#1
Of course we'll ignore the unspoken campaign by the Saudi government to send their jihadists off to Iraq to be slaughtered like pigs to a packing house, care of the US Armed Forces. The ruling family's hands are technically clean and the cancer is removed as a significant threat to their station. Saudi Arabia walking out of the OPEC cabal appears to be one of their 'paybacks' for allowing us to let them play that game. In a cynical geo-political sense, its a win-win outcome for both countries.
#2
Saudi Arabia walking out of the OPEC cabal appears to be one of their 'paybacks' for allowing us to let them play that game.
We don't "allow" them to play that game. And it's not a game - it's a balancing act the rulers have to manage in order to prevent the kind of full-out internal revolt that happened to the Shah. Our enemies are the people of Saudi Arabia, not the rulers. It's not physically possible to prevent the Saudi population from perpetually working themselves up into a frenzy. Sayyid Qutb wasn't an agent of the Egyptian government, and he came up in an era when Nasser was spouting socialist slogans, not praises of Allah. The fact is that Muslims around the world recognize a higher power, and that higher power is not the rulers of the nations they inhabit. The people they recognize as taking dictation from that higher power is clerics, and the reality is that Islamic clerics are very, very hard to control, given that one of the principal tenets of Islam is that any Muslim ruler who acts against Islam is himself an infidel and must be slaughtered like an infidel.
A gruesome crime wave is shaking Mexico to its core, with children murdered, headless bodies left in piles and ordinary Mexicans losing the little faith they have in the police and government.
While violent crime has long been rampant in Mexico, a spate of recent killings have gone beyond anything seen before as drug smugglers slaughter rivals and common criminals, often helped by corrupt police, turn more brutal.
Hitmen from the Gulf cartel drug gang left a pile of 11 headless corpses piled up near the city of Merida and police say the victims were likely still alive when decapitated.
Drug gunmen killed 13 people including a baby and a university professor at a party in the picturesque tourist town of Creel, breaking a taboo against killing children.
You are seeing a deterioration, and a very drastic and violent terrorizing factor, said Fred Burton, an analyst for the U.S.-based Stratfor security consultancy.
President Felipe Calderón, a strong-willed conservative, made the fight against crime his top priority when he came to office in 2006 but drug murders have soared to a record 2,700 so far this year in a war between gangs.
August was the bloodiest month in three years of clashes that began when Mexico's most-wanted man Joaquin Shorty Guzman took on rival traffickers for control of smuggling routes. About 450 people were killed last month, most of them in the border states of Chihuahua and Baja California.
Natividad Gonzalez, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, warned last week that drug gangs were holding greater sway over town and village authorities, threatening a collapse of the basic government structure in our country.
Calderón is now under pressure to crack down after 150,000 people marched through Mexico City in an anti-crime protest and his National Action Party may suffer at mid-term legislative elections next year.
Even crime-hardened Mexicans were shocked by the kidnapping and murder of a 14-year-old boy whose body was found on Aug. 1 in the trunk of a car in Mexico City despite his father paying a ransom.
Increasing numbers of people are asking for protection against armed robbery and kidnapping at a shrine to Saint Sharbel, said to help desperate causes, at a church in the capital's middle class area of Polanco.
Terrible crime is the main worry in our country today, housewife Francisca Hernandez, 53, said at the shrine this week. I come to pray for my children, who have to go out to the street to work every day, said Hernandez. Her daughter was robbed gunpoint on a bus recently.
Mexican drug gangs have yet to launch major terror attacks like Colombian traffickers who murdered 107 people in bombing a commercial airliner in 1989, and killed over 60 more in a car bomb attack on the headquarters of the DAS security police.
But Stratfor's Burton said Mexico's Sinaloa and Gulf cartels probably have the necessary weapons, communications and intelligence to launch spectacular attacks in retaliation for Calderón sending thousands of troops against them.
Could you see them placing a large car bomb next and start killing a lot of people or start killing elected officials including Calderón himself and the attorney general? he said. It's not a bold leap, especially with the kind of money and resources they have.
Calderón, state governors and the mayor of Mexico City held a summit last month and agreed on a long list of anti-crime measures but many of their promises, like a vow to rid Mexico's underpaid police forces of corrupt cops, are not new.
Calderón is coming under fire for the crime wave although his popularity rating is still high at above 60 percent.
Local and state governments are also facing much of the blame. Voter disapproval of Mexico City's leftist mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, a possible presidential candidate in 2012, rose to 45 percent from 37 percent in June mostly due to his failure to reduce crime, a poll in the Reforma newspaper showed this week.
There is mistrust of the police mostly but also of the political class in general, said human rights worker Victor Clarke Alfaro in the violent northern city of Tijuana near the U.S. border.
The opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000, may pick up votes in next year's elections, said political analyst Ana Laura Magaloni.
Calderón's anti-crime plan seems unclear to many people, she said. As long as it's not clarified then voters are going to reject that and give an advantage to the PRI, she said.
(Except the media have picked it up as their Important Story du jour.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/12/2008 19:34 Comments ||
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#3
The cartel have a balancing act to play. If they reduce the Mexican government to ineffectiveness, the Yankee will be on their back [along with the hunting skills developed in Iraq]. Regardless of Justice Kennedy's personal belief, Mexicans within their own border are not afforded the US Constitutional protection. Pancho Villa couldn't operate today like he did back a hundred years ago. The American military let lose like that then would have him today. At the same time, focusing the effort on each separate cartel will weaken them vis a vis their competitors who'll be sure to pick up the remains. The again, no one said they look far beyond their immediate bank account.
