Yes. The current Al Qaeda Number One is a Muslim Brotherhood graduate, a perfect example of impatient Ikhwanism run amok.
Since the fall of the Mubarak regime and the rise of political Islamism following the electoral victories of the Moslem Brüderbund, a new potential menace has resurfaced in the security vacuum -- the rise of cut-thoat jihadist groups. These groups embrace an extreme Salafist interpretation of Islam, which accepts violence as a legitimate means of realising their demands.
"Sometimes violence is the only way to achieve your objectives!" a young Salafist jihadist from Al-Arish told Ahram Online, preferring to remain anonymous.
So true, though not nearly so often as young enthusiasts are willing to believe.
For decades, former president Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... and his National Democratic Party (NDP) asserted its legitimacy via the Islamist threat, forewarning of what has now become the political face of post-revolution Egypt: an Islamist political landslide and the rise of extreme jihadist Islamist groups.
To be followed by the murder of minorities, rapine, plunder, famine and disease... in short, the riding forth of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. One can only hope that this time the Muslim world will learn the lesson they have thus far avoided.
Today, the media, along with moderate Islamist and secular political forces and minority groups, maintain that Islamist jihadist groups are posing a mounting threat to Egypt's security and regional stability. Some experts believe scare tactics are being used to deter the possibility of an Islamist president, which seems likely given the victory of Mohamed Mursi, the Brotherhood's candidate recent in the first round of presidential elections.
"Scare tactics are typical of electoral polling. Fears of jihadists in Egypt are exaggerated," said Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a noted human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... and democracy activist. This opinion was echoed by the general advisor to the grand mufti of Egypt's prestigious Al-Azhar religious institution, Ibrahim Negm. "I don't think there is a tangible threat in the immediate future, even if Mursi loses." He added: "Though there are of course jihadist elements and pockets."
Voicing the opposite view, Henri Wilkinson, head of intelligence and analysis at the Risk Advisory Group, believes that threat is likely to intensify with time. "I'd say there is genuine potential for this threat to grow and become a much bigger issue than it is now."
There is also genuine potential that I might cross the 5' barrier I have been approaching from underneath my entire life. After all, I am only fifty in people years. Come sir, live dangerously and pronounce a probability.
This notion is supported by some grassroots observers who claim the jihadist threat is much bigger than many like to admit. "After the revolution, jihadist groups are stronger. More people joined, because they no longer fear the consequence of jihad," claimed Mohamed Sabry, a 26-year-old and journalist from Al-Arish. "I believe they are strong enough to fight if elections don't go their way and are forged by the SCAF [Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces]."
The journalist from Al-Arish, a coastal city in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula renowned for its jihadist elements, has befriended many jihadists. He told Ahram Online that such groups do not recognise democracy as a means of change.
"We do not believe in democracy; we do not vote. Democracy is atheism!" confirmed a young Salafist jihadist from Al-Arish who preferred to remain anonymous.
Some Salafists ...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them... nonetheless accepted disqualified presidential candidate Hazem Abu-Ismail as the only "real" Mohammedan candidate, and were distraught by his elimination from the race, staging a sit-in in Al-Arish's Al-Horaya Square.
Observers believe there are two principal jihadist movements in Egypt, both based in Sinai but with countrywide influence: Takfir Wal Hijra and Salafist jihadism, whose adherents are known as Salafist jihadists. Both factions adhere to an extreme Salafist interpretation of Islam, following Al-Qaeda's philosophy and goal of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate.
But experts believe that Al-Qaeda itself does not exist in Egypt.
So? If other organized groups with the same objectives and access to the Internet think globally but reapply best practices to work locally, does it matter if the front man is not Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri?
"I guarantee there is no Al-Qaeda presence in Sinai, but the Takfiris ...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who most be killed... are in the thousands," the head of North Sinai security was recently quoted as saying. North Sinai Governor Abdel Wahab Mabrouk, who also denied the presence of Al-Qaeda, also affirmed the presence of cut-thoat religious groups.
"We often don't have a name for jihadist groups, so we put them all under the same 'Al-Qaeda' umbrella to simplify matters," explained Mohamed Kadry Said, a military specialist with the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
Takfir Wal Hijra is one of the initial radical Islamist groups founded by Shukri Mustafa to have emerged in Egypt in the 1960s as an offshoot of the Moslem Brüderbund. According to the group's radical ideology, even Mohammedans that do not share its beliefs are infidels.
Most of its followers live in the desert, maintains Sabry. It is believed to have grown smaller following a security crackdown on the heels of the murder of an Islamic scholar and former government minister in 1977. However, nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... locals claim the group's influence has grown in northern Sinai in the last year, since the revolution, and some allege it is allied to Al-Qaeda.
"I feel they may be planning to do something with Al-Qaeda in the future. Our intelligence is most likely watching them very closely," asserted Said.
Sabry and the Salafist jihadist, however, believe Salafist jihadism poses a bigger threat to national security. "Takfir Wal Hijra are not a threat; they just label atheists; they do not employ violence. We, on the other hand, do!" professed the Salafist jihadist.
Salafist jihadism, as termed by renowned scholar Gilles Kepel, was first identified as a threatening phenomenon in the mid-1990s. Experts claim Salafist jihadists are in the thousands and constitute the largest jihadist force in Egypt, openly embracing violence as a means to reach political goals.
