Sure to stir up controversy, an interview with Nobel laureate Doris Lessing was published 10/21/07.
"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," the Nobel Literature Prize winner told the leading Spanish daily El Pais.
"Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be."
Lessing had sharp words for both President Bush and his ally, former British premier Tony Blair.
"I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning," El Pais quoted Lessing as saying. "Many of us hated Tony Blair, I think he has been a disaster for Britain and we have suffered him for many years. I said it when he was elected: This man is a little showman who is going to cause us problems and he did."
"As for Bush, he's a world calamity," added Lessing. "Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."
Iran also came in for a lashing from Lessing, who was born to British parents who were living in what is now Bakhtaran, Iran.
"I hate Iran, I hate the Iranian government, it's a cruel and evil government," she was quoted as saying.
"Look what happened to its president in New York, they called him evil and cruel in Colombia University. Marvelous! They should have said more to him!"
An excerpt from an interview the day she was awarded the 2007 Nobel prize for literature:
"I'm about to be demented. Maybe I already am demented," she says, gesturing hostilely toward the phone, which brays without cease. "I'd like to make you some tea. Would you like milk and sugar? I'll be right back. And if this thing rings, throw it out of the room."
Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Lessing in London for comment Monday were unsuccessful. Her agent's office said the author was unavailable because she was not feeling well.
There are plenty of easy punchlines off that not feeling well part, but I doubt its because she realized she just said something colossally moronic. The old bat is 88 and it probably doesnt take much to put her out.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/23/2007 16:19 Comments ||
Top||
#7
" I take it Doris don't get laid much..." Me neither, tu3031, but I'm not bonkers. At least I don't think I am.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/23/2007 19:05 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I got as far as "Nobel laureate" in the first sentence, and stopped there. I take it someone who thinks she's oh-so-important has said something she thinks is oh-so-profound?
Yawn.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
10/23/2007 19:11 Comments ||
Top||
#9
If you can't diss everybody when you get a Nobel, when can you diss everybody?
Europes no-go zones or SUAs (sensitive urban areas) are multiplying. These are areas where the police no longer dares to venture and where Islamists hold sway. Every night since the beginning of last week, immigrant youths have been torching cars and clashing with police in Amsterdams Slotervaart district. The incidents started on Oct. 14 when a policewoman shot dead Bilal Bajaka, a 22-year old ethnic Moroccan, whilst he was stabbing her and a colleague with a knife. The officers were stabbed in the breast, face, neck and back. Surgeons could only narrowly save their lives.
Since the incident, Slotervaart has seen rioting almost every night. The Amsterdam Moroccans are shocked because one of them has been killed by an infidel woman. According to his family, Bilal Bajaka was mentally deranged and had a suicide obsession. Ahmed Marcouch, the Moroccan-born Socialist mayor of Slotervaart, criticized the Dutch authorities for failing to provide adequate health care for Bajakas mental problems.
Bilal Bajaka was, however, a personal friend of Mohammed Bouyeri, the Jihadist who ritually slaughtered the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh in 2004. Bilals attack on the two police officers came exactly two years after the arrest of his brother, Abdullah Bajaka, the leader of an alleged plot to blow up an El-Al Boeing at Amsterdam airport. Bilals family background is not at all deprived. One of his sisters is a medical doctor, another sister is a Dutch judge.
For ten days now, the situation in Amsterdams immigrant neighbourhoods has been tense. Senior police officers compare the current situation in Amsterdam to the 2005 Ramadan riots in Paris. Media outside the Netherlands, however, hardly mention the riots, which aim to drive the police from Slotervaart and turn the neighborhood into a new no-go area yet another pocket of Eurabia on Europes soil.
Similar events are currently taking place in Brussels, the capital of neighbouring Belgium and of the EU. Last Sunday, demonstrating Turkish youths ransacked an Armenian restaurant in the Sint-Joost-ten-Node borough. According to the owner the police was present at the scene but did not interfere while his establishment was being demolished. The Armenian had to flee for his life.
Another man who had to run for his life was the Belgian journalist Mehmet Koksal, an ethnic Turk. He was attacked around 11 pm on Sunday evening by a group of some twenty Turkish youths in front of the American embassy in Brussels, a few yards from the Belgian parliament building. The Parliament and the US Embassy are less than one kilometer from Sint-Joost-ten-Node. Koksal fled to a nearby police car, but a female police officer refused to let him into the car, whereupon the youths savagely beat him up. Fearing that they were about to lynch him, the police officer changed her attitude and allowed the journalist to seek refuge in the police car.
Koksal told the press today that he is not going to press charges against the police for failing to help him. The police woman was more afraid than I was and ultimately the police came to my rescue, he said.
#1
Areas where police are unable to go should be subdued by whatever military force is required. Unfortunately, it is not clear The Netherlands has such force available (even if they had the will to use them) and Belgium clearly has neither forces nor will. If Deerborn goes this route we CAN take care of it, but I doubt we have the will either. It's just more appeasement on a smaller scale, and will ultimately lead to the same end.
#2
The people have the will... at least when it comes to Dearborn. The main question is whether the US government would order troops to fire on its own people as the people sorted the situation out once and for all.
