiences. You are expected to learn how to do your job, and to do it professionally.

The modern military is as much about disaster relief, and providing order for rebuilding a devastated region, as it is about fighting and killing an enemy. Military members are encouraged to improve themselves, and many gain degrees while in the service, through online courses.

Joel, who is stationed in Baghdad with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team, earned his degree through online courses and hopes to be able to watch the ceremony through an online link-up.

"A lot of it has involved slipping in homework in between missions and rest time. But there's always the unforeseen, though," Joel, 36, said Wednesday in a phone interview from Iraq. "Taking courses online gives me a sense of normalcy. ... As one class completes, I'm that much closer to being home."

According to military publications, more than 40,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have enrolled in online college courses.

Denver Post

By acquiring real world skills in a genuine world atmosphere, while still being able to earn credits and degrees online, members of the military are able to bypass the academic lobotomy that millions of on-campus university students receive every year.

While their home societies are preparing their civilian cohorts for perpetual incompetence, military members are seeing much of the world firsthand, and working side by side with people from other cultures for both peacekeeping, disaster relief, and making war.

Military members who do not make a career of the military often join reserve units or national guard units, to combine their civilian lives with continued service to their country. Career military members often retire by age 38, at which time many of them join city, county, state, or federal agencies of law enforcement or other active civil service agencies that require competent workers.

Competence is rare in a neotenous society. You have to look for it.

Brain Drain: Iran--Death of A Nation

When a nation's brightest lights choose to pack up and leave, those left behind lost a little more hope for the future.

Everyone in the class wants to go abroad.

"The main point for going out of Iran is we have no job security here and there is economic tension," says 32-year-old travel agent, Nazaneen.

The number of educated young Iranians trying to leave the country appears to have increased in the last year since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office judging by the numbers sitting the IELTS exam.

The figures have increased two-and-a-half times this year over the same period last year, according to the Australian administrators of the test.

A year ago, the International Monetary Fund said Iran had the highest rate of brain drain of 90 countries it measured.

BBC

Ahmadinejad and the prancing mad monkey mullahs have led Iran down a disastrous path, which can only result in ruin for Iran. But then, that was their whole aim, nicht wahr? Anyone who knows anything about the legend of the 12th imam, understands that it is the goal of devout Iranian Shias to bring about the apocalypse. Ahmadinejad and the other monkeys are on schedule, if not just a bit ahead.

US Democratic Party--Party of the People, Party of the Environment

All politicians are corrupt and hypocritical. That is a definite given, an axiom for the ages. But some parties exude particular impressions--of being the party for the common person, for example, or the party of the environment.

We know that if a member of the US Democratic Party were US President at this time, that everything would be right with the environment, that the people would know that they were being served, . . .

A flock of small jets took flight from Washington Thursday, each carrying a Democratic presidential candidate to South Carolina for the first debate of the political season.

For Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, it was wheels up shortly after they voted in favor of legislation requiring that U.S. troops begin returning home from Iraq in the fall.

No one jet pooled, no one took commercial flights to save money, fuel or emissions.

All but Biden, who flew on a private jet, chartered their flights -- a campaign expense of between $7,500 and $9,000.

Source

Is it possible that the general impression of the US Democratic Party could be wrong?

The enemy kills entire families including small children

People talk of an Army breaking under the strain, but while there remains a sliver of hope that Iraq might avoid conflagration into full-scale genocide, out here, where bones splinter and flesh really does burn, there is a kind of clarity. And on these empty streets, a practiced eye regards the slivers of hope that are strewn among all the chards of broken glass.

The latest group of professional soldiers I had the honor of accompanying was the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas. They opened their doors in Baghdad and wanted me to tell the people at home the good, the bad and the ugly. They didn’t hold back; they provided plenty of all three. In one neighborhood where residents have been subject to a methodical slaughter, our people found an abandoned Christian college that had already proved itself the proverbial island in the storm.

Source

US forces in Iraq appear not to be broken, or even breaking. Instead, the US military service members who brave death every day appear to be far better ambassadors for American goodwill than all the US diplomats, congressmen, and administration officials combined.

It doesn’t matter how skeptical of the war a journalist might be, according to an Army public affairs officer (PAO) who spoke with me about it on condition of anonymity. “So often, they come out of that experience and – even if their opinion of the war hasn’t changed – they’re completely won over by the troops.”

“I was one of those,” admitted Beriain, speaking broken English and blinking away tears. “No matter what you think of the war, or what has happened here, you cannot be around the soldiers and not be completely affected. They are amazing people, and they represent themselves and the Army better than anyone could ever imagine.” A retired Army officer concurred, telling me that “young troops are some of the best good will ambassadors we've ever produced. It would never occur to one to not tell you what he's really thinking, and they are so earnest” that it is almost impossible not to be won over by them if given enough time.

The biggest recent case of a journalist with an anti-war mindset being completely overwhelmed into a change of heart by American soldiers, according to the PAO, was a Greek reporter who had been embedded with a cavalry unit that became entrenched in a 45-minute firefight with insurgents. Taking cover and fearing for his life for the almost hour-long duration of the battle, the journalist had the best view possible of American soldiers in action against an armed and murderous enemy, and credits his having lived to tell the tale directly to those young troops.

“He had tears in his eyes as he talked about it,” said the PAO. “He just kept saying, “they saved my life, they saved my life...these are great men; they are heroes.” He couldn’t get through the story without choking up – and this was a man who had arrived here with all of the disdain for the Iraq mission and for the American soldiers who he saw as the bad guys in this fight.”

Source

Of course, the contrast could not be starker, between the narrative of western civilisation, and the ugly narrative of Islamism that western forces are attempting to hold back.