"In order to get freedom, innocent people must die," said the young Salafist jihadist. The young jihadist claimed his movement's following was much larger than experts suggest. "Check out our Facebook page: we have 100,000 likes! In Sinai, we have about 10,000 followers and in Egypt around one million." Experts, nevertheless, deny these figures.
"These jihadist groups are too small and too few in number to represent a real threat," reassured Saber Taalab, director of the Islamic Research Centre in Nasr City.
Notably, some Salafist jihadists were tossed in the clink Book 'im, Mahmoud! on charges of participating in the Sinai attacks in 2004 and 2005 that killed some 125 people at the Red Sea beach resorts of Sharm Al-Sheikh, Dahab and Taba. No evidence of their involvement in the attacks, however, was ever produced.
The group staged a sit-in last year to demand the release of its members. In response, the current interim government of Kamal El-Ganzouri released them. Many believe this amnesty would not have happened before the revolution.
Salafist jihadists were also accused last year of launching an attack on a cop shoppe in Al-Arish in which five Egyptian security personnel were killed.
When questioned about Salafist jihadism's ideology and goals, the primary issues listed include liberating Paleostine and establishing an Islamic emirate in Sinai, which many believe has been partially realised in some areas.
"We're following Al-Qaeda's strategy for establishing an Islamic Caliphate by 2020 designed by the late Osama bin Laden ... who had a brief but splitting headache... , God rest his soul," said the young jihadist. "The plan predicted the Arab uprisings, out of which an Islamic state will be born."
In the small town of Sheikh Zuweid, located only a few kilometres from Gazoo, such aspirations appear to be a reality, as slogans dubbing Sinai an "Islamic state" cover the local cop shoppe.
The town was left terrorised last year after a local Sufi shrine was blown up by five jihad boy jihadists. Locals from Sheikh Zuweid believe that the increase in jihadist extremism is a direct result of state neglect and the collapse of traditional tribal structures.
"The jihadists and groups who declare society apostate have infiltrated the tribes, taken up arms and threatened the structure of social custom," declared Ahmed El-Eiba from the Azazna tribe, an activist from Sinai.
Sheikh Zuweid is known as a hub for exporting weapons to Gazoo, and Al-Hasna and Nakhl are markets for local weapons where tribes buy and compete.
El-Eiba explained how the Libyan uprising had served to create a vibrant arms market. Weapons are purchased for personal use, or to accumulate an arsenal, such as in Syria or in larger operations that would alter regional security balances.
Islam Qwedar, a young activist from Sinai blamed former security officers in the Mubarak regime for introducing tribes to the lucrative arms trade, which has led to dwindling security. "They were the first to introduce this lucrative trade," he stressed. The rising number of luxury cars in and around Al-Arish reflects the prosperity brought about by this nascent arms trade.
"The security vacuum after the revolution led to the establishment of a black market for weapons from Libya, which was taken over by Bedouin. The situation is beyond control and can only be redressed through security measures adopted by the state," Qweder affirmed.
While the normal arms trade through Sinai tunnels to gangs in Gazoo continues, both Qwedar and Mohamed Ibrahim Hamad, the son of a tribal leader in Bir Al-Abd, are preoccupied with the recent influx of weapons from Libya and their effects on national and regional security. "Weapons markets in Egypt are now controlled by cut-thoat groups who are beyond the control of the tribe," said Hamad.
One of the root causes behind the rise of extremism in Sinai, many believe, relates to the state's refusal to recognise Bedouin rustics. A government report in 2010 said a quarter of all Sinai's population of some 600,000 did not carry national ID cards. The Bedouin account for the majority of this number; they are not allowed to own land or serve in the army and do not benefit from local tourism revenue.
"We don't feel like Egyptian citizens," said Sheikh Ahmed Hussein of the Qararsha tribe, one of the biggest in southern Sinai. "The Mubarak regime created this problem; intensified the problem of jihadist groups by not giving the people of Sinai their rights," stated Essam Durbella of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya.
Sensing the urgency of the problem, the El-Ganzouri government has granted amnesty to some tossed in the clink Book 'im, Mahmoud! hard boyz and called for the revival of several local development projects, including a railway and canal to supply water to central Sinai.
With what funding? Egypt can only feed her people now because of loans from Saudi Arabia, et al, and even that will run out as oil prices fall.
Abdullah Abu-Ghama, a member of parliament from Sinai, says this cannot come too soon. "The state has to speed up the process of development," he said. "If not, the mother of all problems will occur and hard boyz will increase in number."
Another fundamental issue plaguing Bedouin and jihadists in Sinai concerns Israel, as they see themselves as Egypt's first line of defence against Zionist expansion.
Those juices have been crowding in on the the borders of Cairo, have they, driving up property prices? Or are they referring to military expansion -- against which they were such a staunch defence in the last several wars?
Meanwhile, ...back at the laboratory the fumes had dispersed, to reveal an ominous sight... in Tel Aviv, there are intense research and policy efforts aimed at addressing Sinai as a potential flashpoint.
Israel is visibly concerned, and is making plans to revise security agreements based on military experts' claims concerning missiles being horded or traded in Sinai -- missiles that they say are more advanced than SAM, Fateh and Grad missiles, which can be used for large-scale operations. Israel's Begin-Sadat Centre has drafted a plan for the partial reoccupation of the border zone and intervention in Sinai, which has been ruled out -- for the time being -- by the right-wing Netanyahu government.