I speak entirely hypothetically, of course. Think of this comment as a sort of science fiction. I am not advocating anything, just "asking questions". Etc.
#7
Not to worry about dearborn...they're smart enough not to sh*t where they eat. Oh, they'll wear the stupid hijab and prance around but they're surrounded by the Blacks to their east flank (both sides do not like each other) and lower to middle class whites on the other three sides. It's a well known dislike if on the q.t. that the arabs are not well liked by the other two groups. Couple that w/a big chaldean population and plenty of serbs and you have enough of a powder keg for them to keep their manners.
I thought (and wrote to that effect) that both the gratuitous and toothless Senate resolutions calling for the de facto trisection of Iraq, and condemnation of Turkey for the century-old Armenian holocaust were unnecessary barbs that would only inflame an already anti-American Turkey.
BUT we should confess that much of Turkish anti-Americanism is ill-founded and derives from their own ongoing fights between Islamists and Attaturk Secularists and has nothing to do with anything the United States has done. Recent polls reveal that Turks are among the most anti-American and anti-Christian peoples in the world, the latter fact not surprising to anyone who reads deeply of the 500-year history of Hellenic-Ottoman relations.
A second point: by and large the United States has treated Turkey well. We support its entry into the EU; we tried to be fair in the Cyprus dispute (despite the Turkish brutal invasion in 1974); we offered a lot of money to use bases to supply the invasion of Iraq; we advise the Greeks patience in the face of constant Turkish overflights in the Aegean. We were a good ally in the Cold War, and kept the Soviets doing to Turkey what it did to Eastern Europe.
Again, nothing really justifies the elemental hatred that the present generation of Turkey seems to exhibit for America, or the perverted manifestations of anti-Semitism or things like the mega-hit, anti-American film and subsequent TV series Valley of the Wolves (replete with murderous American soldiers and an organ-harvesting Jewish doctor).
Where does that leave us? I believe we need to cool the resolutions, continue to talk nicely to Turkey, send out diplomatic peace-feelers, assuage Turkish wounded pride, hope for the bestand start making immediate contingency plans for a possible dramatic break from this erstwhile critical Nato ally.
And that would mean backup plans should it become necessary to abandon facilities inside Turkey, and seek closer relations with Armenia, Kurdistan, Greece, Cyprus, and other regional neighbors. Perhaps both sides have been clumsy, but there are developments going on in Turkey that are far larger than inept diplomacy, and we should quit denying the danger, or despair that without the old Turkey we are adrift in the Eastern Mediterranean. We are not.
We should never promote such divides, but recognize the current course of Turkish politics is not necessary ahistorical, but may in fact be a natural reaction against the historical aberration of Attaturk's secularism, as European Turkey begins to become overwhelmed, demographically and culturally, by anti-Western, anti-globalization Anatolian Islamism, and thus begins to replay the historical role of the Ottomans-whom, contrary to current orthodoxy, I don't find to have very been positive for civilization as a whole.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/23/2007 12:32 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
IN other words, VDH thinks we need to be prepared to get out of Turkey and treat them as the enemy they have become, and then look out for a civil war that will break Turkey apart.
I've been saying that for a while. Nice to have someone like VDH on my side of things.
Step 1: keep the Turks out of Iraq. That means deploy US forces opposite of them on the N Iraqi border. NOW.
#4
Not an expert on Turkey, but break-apart. Beyond the Turk/Kurd rift are there any other potential pieces? Beyond historical connections does the Bosporus have any real connection to Greece anymore?
#5
abandon facilities inside Turkey, and seek closer relations with Armenia, Kurdistan, Greece, Cyprus, and other regional neighbors.
Note how all four of those countries have Christian populations. One of them, Armenia, is possibly the oldest Christian nation on earth. While Turkey does indeed have a Christian population they are little better than Iraq, more likely worse, in how they continue to repress this peaceful religious constituency.
America would do well to begin assembling a coalition of Christian, or even better, non-Muslim nations with the intent of halting Islamic encroachment and opression from spreading further. While, as Wafa Sultan notes, this is not merely a clash of religions or even civilizations, there currently remain few stronger rallying points than that of religious freedom. Islam's flagrant lack of reciprocity with respect to religious freedom is so glaring and blatant as to represent an ideal lever with which to pry away its erstwhile allies. We must construct a united front against Islam's rising storm and fighting religious oppression is an ideal platform upon which to establish that bulwark.
#6
Zenster, US bases in Cyprus and Armenia, in addition to a new permanent facility near Kirkuk (as well as the new bases in Romania) would be more than anough to replace Incirlik.
#7
Problem with Armenia is 1) they constantly try to fight out of their weight class and 2) they're playing kissy-face with Iran (so as to put down the Azeris).
The Greeks don't like us much more than the Turks. Cyprus will do whatever Greece tells them to do. The Kurds are not in the best of positions.
And Prof. Hansen, that's about it for the 'neighbors'.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/23/2007 18:36 Comments ||
Top||
By promoting "moderate Islam" on the Turkish model, Taspinar adds, America undermined the secular state founded by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. That is why secular Turkish nationalists hate America just as much as Turkish Islamists.