#2
I have been calling this one out (Hillaryin 2012) ever since she got jobbed by Obama.
If Obama loses, the bloodletting in revenge by the Clinton machine will be terrible and widespread in the Dem party. And the Kos & MoveOn types will be the first one to feel the Clinton knife at their throat.
#3
anonymous2u, yes....he said that, but he didn't say anything in the article that contradicts that.
I just kind of hope OS is right. Anything that puts those cretins at Kos & MoveOn back in their cage is ultimately a good thing for everybody, not just the Dems.
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
09/12/2008 22:42 Comments ||
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#4
And the Kos & MoveOn types will be the first one to feel the Clinton knife at their throat.
From your lips to God's ears, Spook. I don't like either faction within the Donks (which is why I'm a Trunk), but let's face it...the nation is not served well when one of its two parties is (usually) sober and responsible and the other is just barking, bats**t, howling-at-the moon crazy.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
09/12/2008 23:40 Comments ||
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#5
As for Morris' prognostications...given this as an example of his track record, I wouldn't want him tinkering with my 401K.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
09/12/2008 23:44 Comments ||
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Senator Joseph Biden Jr., the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, is an experienced, serious and smart man. But he does say some curious things. A day on the campaign trail without some cringe-inducing gaffe is a rare blessing. He has not been too blessed lately.
Just this week, he mused that Senator Barack Obama might have been better off with Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate.
"Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America," Biden said Wednesday in Nashua, New Hampshire. "Quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me."
Earlier in the week, in Columbia, Missouri, Biden urged a paraplegic state official to stand up to be recognized.
"Chuck, stand up, let the people see you," Biden shouted to State Senator Chuck Graham, before realizing, to his horror, that Graham uses a wheelchair. "Oh, God love ya," Biden said. "What am I talking about?"
But it was the Clinton remarks that touched a potentially sensitive spot for the Obama-Biden ticket. With Sarah Palin's addition to the Republican ticket potentially energizing some women voters, Biden's remarks raised anew a legitimate question of whether Obama would have been better off picking the former first lady as his running mate. One could imagine Senator John McCain's campaign even using Biden's remarks in their own ads to exploit female misgivings about the Democratic ticket.
Obama knew what he was getting when he picked Biden as his running mate: A veteran of six terms in the Senate, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, an Irish Catholic with working-class roots, a guy who had twice been tested in the arena of presidential politics.
And a human verbal wrecking crew. This is the fellow who nearly derailed his nascent presidential campaign last year by calling Obama bright and clean and articulate and who noted that you needed a slight Indian accent to walk into a Dunkin' Donuts or 7-11 in Delaware.
The guy who, reading his vice-presidential acceptance speech from a TelePrompter, bungled McCain's name, calling him "George" ("Freudian slip, folks, Freudian slip," he explained).
The guy who, on the day Obama announced him as his running mate, referred to his party's presidential nominee as "Barack America" and noted that his own wife, Jill, a college professor, was "drop-dead gorgeous" but who, problematically, possessed a doctorate.
The guy who has said he is running for president (not vice president) and who confused army brigades with battalions. Who referred to his Republican vice-presidential opponent as the lieutenant governor of Alaska.
Aides to Obama said that Biden's propensity to misspeak could pose problems, particularly in the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 2. They are watching his performance on the trail warily, but so far have not tried to rein him in.
But they have assigned a couple of veteran minders to travel with him - David Wilhelm, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, and David Wade, former spokesman for Senator John Kerry. Wade said that Biden's occasional stumbles prove to voters that he is human and that they help them relate to the candidate.
"It would be a huge mistake to try to strip away the authenticity that's been his greatest strength for 35 years," Wade said. "For anybody who's gone to Joe Biden events and watched how voters connect with him, there's a pretty big gap between the expectations of the elite media who seem to crave scripted, blow-dried drones out of central casting instead of regular folks who want to see some honesty and candor. They appreciate it that he takes the voters seriously and doesn't take himself too seriously."
Wade added: "I've never heard a voter say they wanted someone who was more scripted, more slick and who talks to me in sound bites. If they wanted stuffed shirts, we'd be preparing for an October debate with Mitt Romney."
Those who have known Biden for a long time say they see him as a man with an equally big heart and mouth.
"He has overwhelming support here, he's well liked," said James Baker, mayor of Wilmington, Delaware, Biden's home. "We forgive him every once in a while when he says something dumb - 'Oh, that's just Joe."'
Biden recognizes that his tongue sometimes ventures ahead of his brain and often catches himself with a smile.
In Fort Myers, Florida, last week, he referred to the "Biden administration," before quickly correcting himself to say the "Obama-Biden administration."
"Believe me, that wasn't a Freudian slip," he said, laughing and crossing himself. "Oh lordy day, I tell ya."
#4
I love the "never voted for the worknig guy in his life."
IMO, if flying off a boat with bombs to deliver on the bad guy to protect the American way of life isn't voting, then I'll wear a hemet 3 sizes too big and drive a tank.