A barrier is also being built along Israel's 266-kilometre (165 mile) border with Sinai in an attempt to ease tensions between Israel and Egypt. Israeli government front man Mark Regev claimed that the barrier is aimed at preventing illegal border crossings, and may also diminish the likelihood of large-scale security threats from Sinai.
One of Israel's stated fears relates to the possibility of Paleostinian factions in Gazoo using Sinai as a launch pad for attacks on the self-proclaimed Jewish state.
Before it was self-proclaimed it was voted into existence by the entire United Nations. That was the first war the Ummah lost to the Jews, establishing the habit and demonstrating Allah's will in the matter.
The Paleostinian group Jahafil Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad fi Filastin (formerly known as Al-Tawhid Wal Jihad) based in Gazoo reflects this fear, as it is said to be linked to Al-Qaeda and closely aligned with Egyptian jihadist groups similar to those that allegedly murdered president Anwar Sadat after the signing of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Experts also believe that the puritanical Islamic ideology sweeping Sinai today poses a grave security threat, not only regionally, but also to Egypt and Paleostinian resistance faction Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,, which itself has been confronting Al-Qaeda-type militancy in Gazoo. Views on how to tackle the problem vary.
Following the trend of past Islamist waves in Egypt, some experts claim that heavy-handed police crackdowns have only aggravated the problem. Others believe the situation will only be quelled once a president has been elected in Egypt.
"With the new president and government, security will be restored," affirmed military advisor Kadry Said.
Egypt's new president and government will undoubtedly need to manage this high-priority issue tactfully," Sinai MP Abdullah Abu-Ghama warned.
Rifaat Said of the leftist Tagammu Party speculated: "If [the Moslem Brüderbund's] Mursi becomes president, jihadist elements in society may be pacified, as they might accept Mursi as the best alternative who will apply Islamic Law."
This may not, however, pacify everyone, as the young Salafist jihadist described current Islamist politicians -- including Mursi -- as "liberal."
"The Salafists and the Moslem Brüderbund in parliament are liberals with beards who are going to be the next NDP. They will just use Islamic slogans, but will not enforce Islamic Law," he said. "The Moslem Brüderbund will work with the SCAF, just like Hamas works with Israeli intelligence!"
Reassuringly, Ibrahim remains adamant -- after considerable personal and academic exposure to Salafist jihadists -- that the jihad boy jihadist problem in Egypt will be mollified with the coming of the country's next president.
How nice for him.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/10/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Saudi and Pakistan will be proud of a new jihadi ally.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, believes that college has become, for many, merely a "status marker," signaling membership in the educated caste, and a place to meet spouses of similar status -- "associative mating." Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 -- enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions). Employers value this signifier as an alternative to aptitude tests when evaluating potential employees because such tests can provoke lawsuits by having a "disparate impact" on this or that racial or ethnic group. Is that the Glenn Reynolds?
Yes. The Instapundit himself.
In his "The Higher Education Bubble," Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices -- and lowered standards -- to siphon up federal money.
The Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald notes that sinecures in academia's diversity industry are expanding as academic offerings contract. UC San Diego (UCSD), while eliminating master's programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate "a student's understanding of her or his identity." So, rather than study computer science and Cervantes, students can study their identities -- themselves. Says Mac Donald, " 'Diversity,' it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism." Somehow fitting, that it's linked to the 2008 election.
She reports that UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion. UC Davis has a Diversity Trainers Institute under an administrator of diversity education, who presumably coordinates with the Cross-Cultural Center. It also has: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; a Sexual Harassment Education Program; a diversity program coordinator; an early resolution discrimination coordinator; a Diversity Education Series that awards Understanding Diversity Certificates in "Unpacking Oppression"; and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in "Understanding Diversity and Social Justice." You just can't make this stuff up. Who would want to?
California's budget crisis has not prevented UC San Francisco from creating a new vice chancellor for diversity and outreach to supplement its Office of Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and the Diversity Learning Center (which teaches how to become "a Diversity Change Agent"), and the Center for LGBT Health and Equity, and the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution, and the Chancellor's Advisory Committees on Diversity, and on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, and on the Status of Women. All the graduates in those "disciplines" have to go somewhere!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/10/2012 14:43 ||
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I wonder why Males are no longer spending their time there?
#2
the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15
Times have changed. I was in the CLASSROOM at least 15 hours per week, with at least that much non-classroom study time (double that for science & math, which was most of my course load.) Perhaps that has something to do with being in the evil one - er, 10 - percent.
#3
Employers value this signifier as an alternative to aptitude tests when evaluating potential employees because such tests can provoke lawsuits by having a "disparate impact" on this or that racial or ethnic group.
It's not just lawsuits. It's lazy Human Resources in businesses that simply rely upon a piece of paper to avoid actual qualification and placement work. Business have defaulted to that mode for way too long.
Wizard of Oz: Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma.
If there is yet to be another productivity revolution in American business, this issue is one waiting for exploitation.
#4
It's not just lawsuits. It's lazy Human Resources in businesses that simply rely upon a piece of paper to avoid actual qualification and placement work. Business have defaulted to that mode for way too long
How true. I have had many MBA's put on my team of analyst who are dummer than a door nail. May be able to debate humanities but business since there is none. Most could not even do a simple vlookup or If statement in excel.
Posted by: Dan ||
06/10/2012 22:24 Comments ||
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#5
It's lazy Human Resources in businesses that simply rely upon a piece of paper to avoid actual qualification and placement work
Because "actual qualification and placement work" are themselves lawsuits-waiting-to-happen.