Its Bush allowing state to screw thigns up again. Grow a pair George and quit being a damned wimp.
#2
Good writeup - Turky is in a vise between islamists and its own faile Kemalists. They need ato break up Turkey and break apart the Kurds and other suppressed miorites, like to hold former SU states did.
#3
The State Department has been endorsing "political islam" since the Clinton administration. I recall seeing a photo montage of pictures of the wives of Egyptian leaders, before and after US dhimmitude. In the older photo, none of the wives are robes; in the current version, ALL are. The perception of anti-secularist leadership in America, is not far fetched.
#4
The culprit, he argued convincingly, is Washington's misguided promotion of Turkey as a model of "moderate Islam". The abominable stupidity of American policy towards the region - I would use stronger words if I could find them - is in large measure responsible for the looming catastrophe.
Mind you, it's not in our being repressive or anti-Muslim, it is precisely because we have tried to reconcile with an implaccable enemy. We could not be more stupid.
Professor Taspinar, who also teaches at the National War College, is one of America's best-known experts on his native country, and I am chagrined to have overlooked his analysis until now. He places most of the blame on Washington's portrayal of Turkey as a paragon of the "moderate Islam" it wants to sell to the rest of the Muslim world.
Bush and most of America's traitor elite continue to seek out some sort of example of "moderate" Islam, when there is no such thing. They will continue to do so until, one day, untold thousands or hundreds of thousands of Americans are slaughtered in a final demonstration of just how "moderate" Islam really is.
By promoting "moderate Islam" on the Turkish model, Taspinar adds, America undermined the secular state founded by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. That is why secular Turkish nationalists hate America just as much as Turkish Islamists.
DO NOT underestimate the importance of this one single observation.
Turkey is enmeshed in a terrible battle for its national identity, in which neither the secular nor the Islamist parties have any use for "moderate Islam".
Key concept.
Partition implies the realization of Turkey's worst nightmare (and one of the nastier nightmares for Iran and Syria), namely an independent Kurdish state with its capital at Kirkuk, the "Kurdish Jerusalem", sitting on abundant oil revenues.
Boy, howdy. That just rips my heart out, ya know?
... nowhere is it written that Washington must try to avert a Turkish civil war. America's civil war was the best and bravest thing it ever accomplished; it washed away the stain of slavery with an ocean of blood. The cost was terrible, but human freedom is beyond price. If Turkey requires a civil war to choose between a Western and Islamic identity, who is to say that what was good for America is not the cure for Turkey as well?
Yowwie!! Suffice to say that Sunni and Shi'ia discord are now bearing their final bitter fruit: Namely, an independent Kurdistan. Had Islam's two major sects been able to reach some sort of accord, they might have had the moral authority to prevent Kurdish statehood. Instead, nothing could be more fitting and all that remains is to wonder whether Kirkuk's "Jerusalem" will be the center-point of an equal amount of religious strife as its spiritual namesake. No way am I betting against it.
#5
Zen: "Traitor elite" is exactly right. I never fail to find a grotesque amusement in leftardic rantings about this supposed warmonger president. The entire establishment sucking off the saudi oil teat have bought and paid for the maniacs out to slit our throats.
#6
BS. I have lived in Turkey, ran projects there, travelled it and even saw it in the service. This has a long run-up before Bush, before Clinton, before even Carter. Turkey is a moslem country, period. It is as secular as you can get being moslem, much like Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Lebanon. But like Indonesia, the army controls the secularization - however, the politics has creeping Islamization much like the other states except Egypt which is a true authoritarian state with a repressed by present Islamic movement. The Turkish military has allowed the Islamists to remain in power as long as they keep their Islamization limited. Once they go sharia the army will take the country back. The only thing "moderate" is that it is a democratic country if you extend that definition to the way politics and religion are practiced in Turkey. They are caught between a rock (Moderinization and moving toward Europe) and a hard place (Islamization). Turkey is its own problem - even State couldn't have screwed it up as bad as it has done to itself (with France and Europe's help more than America's).
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/23/2007 9:58 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Jack, the question is: Wil the Army take the chance to occupy N Iraq as a distraction for the Turkish people, or not?
If so the Army will disappear after the US attacks and defeats it in Iraq. And its vulnerability, especially once they get rolled back, and have Turkish soliders paraded around as POWs by , will be evident.
Thats when the Kurds and others figure they might have a chance, and Turkey falls apart in a massive civil war.
#9
No way the the US attacks the Turkish Army. A strong letter of reprimand and a 2 week vacation back home for the Turkish ambassador. It's the only secular institution in a region of islamic chauvanism. If the Kurds want to try to give the Turks a bloody nose, no one can stop them from trying. In addition, US forces are reliant on Turkish supply lines and don't need to be fighting a much larger NATO force. There are bigger beturbaned fish to fry.
Posted by: ed ||
10/23/2007 12:52 Comments ||
Top||
#10
I am all for a two pronged attack. One to take back Constantinople, the other to take that 40 mile strip of desert in S.Arabia.
#11
ed if we do NOT attack the invading Turks, the Kurds will - and the Iraqi army will disintegrate as the Kurds in it flow N to defend their homeland.