#5
"I think it's important that he emphasizes that McCain has never voted for the working guy in his life. It's not just minimum wage votes; it's everything: Privatizing Social Security and Medicare, he's anti-union, he hasn't lifted a finger for public education, his health plan is a joke. I mean, this guy--he doesn't really believe that working people and their families in this country ought to be guaranteed basic health insurance. So, I think you want to draw those contrasts, and I think he will do so and has already begun to do so."
-Let's see...Anti-union: check. Anti-gov't ed: check. Pro privatization of social security: check. Anti-gov't running Health Care: check. Anti-minimum wage: double check. Well, if you put it that way, Johnny Mac just went up a few notches in my opinion.
#11
I'm starting to think that either Karl Rove is the most cunning political genius of the last 200 years or that the Democrats collectively could not outsmart a box of hammers.
#1
This is the most biased crap I have ever read, I'm amazed they claim to have advanced degrees.
Posted by: Bill Claiter9194 ||
09/12/2008 10:50 Comments ||
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#2
Hard-working people vote Republican for a variety of reasons. One being they believe they can spend ther hard-earned money better than the government.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/12/2008 10:51 Comments ||
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#4
We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress.
#5
I think it really gets down to Liberals tend to prefer people stay in there place and be happy milking the rich but a lot of America simply aren't satisfied with that and it feels unfair. They want to be rich (even if the odds are against them) so fleecing the rich doesn't really make sense.
A careful distinction that is rarely made is the idea of taxing wealth creation vs idle wealth. If we were to eliminate the taxes on hard working wealthy folks and up them on the trust-fund babies more Americans would be in favor of that than not. But you'd be defunding a lot of prominent politicians and their donors in the process so it won't happen.
have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists
Freud? He was a vast fraud: in fact there was a research on the people he allegedly cured and in fact none of them had his condition improved. In fact several of them had it worsened after visiting Dr Frud (logic; after a traumatic experince the peole who fare better are those who let it behind them not those who remember it) when
it wasn't simply creted by Freud's proding.
So we have it, a soft scientist, a guy who swallows a fraud bait and hook and, he is a Democrat.
#9
This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion.
and ...
When Democrats try to explain away these positions using pop psychology they err, they alienate, and they earn the label "elitist." But how can Democrats learn to seelet alone respecta moral order they regard as narrow-minded, racist, and dumb?
not to mention ...
Conservatives think that welfare programs and feminism increase rates of single motherhood and weaken the traditional social structures that compel men to support their own children? Hmm, that may be true, even if there are also many good effects of liberating women from dependence on men.
But then ...
In several large internet surveys, my collaborators Jesse Graham, Brian Nosek and I have found that people who call themselves strongly liberal endorse statements related to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, and they largely reject statements related to ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. People who call themselves strongly conservative, in contrast, endorse statements related to all five foundations more or less equally. (You can test yourself at www.YourMorals.org.)
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/12/2008 13:16 Comments ||
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#10
Redefine things. Peace is war. Love is hate. Sane is insane. Come on, its newspeak and everyone is doing it.
#11
I don't know... let's depart from Ideology of anything for a second.
Say Abortion on Demand
Say most of San Fran who votes for Pelosi are non-reproducing drones with conflicted sex sense.
Say as they always insist that it is genetic and a test could determine it before birth.
What Hetro-Sexual breeding couple would want to give birth to a drone?
Say the same thing about chattering classes...
What couple would want to raise perpetually angry self-centered narcissists?
Isn't this eugenics?
....
Now how I started voting Republican....
One word - Carter
#12
To answer the original question...maybe because the current crop of prominent Dems (Joe Lieberman being an exception)look like such $%*#ing douches?
#14
In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.
But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.
To me this is the key bit of the paper. He's saying that as long as Progressives ignore the key cultural concerns of what is functionally another culture within the U.S., they will continue losing elections... and finding themselves in conversations with others who become inexplicably furious at them. Something like what those with Asperger's Syndrome experience.
The second conclusion was that the moral domain varies across cultures. [M]orality being about justice, rights, and human welfare worked perfectly for the college students I interviewed at Penn, but it simply did not capture the moral concerns of the less elite groups... [T]he second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way.
When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer. When Democrats try to explain away these positions using pop psychology they err, they alienate, and they earn the label "elitist."
And here's the other key bit, his conclusion from his mugged-by-reality excursion into Indian society:
On Turiel's definition of morality ("justice, rights, and welfare"), Christian and Hindu communities don't look good. They restrict people's rights (especially sexual rights), encourage hierarchy and conformity to gender roles, and make people spend extraordinary amounts of time in prayer and ritual practices that seem to have nothing to do with "real" morality. But isn't it unfair to impose on all cultures a definition of morality drawn from the European Enlightenment tradition? Might we do better with an approach that defines moral systems by what they do rather than by what they value?
Here's my alternative definition: morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible. It turns out that human societies have found several radically different approaches to suppressing selfishness, two of which are most relevant for understanding what Democrats don't understand about morality.
the author then goes on to expand the point, hoping to help Democrats understand what they must do (address the sacred, not merely the consumerist profane) in order to win over those who they think ought not be voting Republican. It's actually a good paper, if one reads it dispassionately.
Severe Acquired Leftist Anencephalic Dementia (SALAD).
"I wish I could tell you that the political left in this country was out of its friggin' mind...but I can't, because it is increasingly clear that if you could put all the combined synapses of all the the above bloggers together you would not get a single logical or coherent thought about the war that is being waged against the West by the religion of peace.