The objective of the Decidophobic is to make one major decision, and only one major decision, so one does not have to make another major decision in his or her life ever again. One strategy is to join a religion or a movement. One that has a set of finely prescribed behaviors that circumscribe one’s actions and offers an earthly or heavenly reward for the true believer. If a person is adrift without personal bearings and can not function in a chaotic ethical and moral environment that is perceived to have no absolutes – much like we have today – he or she will seek a belief system that offers a safe haven in this storm of relativism.

Islam fills that void

It is a strict religion that offers paradise and a sense of meaning in life to those who adhere to the simple pillars of its faith. Islam also presents to its followers a person whose life can be imitated and acts as a blue print to achieve the promise of paradise. But there is another form of ‘religion’ that is just as powerful and offers the reward of paradise here on earth. That is the belief in a strong secular ideology also led by a man to emulate – and even worship - and follow in his footsteps. Examples of these ideologies are Nazism with Hitler and Maoism with Mao Zedong.

Both of these belief systems are the answer to one suffering with Decidophobia. There is even an instruction manual for the Decidophobic that relieves him or her of any future personal decisions. The beliefs revealed and the instructions are clear in their ‘bibles’. Mein Kampf, Mao’s Little Red Book, and the Koran. These belief systems are now the Decidophobic’s community, their country that they dwell within surrounded by fellow citizens of their little nation.

Source

Of course, Iran is the source of most Islamist terrorism currently. Even some European officials are beginning to understand the starkness of the situation regarding Iran.

Although US Democratic Party congressmen and women are taking a particularly cynical and cowardly stance toward the world struggle against jihadist terrorism, coming from Iran but manifested by Iraq, it is unlikely that their disingenuous tactics will stand at the end of the season.

These are issues of life and death that most journalists and some bloggers are very eager to deny--just as the US Democratic Party congressmen and women do.

Speaking of Iran, How are your Nuclear War Survival Skills?

As Iran and North Korea continue to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons technology--with the tacit approval of China and Russia--the probability of a nuclear engagement between the "warlord governments" and the developed western world is increasing.

When the USSR fell of its own centrally-planned ineptitude, most people believed they would never need to worry about nuclear war again. Scholar Francis Fukuyama even went so far as to predict "the end of history." Who can blame all of those naive optimists for believing that it would be downhill coasting from then on?

Well, they were wrong, and history is working overtime to create another world war and perhaps a nuclear world war. So what is a prudent, intelligent, and informed person to do? I barely have the heart to tell you that you need to brush up on your nuclear war survival skills.

I suggest that you begin with Chaper 1, and take your time with it. Most people believe that a nuclear war between the great powers would mean the end of humans on earth--or at least the end of civilisation. On the Beach by Nevil Schute was pivotal in shaping popular beliefs about the consequences of a world nuclear war. Several other post- apocalyptipc novels helped to round out this bleak outlook.

Make no mistake--a large scale nuclear war would the worst event in human history up until now. The huge nuclear arsenals possessed by Russia and the US, and the huge arsenal being rapidly built up by China, would guarantee a human and environmental disaster unprecedented in history.

Still, if you knew that you could survive a nuclear war--given a little luck--would you be willing to take the trouble to learn how? Many people would not. Many people feel that if such a disastrous cataclysm were to occur, with the horrific loss of life, that they themselves would not want to live.

I understand that. Any survivors of a large scale disaster of that magnitude would have to work like hell to have any kind of decent life at all. In other words, any survivor of a large scale disaster has to have personal competence, and hopefully good health and personal integrity. Because who would want to live in a world that was run by Pol Pot characters or Hell's Angels?

The personal integrity and good health are up to you, as is the general life competence that comes in so handy when the unexpected happens. But specific knowledge and skills that could help you and your family survive a nuclear war, is something that you just have to work at, to learn. Either you want to survive or you don't, should such an unspeakable horror occur.

Update: Also see this Al Fin posting, with links to motivational videos.

Doesn't Look Lost--Objections from Iraq

An independent movie-maker, reporter, and blogger, embedded with the marines in Anbar, objects to US Senator Harry Reid's statement of surrender last week. Here are his words:

The Sheiks, the arbiters of power in Anbar for centuries, are loath to give up their power to a professional police force based on merit, a police force beholden to civil law instead of tribal patronage.

But the Sheiks are also tired of the capriciousness of the Jihadists and of appearing powerless before their tactics of terror. While many of the Sheiks doubtlessly supported elements of the insurgency, they saw their power would be cut off by the Sharia courts.

For people used to being courted for their political sway, the approach of the jihadists was dead end. The Americans, even the units doing Hammer and Anvil, were a better alternative.

....Are the militias rag tag looking? Yes. Are they professionally operated? No. Do they conform to Western standards? No. Are they effective against the jihadists? Yes.

So effective that the Marines who actually work the patrol bases and combat outposts say everything is really boring and their main job is as QRF for the neighborhood watch.

As for my time in Husabayh Jawal and Khalidiyah, it was really boring, but boring is good. ....

Source

The coalition action in Iraq will probably not have the ending that anyone would have predicted, or even preferred. But if the people of Iraq are able to resist the world wide tide of jihadism, and take concrete steps toward a representative rule of law--although not western style democracy--the state of the world will be better. Certainly if the Kurds can develop a modern Kurdistan based mostly on "rule-of-law" principles, they may demonstrate something about what muslims are capable of.

The theocratic style of government you see in Iran, and the quasi-theocracy of Saudi Arabia, may be justifiably thrown on the dustbin of history, if the people of Iraq can find it in themselves to rise above their medieval traditions, customs, and religion.