We have no choice but to attack any and all Turkish units if they make any moves beyond the small mountainous areas where the PKK operate, and of they make any move at all toward attacking the cities or abusing the citizens.
Right now, Iraq is far more important than Turkey. And I suggest you re4ad the Spengler article thats linked to here. The Turks are no longer allies - they are one of the most anti-American nations in the world.
As for the Turkish Army - what good is that secularism if all it presents is warmed over fascist Kemalism, and the stomping of a valuable ally in the region, the Kurds? It will be seen as a sellout by the US, in the region. ANd that will cause even more trouble.
Again, go read that article that is linked to here. And read VDH as well.
#13
Oldspook, This is only muslim rooster chest puffing. Any incursion will be shallow and short lived. We would be demanding the same if attacks cam from Canada or Mexico. We don't need to the fighting a half million man army, especially when our supply line goes through their territory.
We need to manage this situation and let the Turk military know in no uncertain terms that if they go too far they will lose access to our latest weapons, while in a few years Iraqis will be equipped with said weapons and then it may be the Iraqis who will cross the border with impunity.
Don't lose sight of the real enemy. It is Iran. We keep screwing around and delay the inevitable war and one day we will see 20 million American vaporized.
Posted by: ed ||
10/23/2007 13:27 Comments ||
Top||
#14
This has a long run-up before Bush, before Clinton, before even Carter.
Indeed, which is why I include Bush with America's traitor elite in my own list of who's to blame. Moreover, it is vital to know that Islam has, does and will always hate us no matter what we do. There is no possible conciliation with Islam.
Turkey is a moslem country, period. It is as secular as you can get being moslem, much like Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Lebanon.
Which, essentially, means superficially secular and rabidly Muslim. Thereby being of no use to us and in need of a smackdown. Fortunately, Turkey being the, well, turkey it always has been they will most likely find some way to descend into civil war. At that point, perhaps the military will use their force to quell the Muslim population, even if it takes more than decimation.
Don't lose sight of the real enemy. It is Iran. We keep screwing around and delay the inevitable war and one day we will see 20 million American vaporized.
Word, ed. Let Turkey fall on its own sword. Iran is Job #1.
Actually, I think there is a genuine split in the populace. The cosmopolitan secular elite actually reject much of islamic dogma, but they are vastly outnumbered by the average/rural Turks who are observant muslims. The problem is that with the push to democratic reforms, the Turkish muslim norm has risen to the elite positions and will over time push out the seculars, military coup not withstanding. That's the read I get from my relatives who were stationed there during the cold war.
Posted by: ed ||
10/23/2007 13:53 Comments ||
Top||
#16
Thank you for the insight, ed. However:
The cosmopolitan secular elite actually reject much of islamic dogma, but they are vastly outnumbered by the average/rural Turks who are observant muslims.
Secular or no, until Turkey's intelligentsia violently "reject" fundamentalist Islam, they will represent nothing more than the moderate Muslim baby who gets thrown out with the jihadist bathwater. The West cannot afford to waste its breath upon those, Muslim or otherwise, who are unwilling to take the task in hand, onerous though it may be. While unapparent, Islam's very survival is at stake, we have only yet to make that fact a much more stark feature in the MME (Muslim Middle East) landscape.
My point is that the only thing keeping Turkey from going full monty Islamicfascism, ala Iran, is the army. I wouldn't even call the army "a moslem army". They are about as secular as you can get. They used to vet pretty seriously and competently any Islamist trying to get in and watch the officer corps like a hawk for any Islamic tendencies. You can bow east 5 times a day but you'll never get promoted, never get the car and driver, never get the nice base housing, etc. But the army is like any other army, it is there to protect and defend its homeland regardless of the politics of the PKK vis a vis a united Kurdistan. It is not going to sit idly by while the PKK (now under somewhat US protection) excursions the border and kills and captures its assets. So the dilemma I see is not one of Turkey vs. Iraq or an emerging Islamic state in Turkey but the army who guarantees Turkey's secularism (and therefore its Nato membership) defending its homeland and itself. You know, no Nato member has ever gone toe to toe with another Nato member. Iraq is defacto a US territory at this time whether we want to admit it or not. That is why the Congress is so stupid and wantonly unpatriotic to put our Nato alliance in jeopardy.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/23/2007 16:24 Comments ||
Top||
#18
What I was concerned with is overkill - you dont put 2 Armored disions deployed in echelon up on the border of a mountainous area unless you are roarignly7 incompetent as to theri deployment into said mountainous area, or else you are planning a penetration and breaktrhough into more favoreable terrain, i.e. Kirkuk.
Thats what ahs my eye. Had they moved in a couple of Infatry untis or split the armored division upinto combined arms teasm, and reployed it alont eh border widely for a broad but shallow push, I'd not be nearly as concerned.
HAving them change the deployment and stance of those Armored Divisions woudl go a long way toward showing thier intent to be an acceptable level of over the border incustion, but not an invasion.
You simply do not line up full armored divisions in narrow assault depth on major roads if all you need is coutneroffensives into mountainopus terrain. Its a recipe for disaster for those units if they try to roll them into the mountains like that.