These bloggers and many of their readers are on a mission to go where no human has gone before. They are beyond mere denial and delusion; beyond psychosis even. I regularly treat schizophrenics who have more respect for reality.
Sadly, they suffer from a totally debilitating disorder: Severe Acquired Leftist Anencephalic Dementia (SALAD). Their minds are simply not there any more! The cognitive dissonance of believing so many bizarre and contradictory fantasies; the mental contortions and fits necessary for them to retain their ideological myths has caused their minds to softly and silently vanish away (that's what happens when the snark is a boojum, you see).
It's a terrible and agonizing affliction. And I feel for them--a mind is a terrible thing to waste, after all; but we can rejoice because I am certain they haven't noticed and therfore feel no pain whatsoever."
"And, as a parallel, there is something terribly wrong with the political left and anyone who is able to continue to pretend that terrorism is just some vast right wing conspiracy promulgated by the Bu$hies and Big Business to oppress the masses. They can rationalize, minimize, distort, deny, ignore, and delude themselves all they want; they can add some mixed-up Greens to the SALAD and scream about global warming; but it is very hard not to laugh--and they really do suffer from a debilitating and crippling cognitive malfunction."
#19
In the old Soviet system people were sent to 'professional care' institutes who disagreed with the dialectic of the party. They were obviously mentally ill because they didn't grasp the fundamental perfection of the socialist dogma. Any surprise the left remains the left even in the 21st Century?
Concepts like human free will are an anathema to their basic constructs of their preconceived universe. Where as those towards the right believe man is unique above the animals and able to make cognizant choices, the left treats the whole as just another social organism inhabiting the planet. That's why the left believes and acts upon the concept of a territorial hierarchical arrangement of the rulers [them - the inner party] and the ruled [everyone else - the outer party]. When Americans make decisions that don't conform to the secularist/socialist non-unique world construct, they see it as a neurosis while the other group simply looks upon it as natural 'human' behavior.
#21
"Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?"
-you mean like the socialist policy of taking money away from other honest hard working Americans? My grandparents were rural based hard workers and they didn't want a hand out from anyone. Or is he referring to the open borders or giving illegals a road to citizenship? (honestly a dem & mccain policy) Yeah, that really helps rural Americans or even dem Union voters. By flooding the country w/other cheap labor competition you essentially hurt those you claim to want to help. This guy's an idiot. I caught it in the first paragraph but I guess even a blind squirrel gets a nut as I tend to vote GOP.
#22
Ever note the story lines that run the fantasy that the hero/heroine is defeats the bad guy and all in the land acknowledge them as ruler. Perhaps the primary mindset of a liberal that he is the nobility and all others should be subservient to the greater knowledge and moral authority he/she exhibits.
#23
"Perhaps the primary mindset of a liberal that he is the nobility and all others should be subservient to the greater knowledge and moral authority he/she exhibits."
Fixed that for ya', tipper.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/12/2008 19:28 Comments ||
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#24
I found this on a left-wing-nut site which referenced this article, which I thought was interesting. Palin Power isnt just about making hockey moms feel important. Its not just about giving abortion rights opponents their due. Its also, in obscure ways, about making yearnings come true deep, inchoate desires about respect and service, hierarchy and family that have somehow been successfully projected onto the figure of this unlikely woman and have stuck.
For those of us who cant tap into those yearnings, it seems the Palin faithful are blind to the contradictions between her stated positions and the truth of the policies she espouses, to the contradictions between her ideology and their interests. But Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of moral psychology at the University of Virginia, argues in an essay this month, What Makes People Vote Republican?, that its liberals, in fact, who are dangerously blind.
Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger, he told me in a phone interview.
Perhaps thats why the conservatives can so successfully get under liberals skin. And why liberals need to start working harder at breaking through the empathy barrier.
Bingo!
As Sun Tzu would say: It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
When I was a kid I was terrified of the End of the World. Kids heard things; older kids who'd read that ridiculous end-times tract, "The Late Great Planet Earth" said it foretold a struggle between the "bear" and the "eagle" and we all knew what that meant. One summer at Bible Camp I asked one of the pastors if this bear-eagle end-of-the-world stuff was true, and he said "we know not the day or the time." You know, I thought, but you just won't tell us.
It was 1968. On the night before the last day of camp, a counselor named Charlie Brown interrupted our sunset meeting by the shores of White Bear Lake to tell us the news: Russia had launched their missiles and they would destroy America before the night was out. It was time to get right with God.
Silence; crickets; small sobs. I'm sure no one thought much about Jesus right then. We thought about Mom and Dad and Spot and our room, where we really, really wanted to be right now, with the familiar smell of the goldfish bowl, and -
Charlie Brown guided us through some prayers. We all said Amen, and I'm sure for some it was the least heartfelt Amen we'd ever said. Then Charlie Brown said he had made up the story. Russia hadn't launched the missiles. But what if they had? Were we right with Jesus?
Back at the barracks we were quiet and unnerved. No one wanted to go to sleep. No one wanted to talk, either. Finally John Larson, the bunkhouse bully, broke the silence. He was the mean kid. He was the one who tormented me at home, and had bothered me at camp. Nelson Muntz without the charm. John Larson expressed his simple wish to stab Charlie Brown in the stomach.
A dozen little Lutheran campers nodded in the dark: ya sure, you betcha.