But as the recall campaign progressed, the Democrats stopped talking about bargaining rights. It was a losing issue. Walker was able to make the case that years of corrupt union-politician back-scratching had been bankrupting the state. And he had just enough time to demonstrate the beneficial effects of overturning that arrangement: a huge budget deficit closed without raising taxes, significant school-district savings from ending cozy insider health-insurance contracts, and a modest growth in jobs.
The real threat behind all this, however, was that the new law ended automatic government collection of union dues. That was the unexpressed and politically inexpressible issue. That was the reason the unions finally decided to gamble on a high-risk recall.
So they fought and they lost. Repeatedly. Tuesday was their third and last shot at reversing Walkers reforms. In April 2011, they ran a candidate for chief justice of the state Supreme Court who was widely expected to strike down the law. She lost.
In July and August 2011, they ran recall elections of state senators, needing three to reclaim Democratic i.e., union control. They failed. (The likely flipping of one Senate seat to the Democrats on June 5 is insignificant. The Senate is not in session and wont be until after yet another round of elections in November.)
And then, Tuesday, their Waterloo. Walker defeated their gubernatorial candidate by a wider margin than he had pre-reform two years ago.
These public-sector unions, acting, as FDR had feared, with an inherent conflict of interest regarding their own duties, were devouring the institution they were supposed to serve, rendering state government as economically unsustainable as the collapsing entitlement states of southern Europe. Maybe the juggernaut was stopped in time.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/10/2012 14:39 ||
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And t-h-e Michelle of Michelle's Boyz is once again in the aftermath.
"WE WERE [international] SOLDIERS ONCE", UNFORTUNATELY NOT STARRING MEL GIBSON, YOUNG + FULL OF WISCONSIN CHEESE + BEER [Midwest], so methinks we should actually be called
"MICHELLE'S BRIGADE"???
Prasannan Parthasarathi is an economic historian with a rich record of publications that focus on India's relationships with the West and other countries. In Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850 Parthasarathi marshalls the whole body of his detailed research to enter a major ongoing debate: how and why did the economic prosperity of Europe diverge so greatly from that of China and other regions after 1600 AD?
Theories about the Great Divergence generally fall into one of two camps: those that cite cultural differences and those that focus on natural resource advantages. The former school says, in effect, that European rationality as demonstrated in science, the stability provided by entrenched rule of law as demonstrated in the English common law tradition that underlies the US Constitution and related cultural characteristics (see: Weber on Protestant work ethic) came to the fore in the Enlightenment, led to the Industrial Revolution (tellingly, in Britain first) and hence to economic prosperity.
The opposing view focuses on natural resource availability as a key determinant, citing e.g. the massive flow of silver from the New World to Spain and the exploitation of the new continent by Europeans which fueled the success and expansion of industry in the 18th century until recent times when, it is said, that advantage is now disappearing and China is rising once more.
Parthasarathi enters the lists on the second side, with a difference: he extends the scope of natural resources to include certain governmental mechanisms and to technologies themselves. For example, after Indian calico cloth began to be exported to Britain under the Raj, it became all the rage with British, American and continental consumers. British weavers were able, says Parthasarathi, to exploit Indian inventions and know-how to launch the industrial textile industry at home - the first real step in the Industrial Revolution - while simuultaneously using control of India to prevent competition. The growing use of coal and team to !power factories gave a considerable cost advantage to Britain over India and consequently major textile-exporting centers began migrating there from the subcontinent. The result was that Europe grew richer and richer while India fell behind.
It is not possible to cover the detailed discussion of this book in a short review, but a few comments are in order. First, this is not (despite the title) a book about Europe and Asia - it is primarily a book about Britain and India during the period in question. Moreover, several of the author's claims are very controversial, among them the claim that Indians had developed science and technology to a level equivalent of that in Britain in the 17th-18th centuries only to have them appropriated or suppressed economically by the British under colonial rule. Here Parthasarathi cites Chinese texts which informed Indian techniques of dying and textile management, techniques which the Indians developed beyond those in the Chinese sources. Simiilarly, he details coal mining and early steam technologies developed in India prior to British rule.
While there is no doubt that the Indians had a much greater familiarity with cotton textile production of a traditional sort than did Britain, the author ignores the deep expertise of British and continental textile industries with similar techniques for fibers common to those regions, specifically wool and linen, plus imported silk, all of which played key roles in major textile production throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods. Moreover, he ignores broad and deep Western developments in earlier periods that underlay industrial techniques - monastic development of reliable clockworks, for instance, during the Middle Ages, along with exploitation of water for powering mechanical devices which informed later steam-driven machinery.
Rantburg readers might be most interested in the later chapters of this book which detail tax and import/export duty polices of the Raj which, the author argues, significantly distorted competitiveness of the two competing textile industries in Britain's favor. A dissenting opinion is presented in a scholarly review on the website of the Economic History Association. For instance, that review notes that due to low labor productivity, Indian textile production was at a disadvantage to that of Britain quite without tax or duty issues.