#19
Allow me to respectfully play Devil's Advocate:
A) 2 Divisions is a lot of troops (20,000+ ?) As OS says, running thru the mountains will get them chewed up pretty quickly. Given that stupidity and incompetence are often good explanations - are the Turks that stupid?
B) Lots of troops. Is this a demonstration - a display to put some fear into the PKK and show the US the Turks are serious?
C) Again, lots of troops. Is this the Turkish idea of what to bring to an insurgent stomping? I would expect more infantry than armor, but maybe they feel they need the support. We are kinda sorta back to the incompetence thing.
#20
Steve S, its not just numbers, but deployement postures and compostion.
THats what rings the alarm bells. If we were to spread the 4th ID along our border wiht Mexico, there'd be outcry about closing the border, but not alk at all about invasion. On the other hand were we to mount up the 1st Cav and 1st AD out of Ft Hood and put them on the major roads concentrated for a deep enetration, people would be thinting we are making an oil grab into Mexico.
Force composition and posture mean a lot.
That being said, I did mention elsewhere that this might jsut be Turkish posturing to get the US to move againt the PKK. I'm hoping htats all this ends up being. THe consequences of the worst-case are terrifying.
William Gibson, South Carolinian by birth, British Columbian by choice, is famous for inventing the word "cyberspace," way back in 1982. His latest novel, Spook Country, offers another interesting coinage:
Alejandro looked over his knees. "Carlito said there is a war in America."
"A war?"
"A civil war."
"There is no war, Alejandro, in America."
"When grandfather helped found the DGI, in Havana, were the Americans at war with the Russians?"
"That was the 'cold war.' "
Alejandro nodded, his hands coming up to grip his knees. "A cold civil war."
Tito heard a sharp click from the direction of Ochun's vase, but thought instead of Eleggua, He Who Opens And Closes The Roads. He looked back at Alejandro.
"You don't follow politics, Tito."
That's quite a concept: "A cold civil war." Since 9/11, Mr. Gibson has abandoned futuristic sci-fi dystopias to frolic in the dystopia of the present. Spook Country boils down to a caper plot about a mysterious North America-bound container, and it's tricked out very inventively. Yet, notwithstanding the author's formidable powers of imagination, its politics are more or less conventional for a novelist in the twilight of the Bush era: someone says, "Are you really so scared of terrorists that you'd dismantle the structures that made America what it is?" Someone else says, "America has developed Stockholm Syndrome towards its own government." Etc. But it's that one phrase that makes you pause: "A cold civil war."...
Indeed. A year before this next election in the U.S., the common space required for civil debate and civilized disagreement has shrivelled to a very thin sliver of ground. Politics requires a minimum of shared assumptions. To compete you have to be playing the same game: you can't thwack the ball back and forth if one of you thinks he's playing baseball and the other fellow thinks he's playing badminton. Likewise, if you want to discuss the best way forward in the war on terror, you can't do that if the guy you're talking to doesn't believe there is a war on terror, only a racket cooked up by the Bushitler and the rest of the Halliburton stooges as a pretext to tear up the constitution....
No doubt. Mr. Funkhouser and his friends on the wilder shores of the Internet are unusually stirred up, to a degree most Americans would find perverse. Life is good, food is plentiful, there are a million and one distractions. In advanced democracies, politics is not everything, and we get on with our lives. In a sense, we outsource politics to those who want it most and participate albeit fitfully in whatever parameters of discourse emerge. For half a decade, the "regime change" and "inside job" types have set the pace.
But that, too, is characteristic of a cold war. In the half-century from 1945, most Americans and most Russians were not in active combat. The war was waged by small elite forces through various useful local proxies. In Grenada, for example, Maurice Bishop's Castro-backed New Jewel Movement seized power from Sir Eric Gairy, the eccentric prime minister, in the first-ever coup in the British West Indies. Mr. Bishop allowed the governor general, Sir Paul Scoon, to remain in place (if memory serves, they played tennis together) and so bequeathed posterity the droll paradox of the only realm in which Her Majesty the Queen presided over a politburo. Though it wasn't exactly a critical battleground, Grenada springs to mind quite often when I think of cultural institutions in the U.S. and the West. The grade schools no longer teach American history as any kind of coherent narrative. "Paint me warts and all," Oliver Cromwell instructed his portraitist. But in public education, American children paint only the warts -- slavery, the ill-treatment of Native Americans, the pollution of the environment, more slavery ... There are attempts to put a positive spin on things -- the Iroquois stewardship of the environment, Rosa Parks' courage on the bus -- but, cumulatively, heroism comes to be defined as opposition to that towering Mount Wartmore of dead white males. As in Grenada, the outward symbols are retained -- the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance -- but an entirely new national narrative has been set in place.
Well, it takes two to have a cold civil war. The right must be doing some of this stuff, too, surely? Up to a point. But for the most part they either go along, or secede from the system -- they home-school, turn to talk radio and the Internet, read Christian publishers' books that shift millions of copies without ever showing up on a New York Times bestsellers list. The established institutions of the state remain under the monolithic control of forces that ceaselessly applaud themselves for being terrifically iconoclastic:...