I've thought about Charlie Brown's clueless cruelty whenever I think of summer camp. It's a good story; give me an audience and five minutes and I can spin quite the yarn. I don't know what effect he had on my fear of the Apocalypse, but for decades afterwards I got that bright silver sluice of dread in my gut whenever international tensions "flared up" or US-USSR relations were "frayed." The very words in the headlines made me feel slightly sick, and pitched back to the shores of the lake, sitting on that long painted bench. My future was an either-or thing. Either some stupid event destroys the world . . . or not. Stick around and find out which.
Now I am resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon. The End of the World now looks like a comic-book premise, a Heston-movie conceit. We feared it would all be gone in a day, our world upended like an Etch-A-Sketch. What we never considered was a long, slow war, a conflict that burned and sputtered, skittered from one spot on the map to the other. The old wars were simple: the other side had accents, uniforms, nations, cruel habits and urbane sneers. The old wars took years. The old wars were in black and white. The old wars were monophonic, scored by Max Steiner, released by Warner Brothers, and the only proof they really happened at all was the small battered box in the back of Dad's sock drawer, the box that held some oddly colored metal bars. The next war would be horrible, total, and short.
Two years ago today I was convinced that every presumption I had about the future was wrong. This war, I feared, would be horrible, total, and long.
Two years later I take a certain grim comfort in some people's disinterest in the war; if you'd told me two years ago that people would be piling on the President and bitching about slow progress in Iraq, I would have known in a second that the nation hadn't suffered another attack. When the precise location of Madonna's tongue is big news, you can bet the hospitals aren't full of smallpox victims. Of course some people are impatient with those who still recall the shock of 9/11; the same people were crowding the message boards of internet sites on the afternoon of the attacks, eager to blame everyone but the hijackers. They hate this nation. In their hearts, they hate humanity. They would rather cheer the perfect devils than come to the aid of a compromised angel. They can talk for hours about how wrong it was to kill babies, busboys, businessmen, receptionists, janitors, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers - and then they lean towards you, eyes wide, and they say the fatal word:
But.
And then you realize that the eulogy is just a preface. All that concern for the dead is nothing more than the knuckle-cracking of an organist who's going to play an E minor chord until we all agree we had it coming.
I've no doubt that if Seattle or Boston or Manhattan goes up in a bright white flash there will be those who blame it all on Bush. We squandered the world's good will. We threw away the opportunity to atone, and lashed out. Really? You want to see lashing out? Imagine Kabul and Mecca and Baghdad and Tehran on 9/14 crowned with mushroom clouds: that's lashing out. Imagine the President in the National Cathedral castigating Islam instead of sitting next to an Imam who's giving a homily. Mosques burned, oil fields occupied, smart bombs slamming into Syrian palaces. We could have gone full Roman on anyone we wanted, but we didn't. And we won't.
Which is why this war will be long.
The world will not end. It will roll around in its orbit until Sol expires of famine or indigestion. In the end we're all ash anyway - but even as ash, we matter. The picture at the top of this page is a sliver taken from a 9/11 camera feed. It's the cloud that rolled through lower Manhatttan when the towers fell. Paper, steel, furniture, plastic, people. The man who took the picture inhaled the dust of the dead. Somewhere lodged in the lung of a New Yorker is an atom that once belonged to a man who went to work two years ago and never came back. His widow dreads today, because people will be coming and calling, and she'll have to insist that she's okay. It's hard but last year was harder. The kids will be sad and distant, but they take their cues from her, and they sense that it's hard - but that last year was harder. But what really kills her, really really kills her, is knowing that the youngest one doesn't remember daddy at all anymore. And she's the one who has his eyes.
Two years in; the rest of our lives to go.
Posted by: Steve ||
09/12/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
They would rather cheer the perfect devils than come to the aid of a compromised angel.
Wow, well said!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
09/12/2008 1:44 Comments ||
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#2
Lilek's' reflections on growing up as a tweener during the late Cold War mirror my own. Too young for duck and cover, but old enough for graphic depictions of the apocalypse, via Moscow.
I remember reading this column of his five years ago, and how it galvanized my understanding that my longtime moonbat "friends" were not friends at all, merely acquaintances with whom I had done fun things as a young guy and about whom I had fond memories of good times, and who had never grown - mentally or psychologically - beyond that college sophomore mentality.
Excised from my life, with no regrets.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/12/2008 6:01 Comments ||
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#3
But what really kills her, really really kills her, is knowing that the youngest one doesn't remember daddy at all anymore. And she's the one who has his eyes.
wow. That one hit me hard. And not just for the 911 victims, but for all of the military members who died in the war. [wipes away tears]
no mo uro - Very well said and I hear ya. In the last month I finally acknowledged the loss of two people who were once good friends, for the very reasons you describe. I'm still sad over the loss. But the funny thing is that once I let go, I realized that there was a strange sense of relief, as if the weight of an albatross had been lifted from around my neck.
For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian Peninsula. This continental drift is not geophysical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its Southasian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the alluvium that had nurtured Muslim culture in the Indian Subcontinent for over a thousand years. A stern, unyielding version of Islam Wahhabism is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis and saints.
This drift is by design. Twenty-five years ago, the Pakistani state pushed Islam onto its people. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory; floggings were carried out publicly; punishments were meted out to those who did not fast during Ramadan; selection for academic posts required that the candidates demonstrate knowledge of Islamic teachings, and the jihad was emphasised as essential for every Muslim. Today, such government intervention is no longer needed due to the spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state as yet in some amorphous and diffused form is more popular than ever before, as people look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing state. Across the country, there has been a spectacular increase in the power and prestige of the clerics, attendance in mosques, home prayer meetings (dars and zikr), observance of special religious festivals, and fasting during Ramadan.