The EH site review, which I discovered after reading this book, illustrates how scholarly peer review process can and does often work well. Only after citing detailed differences of evidence and interpretation by other scholars does the reviewer sum up his assessment:
By blaming the Raj squarely for everything that went wrong with India's nineteenth century development, Parthasarathi offers us a warmed-up old nationalist chestnut, and his waving at the post-colonial literature does not add much credibility to his case. While he is surely right that one can easily overstate the weaknesses of the Indian economy on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, his cherry-picking of examples (there are only a few tables in the book and only one of them pertains to India) simply does not persuade. Had Britain and India been at the same level of economic and institutional development in 1750, why was there no "Western Europe Company" set up in Delhi that would have exploited the political divisions within Europe, established an Indian "Raj" based in London and forced Europe to accept Indian calicoes without tariffs? Moreover, there were Asian nations, from Persia to Siam, which were never controlled by European Imperialists, yet they never seem to have developed much modern industry either. Neither, for that matter, did Imperial China, which poses a logical problem for anyone trying to blame imperialism for economic backwardness in Asia....
Parthasarathi is a learned and well-read historian, and he is no-doubt correct in pointing out that scholars have underrated the vitality and strength of the Indian economy in the eighteenth century. There were enclaves of highly skilled craftsmen and craftswomen in India, and it is easy to overrate the advantage that Britain and Europe enjoyed over Asian countries such as India and China. But in his justifiable indignation over the disrespect shown by "Eurocentric" scholars to Indian civilization, he lets his rhetoric get the better of him and so hopelessly overstates his case as to undermine the credibility of those corrective elements he provides to the standard story that are most valuable.
I recommend Parthasarathi's book and the EH review, both, to Rantburg readers willing to go through detailed discussions of particular cases in order to consider just what factors are at work in generating national wealth. Parthasarathi is right to say that import duties, tax levies etc. can stimulate or crush an economy over time. But that is not, by far, the only factor involved in national competitiveness. Natural resources also matter but today, in particular, a whole raft of cultural and legal structures matter just as much: reliable intellectual property protection, a well-grounded educational system, access to capital for investment, whether and in what way a country encourages immigration - these will play a critical role in our own future wealth or loss thereof. In addition to presenting a good deal of information that is not well known in the West, this book provides an illustration of just how complex international economic relationships and the growth or loss of national advantage has always been.
#1
The whole geographic determinism thing, Jared Diamond's conceit, was put to rest with authority by Victor Davis Hanson a decade ago.
Why is this Indian guy even desirous of beating this dead horse?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
06/10/2012 12:51 Comments ||
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Diamond is easy to put to rest, since his claims are so very sweeping and general.
Parthasarathi does an excellent job of documenting a much greater pre-industrial sophistication in India than is usally recognized in the West. fWIW, I find his book interesting for that reason, for the specifics of economic policies etc. he documents and in general as a springboard to contemplate just how complex and intertwined culture, law, economy and use of military power can be ....
My field is cognitively informed computing, so I watch e.g. related Chinese publications with much interest. For a long time, they were pretty derivative. But lately they have taken the lead in some areas.
It interests me to speculate why and how that might have come about and what we might want to do in response.
#4
The United States (aka the 13 colonies) revolted from GB largely because of economic issues. So given that the economic policies of the time were not remotely even handed it is fair to say that India was operating under an econoimic handicap.
But on the flip side, India had access to western technology, education, and markets. Also, the caste system disenfranchised a large portion of the population. Blaming the whole thing on resource imbalances strikes me as odd; didn't most of the cotton come from India by the time of the US Civil War?
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
06/10/2012 16:22 Comments ||
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[Dawn] QUETTA has been plagued by continuous acts of violence for the past several months. On Thursday, a bomb went kaboom! outside a madressah killing at least 16 people. Though relatives of a JUI-F leader were among the victims, with no group claiming responsibility it is unclear if a rival group was behind the blast as the police too remained in the dark; in fact a number of religious parties protested against the killings on Friday. Such acts of violence -- along with regular assassinations -- in the scenic provincial capital make it clear that Balochistan's ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... administration has failed to do its job. Of course, there are several shades of violence in the troubled province. While on one end security agencies are accused of killing Baloch activists and then dumping their bodies, separatists are also alleged to be committing atrocities. Among the victims of Quetta's violence have been personnel of the Balochistan Levies as well as regular coppers, some of whom were investigating sectarian murders. Non-Baloch civilians have also been bumped off, while members of the Shia Hazara community are targeted on a regular basis. Some Sunni holy mans have also been killed. Such is the tangled web of violence in Quetta.
The Balochistan government often makes tall claims about initiating 'operations' against 'terrorists', yet these have failed to translate into reality as violence in Quetta keeps escalating. Even the prime minister's recent visit to the scenic provincial capital has had little effect on the situation. If the administration cannot maintain order in the scenic provincial capital, we wonder how it would be able to do so in other militancy-hit areas in Balochistan. It is convenient for the rulers to blame 'terrorists' and 'foreign agents' for fomenting trouble in the province. But beyond the blame game solid action needs to be taken so that people's lives are secure. The police as well as other provincial and federal law-enforcement agencies need to come up with a comprehensive plan to neutralise violent elements in the province and prevent further bloodshed. The writ of the state is largely absent from Balochistan. It is high time the authorities in Quetta and Islamabad took measures to change this.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/10/2012 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV] The exacerbating unrest in Syria stems from an imperialist agenda aimed at eliminating the Middle Eastern governments unfavorable to the US interests in the region, a political analyst tells Press TV.
"It is an agenda for replacement of governments that are not acceptable to American imperialism," said political commentator Ralph Schoenman in a Friday interview, alluding to the Syrian crisis.