I tried to excerpt the high points. Anyway, I get the feeling that people who live in glass houses shouldn't brag about what big iconoclasts they are. I also wonder... these self-proclaimed iconoclasts have proclaimed themselves to be enemies of the fascists, but they haven't done anything to fight fascism per se, they've just worked to cut away the middle ground between surrender and aggressive fascism. I doubt the result will be good.
#1
I have finished reading Spook Country and I had a hard time getting through it (and I am a person who has read Proust). It is like a "beatnik" sci-fi version of WoT with overtones of Truthers, Ron Paulism and Indo-hispanic mysticism. The may have to make a movie in order for us to understand it.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/23/2007 16:16 Comments ||
Top||
#2
"A year before this next election in the U.S., the common space required for civil debate and civilized disagreement has shrivelled to a very thin sliver of ground."
Thin sliver, indeed. So thin you may as well call it nonexistent. If it hasn't vanished entirely already, it will soon if we remain on the present course. "Cold Civil War" is a damned good description for what we're in right now-- but I have a gnawing sense of dread that it's not going to stay cold much longer.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
10/23/2007 17:44 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I have a gnawing sense of dread that it's not going to stay cold much longer.
Islam The Liberals traitors wouldn't have it any other way.
This is Mom's article; she wrote : You may recall Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin lecturer who drew some well-deserved flak for espousing various 9?11 conspiracy theories. Barrett tried to heckle Horowitz and the students--who were not particularly friendly to Horowitz--booed Barrett out of the Union Theater. See Ann Althouse.
by Pedro Oliveira Jr. and Mary Duke
Conservative author David Horowitz attacked Muslim extremism and anti-Iraq war movements, calling liberals unable to add two and two and get four Monday.
Horowitz, who has been called racist by numerous University of Wisconsin student organizations, is the founder of the Students for Academic Freedom. He visited UW as part of a campaign to kick off Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.
I figured the cold weather was coming, so I figured Id warm things up, Horowitz said.
Im afraid I am going to disappoint you; this evening is not about prejudice against Muslims.
The lecturer compared the war in Iraq to the Vietnam War and said bringing American troops home would cause further loss of lives in the Middle East.
The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a good thing, and the United States cannot afford to pull out, he said.
Horowitz criticized liberal opposition to the war in Iraq, and said had U.S. troops not invaded the Middle East, thousands of Jews in Israel would be killed as a result of religious extremism.
If Arabs in the Middle East disarm, there will be peace. If Jews in the Middle East disarm, there will be genocide, he added.
The lecturer also addressed oppressive acts of religious extremists against women in the Middle East.
There are 130 million Muslim girls who have their genitals sliced off at puberty without anesthetics, Horowitz said.
Former UW lecturer Kevin Barrett who attracted national media attention to the university for promoting his belief that the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were an inside military job was in attendance and voiced opposition, disrupting Horowitzs talk near the beginning of the lecture.
[Horowitz] is a suspect in mass murder and high treason, and needs to be confronted to tell the truth and force him to defend his ridiculous racist views, Barrett said in a later interview with The Badger Herald.
Barrett, who was booed by the crowd after he interrupted the speech, left the Memorial Union Theater shortly thereafter in the midst of a popular UW football tradition the asshole chant.
Before the lecture, dozens of UW students protested Horowitzs visit, wearing green shirts to encourage unity amidst their cause and chanting Racist, fascist, anti-gay, right-wing bigot go away.
Among organizations represented at the event were the Muslim Students Association, College Democrats, Black Student Union, MultiCultural Student Coalition, International Socialist Organization and the Campus Antiwar Network.
College Democrats Chair Oliver Kiefer said protesters intended to change the tone of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, and added though protesters may not agree with Horowitzs ideas, they respect Horowitzs right to freedom of speech.
Im excited to see everyone here these organizations represent people from every part of the globe, Kiefer said. One thing scarier than [Horowitz] speaking is silencing people.
CAN member Chris Dols said though Horowitzs reasons for terrorist attacks in America are rooted in religion, America is the aggressor occupying the Muslim world.
The lecture was followed by a question-and-answer session in which many students presented their reactions to the speaker.
I just find it hard to believe that someone could argue that the reason why we invaded Iraq was for purely humanitarian reasons, when there are so many other occasions that we had not acted upon, UW senior Jael Jaffe said.
When it benefits the U.S. through the oil availability in the Middle East, Jaffe added, we find a motivation to go and create an excuse to overthrow a regime.
College Republicans Chair Sara Mikolajczak, whose group sponsored the event, said opposition was not as much as College Republicans were expecting the organization was actually expecting it to be a little more radical.
I dont know what the reasoning for it not coming out in that manner was, but it did go very well and I think people heard a lot of things they wouldnt have otherwise heard, Mikolajczak said. Hopefully it opens up for a better discussion and more discourse on campus.
College Republicans Vice Chair Mattie Duppler agreed with Mikolajczak, saying there should be more talks at UW about the war in Iraq and Islam in the Middle East.
I definitely appreciate all the people who came out tonight who came and listened to the presentation respectfully, Duppler said.