Villages have changed drastically, driven in part by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other Muslims who they do not consider to be Muslims. Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than were the Pashtuns, are now beginning to embrace the line of thought resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law (from one of the four schools of thought or jurisprudence within Sunni Islam) has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law.
Among the Pakistani lower-middle and middle classes lurks a grim and humourless Saudi-inspired revivalist movement (which can be called Saudi-isation) that frowns upon every form of joyous expression. Lacking any positive connection to culture and knowledge, it seeks to eliminate corruption by strictly regulating cultural life and seizing absolute control of the education system. Classical music is on its last legs in Pakistan; the sarangi and vichtarveena are completely dead, laments Mohammad Shehzad, a student of music. Indeed, teaching music in public universities is vehemently opposed by students of the Islami Jamaat-e-Talaba, religious fundamentalists who consider music haram. Kathak dancing, once popular among the Muslim elite of India, has no teachers left in Pakistan, and the feature films produced in the country are of next to no consequence. Meanwhile the Pakistani elites, disconnected from the rest of the population, comfortably live their lives through their vicarious proximity to the West.
School militarism
More than a quarter-century after the state-sponsored Islamisation of the country, the state in Pakistan is itself under attack from religious militants, and rival Islamic groups battle each other with heavy weapons. Ironically, the same army whose men were recruited under the banner of jihad, and which saw itself as the fighting arm of Islam today stands accused of betrayal, and is targeted by Islamist suicide bombers on an almost daily basis. The militancy that bedevils Pakistan is by no means confined to the tribal areas; it breeds feverishly in the cities as well. Pakistans self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that propagates the jihad culture, which ceaselessly demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, designed to create in the minds of the school child a sense of siege and embattlement.
The process begins early. For example, the government-approved curriculum of a Class V Social Studies textbook prescribes that the child should be able to Make speeches on Jehad and Shahadat, and Understand Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant need for Pakistan. The material placed before the Pakistani schoolchild has remained largely unchanged even after the attacks of 11 September 2001, which led to Pakistans abrupt desertion of the Taliban and the slackening of the Kashmir jihad. Indeed, for all the talk of enlightened moderation, then-General Pervez Musharrafs educational curriculum, passed down with some dilution from the time of Zia ul-Haq, was far from enlightening. Fearful of taking on powerful religious forces, every incumbent government has refused to take a position on the curriculum. Thus, successive administrations have quietly allowed the young minds to be moulded by fanatics.
As such, the promotion of militarism in Pakistans schools, colleges and universities has had a profound effect on young people. Militant jihad has become a part of the culture in college and university campuses, with armed groups inviting students for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The primary vehicle for Saudi-ising Pakistans education has been the madrassa. During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the US-Saudi-Pakistan alliance that recruits needed for fighting a holy war. Earlier on, this role had been limited to turning out the occasional Islamic scholar, using a curriculum dating back to the 11th century with minor subsequent revisions. The principal function of the madrassas had been to produce imams and muezzins for mosques.
The Afghan jihad changed everything. Under Zia, with active assistance from Saudi Arabia, madrassas sprang up across the length and breadth of Pakistan, and now number about 22,000. The free room, board and supplies provided to students has always constituted a key part of the appeal to join these madrassas. But the desire of parents across the country for their children to be disciplined, and to be given a thorough Islamic education, is also a major contributing factor.
One of the chief goals of the Islamists is to bring about a complete separation of the sexes, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. Take the tragic example of the stampede in a madrassa in Karachi in April 2006, in which 21 women and eight children were crushed to death, and scores more injured; all the while, male rescuers were prevented from assisting. Likewise, after the October 2005 earthquake, as this writer walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girls from under the rubble of their school building.
The drive to segregate the sexes is now also influencing educated women. Vigorous proselytisers of this message, such as Farhat Hashmi one of the most influential contemporary Muslim scholars, or ulema, particularly in Pakistan, the UK and the US have become massively successful, and have been catapulted to heights of fame and fortune. Two decades ago, the fully veiled student was a rarity on any university or college campus in Pakistan. Abaya was once an unknown word in Urdu, but today many shops in Islamabad specialise in these dreary robes, which cover the entire body except the face, feet and hands. At colleges and universities across Pakistan, female students are today seeking the anonymity of the burqa, outnumbering their sisters who still dare to show their faces.
The immediate future of Pakistan looks grim, as increasing numbers of mullahs are creating cults around themselves and seizing control over the minds of their worshippers. In the tribal areas, a string of new Islamist leaders have suddenly emerged Baituallah Mehsud, Fazlullah, Mangal Bagh and Haji Namdar among others feeding on the environment of poverty, deprivation, lack of justice, and extreme disparities in wealth.
In the long term, Pakistans future will be determined by the ideological and political battle between citizens who want an Islamist theocratic state, and citizens who want a modern Islamic republic. It may yet be possible to roll back the Islamist laws and institutions that have corroded Pakistani society for over 30 years, and defeat the holy warriors. However, this can only happen if Pakistans elected leaders acquire the trust of the citizens. To do this, political parties, government officials and, yes, even generals will have to embrace democracy, in both word and deed.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
Posted by: john frum ||
09/12/2008 12:36 ||
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#1
Take away their nukes and build a wall around the place and they can do whatever they want. As soon as they step foot out of the place, shoot them.