"It is not only in Syria this project... it is intended for Iran. It was implemented in Libya; it is the nature of imperial intervention in the region. That is the underlying reality here; everyday confirms it," he added.
Schoenman pointed out that Washington has not scrupled to conceal its real agenda, saying, "From the beginning the US spokespersons and the secretary of state and the US representative to the UN have made it explicit that their objective is to remove the government in Syria."
The political analyst questioned the reliability of the UN peace plan in Syria and argued that such "punitive peace plans" merely accuse the government of violating the peace deal, while they give a free hand "to financed and armed terror instruments of the Qataris of the Saudis of the Turks of the Libyans under the direction of imperialism."
Violence rages on in Syria despite a UN-brokered ceasefire, which is part of the peace plan proposed by UN-Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... envoy Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011 and many people, including hundreds of security forces, have been killed in the country over the past 15 months.
While the West says the government is responsible for the killings, Damascus ...Home to a staggering array of terrorist organizations... blames "outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups" for the unrest and insists that it is being orchestrated from abroad.
This article starring:
Ralph Schoenman
Posted by: Fred ||
06/10/2012 00:00 ||
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Some think that Ohio will decide the presidential election. Others are watching Florida or North Carolina or Wisconsin. But if you really want to know who will win the White House in November, you should ask the Europeans. They aren't eligible to vote, but they may well cast the deciding ballot -- and for President Obama, it's looking grim.
For all the chatter at home, the election won't be determined by fundraising, or Bain Capital, or Obamacare, or Mormonism, or birth certificates, or even crucial issues about taxes and spending. In the end, Obama will win if voters perceive the economy to be improving -- which it was until Europe's troubles stalled the recovery in recent months. Seems like kind of a narrow view, Dana. Are you seeking a scapegoat for November? Already? Yes indeed. It's all Spain's fault. Or Italy's. Or those shiftless Greeks. If it hadn't been for them we'd be creating those 500K jobs a month Joe Biden said we'd be creating. And if this excuse doesn't fly they'll come up with another one...
On this, Obama is helpless -- Perhaps the Post didn't mean that as they wrote it...
as evidenced by the White House statement Wednesday regarding his phone calls with European leaders. They "agreed on the importance of steps to strengthen the resilience of the euro zone and growth in Europe and globally, and agreed to remain in contact," the White House disclosed.
Europeans are in a stalemate -- paralyzed by disagreement and unable to act on the dire problems all around them. The denial is palpable here in Britain, where, in response to the crisis in the neighboring euro zone, manufacturing is plunging and growth has slowed almost to zero. Britons' disposable incomes are declining for the third straight year. A report this week found that British banks are sitting on $62 billion in undeclared losses. The same public discontent that has toppled governments on the continent has forced the conservative government here to reverse various austerity measures.
Obama has begun to blame weak employment reports in the United States on Bush the troubles in Europe, arguing that the growth will resume once there is a "sense of stability in the world economy." Unfortunately for Obama, there's no sign here that Europeans will come to grips with their problems before November.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/10/2012 13:59 ||
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Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/10/2012 14:27 Comments ||
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#2
building the blame game early on. It couldn't possibly be that voters reject his message and program
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/10/2012 14:27 Comments ||
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#3
Our previous Narcissist Grodon Brown said "It started in America" in order to blame anyone but himself, It doesn't work. Give a (credible*) plan to fix it and show a bit of leadership and you might get more support than you think from your polling groups.
Apparently the post-modern Govt's love of perpetual or permanently upward-sloping straight lines in all things POLECON, aka "LALA-LAND" WHERE CHAOS + MISTAKES + PROBS, ETC. NEVER EXIST, OR AT LEAST ARE NEVER ADMITTED OR ACKNOWLEDGED, GOES ON.
In 410 AD, the city of Rome was overrun and sacked by Germanic tribes. If you're of a certain age, you will have been taught that these and other tribes attacked a decadent empire, bringing to an end the Classical period in history and launching the Dark Ages -- centuries during which the mechanisms of civilization were absent, standards of living collapsed and which ultimately gave rise to feudalism and the Middle Ages. The evidence seems clear: after about 400 AD, archaeological evidence shows a much lower standard of living, a much less rich and robust economy and interruptions of civic mechanisms in the Roman heartland itself. Rome's legions were withdrawn from Britain and elsewhere in Europe and the empire decayed rapidly.
In Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisted: The History of a Controversy Emmet Scott says it didn't happen that way. Scott picks up, extends and broadens a competing theory: namely, that the Empire as a whole -- whose center had long since moved to Constantinople and the bulk of whose citizens lived in the East, not the West - prospered after the sack of Rome, that Germanic and other tribes were eager to adopt Roman ways and that the sudden collapse of the Empire was due to the effects of militant Islam on a richly interdependent trade economy across the Mediterranean.
Scott cites detailed examples of 5th and 6th century Frankish, Gothic and other tribal leaders who explicitly adopted Roman administrative methods, appointed officials to offices defined in Roman law and acknowledged the emperor's authority. He notes evidence that Classical authors were well known and cited by Western (and not just Byzantine) writers during this period, illustrating that Classical learning was alive and well in the western portions of the empire. And he documents the role of the Catholic church and monasticism in not only preserving but also in advancing science and technology throughout these and later centuries.
So if Roman civilization was thriving, what happened to cause a collapse? Scott cites detailed evidence for a major collapse around 620 AD all across the Mediterranean world. Sophisticated agricultural infrastructure in the form of irrigation and field use suddenly become silted and inperable. Coins are no longer minted. Luxury goods that once were commonly imported no longer appear in the archaeological record. New building projects cease and old infrastructure crumbles rapidly.