#1
Barrett, who was booed by the crowd after he interrupted the speech, left the Memorial Union Theater shortly thereafter in the midst of a popular UW football tradition the asshole chant.
#2
Horowitz criticized liberal opposition to the war in Iraq, and said had U.S. troops not invaded the Middle East, thousands of Jews in Israel would be killed as a result of religious extremism.
To the hard left and some squishier types, that's a feature of not invading, not a bug.
What a disappointment yesterday's mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation federal trial was. What the public wanted was clarity and closure in this long-running case. What the jury delivered after 19 days of deliberation and an additional four-day delay in unsealing the verdicts was confusion. So profound was the confusion that Judge Joe A. Fish seemed startled when he opened the sealed verdicts only to discover that the jury had left most counts blank. Even the jury seemed bizarrely unsure of what it had decided. Small wonder Judge Fish declared a mistrial.
Family members of the five defendants in the terror finance case were jubilant after the judge declared the mistrial. But their joy may be premature. Prosecutors have pledged to retry the case. Four of the five defendants likely will have to return to federal court to begin the entire process over again.
The non-verdict on most of the counts was a serious blow to government prosecutors, who have had a decidedly mixed record in terrorist fundraising cases since Sept. 11, 2001. The Holy Land Foundation case was by far their most important prosecution to date. The feds swung for the fences and missed.
Close observers of the proceedings saw this coming. The government did a poor job making a complicated white-collar case understandable to ordinary citizens who often seemed perplexed and overwhelmed by an avalanche of facts and data. As one trial watcher said, it was like seeing his rural East Texas grandmother struggle through a graduate-level seminar in modern Middle Eastern politics.
Despite the jury deadlock, the trial wasn't a waste of time. Whether or not a crime was committed, evidence from wiretaps and videotapes for example, the Hamas fundraising skit in which defendant and former Dallas city engineer Mufid Abdulqader chanted, "Death to Jews is precious" was morally damning for defendants who claimed to be humanitarians. More importantly, the government introduced evidence showing how the infrastructure of many major U.S. Muslim organizations ties together, and how they have their philosophical roots in the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
The preponderance of the evidence strongly suggests that the Holy Land Foundation was no mere charity. That does not let's be clear prove criminality. Going forward, the government must change its flawed strategy if it hopes to prevail.
That last paragraph is astounding. So you can collect money to fund Hamas but not have committed a criminal act. We need a new strategy. all right. No prisoner, no torture, no trial.
Well now. Let's be clear that the last paragraph is correct: preponderance of evidence is not enough to gain a conviction in a criminal court. The standard is reasonable doubt, and clearly a confused jury is never going to clear that standard.
Perhaps the government needs to rethink how it puts people on trial. But these folks were either American citizens or permanent residents: a criminal trial with full constitutional protection is their basic right, and one I (for one) won't sacrifice in the WoT. We have been able to gain convictions in American courts for WoT-related crimes; what's required is a vigorous Justice Department and capable federal prosecutors who put the trials on clearly and convincingly for a jury.
This also means we need to work vigorously at the other end: if it's difficult to convict a Hamas-related financial scam in an American court, then deal with Hamas overseas. It's awfully hard for sympathesizers in this country to send money to an organization that's been wiped out.
American citizens have the full protection of our constitution, sometimes to our frustration. But the gunnies in Gaza? Bombs away, baby.
#1
I'll add my $.02 in that I think all the turmoil at the top of the Justice Dept. contributed to the poor prosecution of this case. With Gonzalez permanently in the hot seat in Congressional hearings, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the gov'ts prosecutions have been disrupted.
#2
If you want to see a slam-dunk justice department prosecution, just join the border patrol and unholster your weapon...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/23/2007 11:46 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I don't have any answers, but I am seeing a general breakdown between our government and the people it is supposed to represent. Good minds need to come up with new solutions to the problem that our enemies have become very successful at using our own system against us. We now face the very real risk that we could lose our freedoms because of the abuse of our freedoms.
#4
This case has to have been in the works for years. Hard to blame it on Gonzo alone. It speaks to systemic problems. One of them is demonstrated by Steve White's attitude, with which I do not necessarily completely disagree. But we can expect to see more OJ type acquitals as muslims use the legal system against us. And be prepared for more extension of dhimmi policies thanks to multi-culti administrators.
Another independent blogger/writer in Iraq doing the sort of reporting the MSM can't/won't do. Open yer wallets and hit his PayPal link if you like his writing and photos ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/23/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Attention MODS: I haven't figured out the system for posting an article (I am remarkably low tech))
Here is a piece about Horowitz at the University Of Wisconsin that Rantburg might find interesting.
You may recall Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin lecturer who drew some well-deserved flak for espousing various 9?11 conspiracy theories. Barrett tried to heckle Horowitz and the students--who were not particularly friendly to Horowitz--booed Barrett out of the Union Theater.
See Ann Althouse link below.
#3
What is particularly sad are the women liberals in New York that refuse to condemn this.