Or non-solution, as the writer points out. Long as heck article.
It is the regretful opinion of many that the internal Palestinian situation has hit a nadir unprecedented in the history of the Palestinian cause. Compounding their distress is that the Palestinian factions, themselves, are largely responsible for this new calamity that has afflicted the Palestinian people.
In spite of the pessimism surrounding the Cairo-sponsored Palestinian dialogue, there remains a glimmer of hope of imposing an Arab solution that would supersede other proposed solutions and be binding on all sides'
The deepening internal fissure has gravely obstructed the Palestinian national project. To make matters worse, influential forces in the Palestinian factions have deliberately sabotaged all attempts to mend the rift that followed bloody internecine fighting and to restore a minimal level of national unity. Indeed, for reasons of their own, some of these factions or portions of these factions appear determined to entrench and perpetuate the current separation between Gaza and the West Bank and to hamper any initiative aspiring to realise inter- Palestinian reconciliation.
#1
the internal Palestinian situation has hit a nadir unprecedented in the history of the Palestinian cause.
The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus says that for every depth there is one still lower. I have complete confidence in the Palestinian people and their finely honed, inate ability to make things worse. With seething and dedication, with their uncanny knack for acting against their own self interest, one day they will look back on what seems today to be an utter mess and say those were the good old days.
Their distresss? Theiiiiiiiir distreeesssss? Have you everseen a Palestian child who looks undernourished?
Go to Sudan and take a look at the victims of Arab tender attentions. There will you find distress. Distress like in famished, raped, massacred, enslaved.
Posted by: Total War ||
09/12/2008 13:07 Comments ||
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#2
Phillips' main point is that the UK political establishment refuses to correctly identify the threat it is fighting. Now the US political establishment is not much better at identifying its domestic threats in so many words, but then the US is well supplied with white trash Jacksonians with guns, Bibles & whiskey jugs on the shelf who tend to do their own thinking & reading between the lines, whose ancestors bugged out of Europe a long time ago, for very good reasons.
#3
As best illustrated in World Religious Texts themselves, > WARFARE > GENERATIONAL = FOUGHT OVER A NUMBER OR MANY GENERATIONS.
The RUSSO-GEORGIAN Conflict > the US-ALLIES ARE NOW IN A WAR AGZ RADICAL ISLAM FOR CONTROL-DOMIN OF CENTRAL = MAINLAND ASIA/ASIA-PACIFIC [e.g. Philippines, SE Asia], ESPEC FOR PAN-ASIAN NUKES + ADVANC TECHS, wid large parts of AFRICA as a SUPPORT/SECONDARY FRONT.
Any US-desired capture or death of OSAMA BIN LADEN + other TOP ISLAMIST LEADERS, while certainly another great achievement for Dubya-USA, is in reality only A PART OF THE TOTAL/GROSS EQUATION = STRATEGIC PICTURE.
WOT > WAR FOR PRO/ANTI-US OWG-NWO INCLUD SOCIALIST-GOVTIST WORLD ORDER [e.g. FASCISM = LIMITED COMMUNISM, etc.], of which the WAR AGZ RADICAL ISLAM IS ONLY ONE WAR WITHIN SAME [e.g. SECULAR COMMIE SUPPORT of ISLAMIST MILITANTS].
When it comes to launching missiles in the Mommy Wars, Sarah Palin has nothing on Christopher Ruhm. On Thursday, the University of North Carolina, Greenboro, economist published a study showing that kids from high-socioeconomic-status families take a long-term hit when their moms work outside the home--at ages 10 and 11, they perform more poorly on cognitive tests and are also more likely to be overweight than those whose high-status mothers leave the workforce.
Children from low-status families, on the other hand, don't seem to suffer as much when their moms work. In fact, many of them do better on the same tests, and they're more fit, than similarly disadvantaged kids with stay-at-home moms.
The findings are surprising, and it's easy to read them as a warning to affluent, educated mothers: if you want the best for your child, don't work. (Conversely, if you're not well-off: get your kid to day care.) But those are dangerous conclusions to draw from the study, and even Ruhm--whose own wife worked while raising their children--says so. "This comes down to a fundamental principle of economics: something has to give. We can't have it all," he says. "But I would never tell anybody what to do or not do about that. I certainly wouldn't tell my wife."
So what are women facing a choice between work and home--and those many more for whom work is an economic necessity--supposed to make of these findings?
The study, published in the journal Labour Economics, divided women into two socioeconomic groups, based on several variables (including education levels, income prior to pregnancy, ethnicity and whether a spouse was present at home). The kids from families in the "lower" group generally fared fine if their moms worked for the majority of their childhoods--at ages 10 and 11, they either scored about the same on cognitive tests, or better, than disadvantaged kids whose mothers stayed home. For kids from high-status families, though, the pattern flipped. The more these affluent moms worked--especially if they went back to their jobs while their children were still very young--the less well their kids did on cognitive tests later in childhood. (The high-status children with working moms still did better overall than all the low-status children--so class, not employment, was ultimately the stronger factor in their well-being.) More at the link. I wonder why this comes out now? Coincidence?.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/12/2008 18:39 ||
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"I wonder why this comes out now?"
I wonder if they thought this through.