Scott says the answer is clear. Muslim piracy and constant attacks on key economic centers destroyed the web of trade in the Mediterranean world. Islamic conquests resulted in rule by Arabs who neither knew nor cared about agriculture, so that countries like Egypt -- once the breadbasket of the Roman empire -- turned to sand. Slave trading became prevalent and skilled workers from the empire were forced into servitude in Muslim courts.
Sometimes a technology becomes critical to an entire civilization. In the Roman empire, that technology was, arguably, papyrus and written documents. Official activities, day to day business transactions and the education of the young -- all depended on the availability of papyrus as the medium for record keeping and writing in general. The Arab conquest of north Africa resulted in a total embargo on papyrus exports to the empire and, says Scott, as a result the sophisticated, complex empire was unable to recover from and respond to the piracy and physical attacks launched by the Muslims. A millennium-old civilization collapsed nearly overnight.
Scott's account is an important corrective to the narrative established in the 19th century, which promoted Islam as a tolerant and sophisticated society who invented and transmitted knowledge to the backward West. Scott insists, for instance, that while some transmission did occur, such inventions as the use of zero in mathematics came from India, with whom the Roman empire had had open trade for centuries that was subsequently interdicted by the Muslims.
Scott's account will be welcome to many Rantburg readers and contains a good deal of useful information. I am cautious about whole heartedly embracing his account, however, for several reasons. First, he has a repeated tendency to cite some information and then assert that we can make no other interpretation of that information except his own. When accounting for complex events that happened long ago and for which we have only fragmentary and indirect evidence, sweeping hand waves are not enough to convince me that the evidence has been carefully weighed and evaluated.
And that brings me to Scott himself. Although the book cover describes him as a "historian specializing in the ancient history of the Near East" I have not been able to find any corroborating evidence of his training, any prior publications or any institutional affiliation. Historians tend to publish less often, and with longer papers, than is common in scientific or technical fields, but they do publish and their publications are peer reviewed with often trenchant commentary from the unconvinced. So far as I can tell, Scott has only written this one book, which was published by the New English Review Press. Editors for the New English Review include Theodore Dalrymple, Ibn Warraq and several of the writers for the JihadWatch website -- in other words, people who have in common a belief that Islam is a major and destructive threat to our own civilization. They may well be right, but this book needs to be taken with a certain skepticism. Scott cites many sources, but he has a tendency to greatly oversimplify a number of relevant theories and facts along the way. Historians have since the 1950s seen the interaction between the various tribes, both IndoEuropean and Hun, and the Roman empire as a complex dance in which they are now allies, now military enemies. Moreover, there is strong evidence that the empire did indeed suffer for two centures from significant internal political, economic and demographic problems which would have made it much more susceptible to Muslim attack in the 620s. Scott neither acknowledges these nor generally speaking seems to understand the complexity of issues at work in the period. An historian trained at the doctoral level would, I think, at a minimum address 60 years of scholarly work in these areas, if only to refute it.
The question of Scott's training and experience matters specifically because he advances a position with sweeping claims. If he had trained at the doctoral level, we would know under whom and therefore with what bias. If he had published before, we could fill in the gaps in his argument from shorter, more detailed works and thereby accept or reject his argument with reference to those works. As it is, the book appears out of a vacuum, sponsored by people who themselves are not historians and who, furthermore, have a very specific political and cultural position they seek to advance. Caveat lector - let the reader beware.
I would like, though, to note one interesting speculation that Scott reports. Just how was it that the Arabs were able to so rapidly conquer and control vast areas of the Mediterranean region, especially since they lacked maritime expertise of their own? Scott briefly proposes that some members of the Persian elite converted to Islam specifically because of their hatred and envy of the West and out of enmity to the Romans with whom they had fought a number of inconclusive wars. Frustrated at their inability to expand into Europe and at their loss of influence with e.g. Egypt, they saw the Arabs and this new ideology as a means to reassert Persian influence across the ancient world. It was, says Scott, Persian-allied fleets that gave the Arabs the means to control shipping, launch raids and attack the West. Worth thinking about today.....
Some readers will also be interested in Scott's assertion that the holy war mentality exhibited by the Crusades was adopted by the Church in response to the effectiveness and justifications for Muslim jihad.
#1
Just keep in mind that while the Western Empire was dealing with the Muslims in the south, they were also dealing with Saxons in the north. The sea faring raiders game their name to the Litus Saxonicum, a military command of the late Roman Empire in Britannia, centuries before. The depredations by the Saxons of Britain after the withdraw of the legions was not much different with the degradation of 'civilization' as attributed to this thesis. It's the Arthurian myth and history of the island that recalled a brief moment of recovery before the proverbial deluge.
#4
Thank you GG, it reminded me. An anthology of both views are in The Barbarian Invasion:Catalyst of a New Order, ed. Katherine Fisher Drew; Robert Kreiger Publishing Co., Huntington NY, 1977. Google if interested.
#5
Procopius2k, your book is available at Amazon.com, though not in Kindle form. :-).
Glusoger Gruter1463, good catch. Mr. Scott talks about Henri Pirenne's work as being key to his own thoughts in the free sample chapters available at the link lotp gives in the article.
#3 This seems to be a replay of the exact theory of famed Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, who wrote in the early 20th century.