Something about Christian hating female leftists that will never get it. Part of me thinks that if their own daughters were going through this the mothers would be the first to join Dhimmitude and refuse the help (witness the leaching bad boy friend syndrome). Only thing missing is the turban and physical mutilation. Their mother's have already done the mental damage to them.
Don't know what these sick people think is normal but islam isn't it.
This is the message prime minister Ehud Olmert is carrying urgently to French President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday and British premier Gordon Brown Tuesday, according to DEBKAfiles military and intelligence sources.
Last week, Olmert placed the Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian nuclear breakthrough before Russian president Vladimir Putin, while Israels defense minister Ehud Barak presented the updated intelligence on the advances Iran has made towards its goal of a nuclear weapon to American officials in Washington, including President Bush.
Olmert will be telling Sarkozy and Brown that the moment for diplomacy or even tough sanctions has passed. Iran can only be stopped now from going all the way to its goal by direct, military action.
Information of the Iranian breakthrough prompted the latest spate of hard-hitting US statements. Sunday, Oct. 21, US vice president Cheney said: "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.''
Friday, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen said US forces are capable of operations against Irans nuclear facilities or other targets. At his first news conference, he said: I dont think were stretched in that regard.
It is worth noting that whereas Olmerts visits are officially tagged as part of Israels campaign for harsher sanctions against Iran, his trips are devoted to preaching to the converted, leaders who advocate tough measures including a military option; he has avoided government heads who need persuading, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.
The Israeli prime minister hurried over to Moscow last Thursday after he was briefed on the hard words exchanged between Putin and Irans supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran Tuesday, Oct. 16.
According to DEBKAfiles sources, the Russian leader warned the ayatollah that the latest development in Irans nuclear program prevented him from protecting Tehran from international penalties any longer; the clerical regimes options were now reduced, he said, to halting its clandestine nuclear activities or else facing tough sanctions, or even military action.
The Russian rulers private tone of speech was in flat contrast to his public denial of knowledge of Iranian work on a nuclear weapon. It convinced Olmert to include Moscow in his European itinerary.
Our sources in Iran and Moscow report that Putins dressing-down of Khamenei followed by his three-hour conversation with the Israeli prime minister acted as catalysts for Iranian hardlinerss abrupt action in sweeping aside senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani Saturday, Oct. 20 and the Revolutionary Guards General Mahmoud Chaharbaghis threat to fire 11,000 rockets and mortars at enemy targets the minute after Iran comes under attack.
Our military sources say Tehran could not manage to shoot off this number of projectiles on its own. Iran would have to co-opt allies and surrogates, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and pro-Tehran militias in Iraq to the assault.
DEBKAfiles US military sources disclosed previously that if, as widely reported, Syria is in the process of building a small reactor capable of producing plutonium on the North Korean model, Iran must certainly have acquired one of these reactors before Syria, and would then be in a more advanced stage of plutonium production at a secret underground location. Something I previously suggested.
#2
More than anything, we are total idiots to presume that warhead miniaturization and device to missile integration represent any sort of obstacles for Iran.
Anyone who is remotely sane must also consider that Iran might be just as happy to send a much less compact yet functional nuclear device on its merry way to our shores. Far fetched? Perhaps. Ask yourself, "Is this a risk you're willing to take?"
Crush Iran now. No delays, no excuses, no further risks.
#3
JPOST > Israeli Ambassador > Very littel time remains to stop Iran from having a nuclear bomb, although diplomacy-negotiations are still preferred. Iran must get NOT the impression that come/after January 2009, when Dubya's POTUS successor takes office in Amer, that it can do what it wants or wills without fear.
#4
STRATEGYPAGE > IRAN: A LARGER THREAT THAN NUKES. Iran's neighbors [small states]nowadays worry notsomuch about per se Iranian nuke ambitions but more zabout Iran trying to take over non-Iranian territory incrementally, by bits and pieces. IRAN > FIGHTING A WOT INCREMENTALLY? WHILE ALSO TRYING TO BUILD AN EMPIRE INCREMENTALLY???
#5
Obtaining weapons grade U235 or Pu239 should not be too challanging for Iran, especially since they are not likely to be too worried about safety.
Building a nuclear device that will actually explode is also relatively straightforward.
Miniaturization is much, much more difficult. There are many things which must be done essentially to perfection or the bomb will lose its symmetry and 'fizzle.' That effort will almost certainly take some trials and errors - which we should be well able to detect. But without miniaturization, Iran's delivery system is likely limited to suicide trucks or boats.
#6
Glenmore: not as much as you might think. The typical "3rd world nuclear weapon" of about 1000kg or less can be carried by augmented Shahab-3 missiles. Packing about a 25kt blast.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Europes no-go zones or SUAs (sensitive urban areas) are multiplying. These are areas where the police no longer dares to venture and where Islamists hold sway. Every night since the beginning of last week, immigrant youths have been torching cars and clashing with police in Amsterdams Slotervaart district. The incidents started on Oct. 14 when a policewoman shot dead Bilal Bajaka, a 22-year old ethnic Moroccan, whilst he was stabbing her and a colleague with a knife. The officers were stabbed in the breast, face, neck and back. Surgeons could only narrowly save their lives.
(Debka)