Lessee - what other woman in the public political eye right now has young children and works outside the home?
Don't tell me - I'll remember it in a minute - first name Michelle....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/12/2008 21:02 Comments ||
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#2
Barbara gets the Kewpie Doll.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/12/2008 21:12 Comments ||
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weelllllll I don't think Michelle's working too much right now, but I bet she's still getting paid
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/12/2008 21:42 Comments ||
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#4
Why do you think they kept her at home yesterday, well away from Ground Zero? The mom meme, of course ... that and the fact that she probably couldn't have kept a bitter smirk off of her face when all those stupid people got all solemn about a no-big-deal criminal act we deserved anyway.
#2
Actually, we are well into the middle of an unfolding economic nightmare. The US has been living beyond its means for years, with negative domestic savings and reliance on foreign purchases of its debt. If its credit markets should lock up, large numbers of businesses will close and large numbers will be thrown out of work -- that was the essence of the Great Depression and the many previous financial Panics in US history. The US Treasury & the Fed are trying to prevent that, or at least mitigate the pain.
#3
What is disappointing is that both political parties are so intertwined with, and willing to be bribed out of making, the parasites who created this mess the political issue they ought to be that the topic is unaddressed in this election. No change.
#4
What is disappointing is that no political candidate, who plainly names and blames the institutions and attitudes that produced the current crisis, can be elected to office.
The US media & intelligentsia could have informed the electorate on this problem far better than they have so far done, but they have other fish to fry.
Eventually the current economic crisis will occupy the national attention, when sufficient pain is felt. This far transcends party politics.
#5
AH, when you say "US media & intelligentsia" you could substitute "liberal elite". With the collusion of the Republican RINO's.
Their political policy's and regulations w/r risky home loans for minorities created the environment for much of this and in addition a shaky economy benefits them in this election year. There is no incentive for the leadership of the congress (Democrats?) to truly solve anything until after Nov 4.
#6
What is disappointing is that no political candidate, who plainly names and blames the institutions and attitudes that produced the current crisis, can be elected to office.
That's because both parties are dirty up to their necks on this.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/12/2008 18:51 Comments ||
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Today's venture begins in the pigpen, where liberals wallow in lies, innuendos and depravity unfitting of even the lowliest swine.
We've all by now heard about Barack Obama's " lipstick" jab of Gov. Sarah Palin. "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." That was the line that got his supporters howling with laughter. They understood that it was a slight at the woman who has stolen his thunder.
No longer are women fainting at Obama's feet as he yammers about change. Instead they are buying up Palin-style Kazuo Kawasaki glasses and getting their hair cut like the Alaska governor.
One TV station in Chicago asked women to comment on Obama's "lipstick" comments, and here are a couple of responses:
"It's definitely inappropriate -- we also seem to be ignoring the second comment that he made. The comment regarding a fish that stinks and wrapping it in paper -- I'm sorry but any 'lady' would find that comment truly offensive. How would Barack like someone saying that comment when referring to anything to do with his wife? Give me a break. ... I don't know of any woman that would. As a lady I find this disgusting." -- Kim Piskorowski, Des Plaines
#1
Real women, the soccer and hockey moms, working women who run to the store after work and those whose work is at home, see something else in Palin. They see real hope, not that mystical snake oil Obama is pushing from atop his Barackopolis.
Palin stands for family and she shows it. She stands for those with disabilities instead of standing with those who encourage abortion of those with disabilities. She stands for fewer taxes on working families, and freedom from foreign oil. She stands for all of the Constitution including the Second Amendment.
The vicious and slanderous attacks will continue. Gov. Palin knows it and so does her family. As somebody who has faced the hateful left, I know how brutal the onslaught can be on a day-to-day basis.
The attacks have changed the face of this presidential election and laid bare the true intents of Gloria Steinem, Obama and the rest of the two-faced liberals who've marched all over this country for far too long.
Obama, the self-described "feminists" and the sinking Democrats are going to have to find another act. The lipstick's off the pigs, and it ain't pretty.
#2
Isn't it enough to dislike him because he's a communist that probably wasn't even born in this country? Or because he's spent his life in the company of radical anti-American elements? Just throw this on top of the heap of reasons not to vote for him.
#7
I have to agree with Clownfish on this one. Some of the women who support Obama are definitely not ladies, eg the Misses Pamela Anderson and Lindsay Lohan, but Obama is not a defining characteristic. On the other hand, I recall being chastised by one of my colleagues at the lab for calling myself a lady. She thought that having a career and being a lady were mutually exclusive endeavours, which demonstrates her incomplete understanding. Sarah Palin is forcing a reassessment of that for some, which is always uncomfortable. They'll come to terms with it eventually, although not in time to get their man elected.
#8
Fox just said there are now over 2000 products you can buy promoting Palin..
From thongs and boxers to exercise suits....
buttons, ...
(pit bulls for Palin)
(Puck Obama)
etc...
#9
Trailing Wife and Clownfish,
I remember distinctly a group of NOW representatives testifying before the Senate. An elderly Southern senator referred to them as "ladies". The women got all insulted and the Senators wound up apoligizing for calling them ladies.
Thus: Not only are they not ladies, but they are proud of not being ladies.
Sad but true.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/12/2008 17:09 Comments ||
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#10
"White trash in the White House?"
Been there, done that.
Nobody can out-trash Clinton, the clap gift that keeps on giving.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/12/2008 21:11 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.