Posted by: Glusoger Gruter1463 2012-06-10 11:29
#6
It is indeed Pirenne, extended with evidence beyond the Italian penninsula and with a strong focus on the economic impact of Islamic attacks.
However, as I noted, Scott's more sweeping claims fail to take into account internal issues which had endangered the empire for centuries before Islam came along. For instance, Diocletian imposed massive wage and price control in 301AD in an attempt to counter currency devaluation among other problems.
Moreover, there were serious cultural issues facing the empire as well - for instance, a major demographic drop among native Romans due in good part to deliberate use of effective abortion and contraception. Roman inheritance and tax laws did not particularly favor having children, and raising them got in the way of having fun. Similarly, participation in public affairs required one to invest a good deal of private money in pulic works, so over time Roman elites withdrew from leading the state while retaining their privileges. Legalizaion and later adoption of Christianity addressed the demographic but not the leadership problem.
Well before the sack of Rome, tribal groups were being paid to patrol the boundaries of the empire - or paid off to avoid attacks. Over time they were integrated more formally into the Roman armies, but usually without the discipline and structure of the legions. The results were mixed, to put it mildly .....
A bit early. Muslim expansion to Africa really began only 20 years later. And pirates in the Mediterranean existed well before the Muslims took over. Rome seems to have coped with them for centuries.
Also Africa didn't turn into a wasteland after Muslim conquest. North Africa was actually only conquered in a second wave from 665 to 689.
The loss of Egypt dealt a heavy blow to the Byzantine empire, but it managee to stay alive for another 800 years. The Western Roman Empire had become disfunctional well before Mohammed was even born.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/10/2012 14:50 Comments ||
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#8
"Islamic conquests resulted in rule by Arabs who neither knew nor cared about agriculture"
Also doubtful. This may have been true for the beduins of the Arab heartland, but the conquest of Mesopotamia changed all that. The early Arab success did not just rest with military exploits but with the ability of the conquerors to secure allies and adapt themselves quickly to their new surroundings. They did not destroy old Roman and Persian irrigati0n practices, but rather perfected them as evidenced in Andalucia.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/10/2012 15:06 Comments ||
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#9
Later, perhaps. But there is a distinct layer in the archaeological remains, consistent throughout the Mediterranean and dated to about 625 or so, in which all of the irrigation and other infrastructure becomes heavily silted and non-functional.
That could be due to an environmental/weather disaster - but no records exist to suggest such, including in e.g. China. FWIW
#10
So if Roman civilization was thriving, what happened to cause a collapse?
Might not have been Islam but the Byzantine Empire, specifically Justinian's attempt to reconquer the western Empire. He laid waste to Italy a couple times over the time period ~ 530 to 550 CE trying to seize and hold it against the various Ostrogoths. In the process the accumulated wealth of the western Roman Senators, which had previously survived the collapse of the western Empire, was devastated. Similar results were seen in north Africa as Justinian took those, and his successors had to try and hold them against Vandals, Goths, military insurrections and finally the Muslims.
This pre-dates Islam by about a hundred years, but both the western Mediterranean empire and the eastern Byzantine Empire suffered because of Justinian's overly ambitious plans to reconquer all of what was formerly Roman territory.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/10/2012 17:19 Comments ||
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#12
Steve White is correct. Justinian actually prepared the grounds for Muslim rule in North Africa which was seen as more benign (and to a point actually was) more benign than Byzantine rule.
Sure dhimmis had to pay a special tax but could still practice their faith and could rise to very high positions. Islamic "tolerance" very much depended on the respective Muslim ruler. Córdoba must have been one of the most civilized places in Europe, but let's not forget that the Islamic society in Andalucia depended a lot on slaves. Yet all this was not much different from the rest of serfdom in Europe. In the 11th century fanatics from Morocco took over and while they also adapted to a refined lifestyle, tolerance waned. Reconquered Christian Toledo shone brightly.
It's important not to interpret history with an ideological eye. Christians and Muslims weren't that much different in the Middle Ages. But the Muslim civilization stalled and turned backwards and never saw Enlightenment.
It still can, but this will change religion forever like it happened with Christianity. And a lot of blood will flow before hopefully success can be achieved.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/10/2012 17:47 Comments ||
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#13
There was also a major Roman Persian war from about 582-602 AD which was supposed to have caused enormous damage to both the Sassaniod and the Roman empires.
Furthermore, both empires made use of Arab mercenaries, which had the effect of training the Arabs in various military tactics, while weakening the Byzantines and Persians and making them vulnerable to Arab conquest.
#15
There are/were Muslims and Muslims. The much-touted liberal and sophisticated Islamic states in Spain were conquered by a bunch of non-sophisticated,non-liberal Muslims, another wave from North Africa.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
06/10/2012 23:35 Comments ||
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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.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, believes that college has become, for many, merely a "status marker," signaling membership in the educated caste, and a place to meet spouses of similar status -- "associative mating." Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 -- enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions). Employers value this signifier as an alternative to aptitude tests when evaluating potential employees because such tests can provoke lawsuits by having a "disparate impact" on this or that racial or ethnic group. 
By lotp
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
Some think that Ohio will decide the presidential election. Others are watching Florida or North Carolina or Wisconsin. But if you really want to know who will win the White House in November, you should ask the Europeans. They aren't eligible to vote, but they may well cast the deciding ballot -- and for President Obama, it's looking grim.
By lotp.
