Although it has been embroidered with the ersatz regalia of antiquity, the Olympic torch relay does not, in fact, date back to the ancient Greeks or even to Pierre de Coubertin, the organizer of the first modern games, in 1896. It was the brainchild of Carl Diem, who spearheaded the 1936 Berlin Olympics under the approving gaze of Josef Goebbels and Adolf Hitler. Designed by Krupp--the German munitions company whose owners were indicted for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg--the torch was carried into the Olympiastadion by the elegant and very Aryan 1,500-meter runner Fritz Schilgen in front of a phalanx of swastikas and the cameras of Leni Riefenstahl, who documented the whole affair in her paean to the Nazi physique and spirit, Olympia.
As international protests shadow the Olympic flame on its Journey of Harmony from Athens to Beijing, it's important to bear these ignoble roots in mind, not because of any meaningful parallels between the Third Reich and the regime in China but as a reminder that the torch relay and indeed the Olympics are inherently political events--provisioned by big business, broadcast by the propagandists of yesteryear and the corporate media of today and hosted and contested by nation-states seeking glory beyond sport. An understanding of the Olympics as such ought to quell any outcry from Chinese and International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials who grouse that demonstrators are improperly politicizing the games. If China, with the support of the IOC, plans to use Beijing 2008 as an advertisement for Chinese nationalism and market "socialism with Chinese characteristics," it can hardly complain when protests raised by or on behalf of Tibetan and Uighur separatists; the victims of genocide in Darfur and repression in Burma; Chinese unionists, farmers, environmentalists, AIDS activists and other internal dissidents flip the script and borrow a bit of the spotlight for their respective causes.
But the history of Olympic politics ought also to serve as a cautionary note to campaigners. The boycotts of the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were little more than cold war theater at the expense of athletes' fortunes, and given the unpopularity of a repeat fiasco--never mind the substantial investments corporations have already made in the games--few are calling for a total boycott. Instead the compromise seems to have become a "mini-boycott" in which world leaders decline to attend the opening ceremonies. Germany's Angela Merkel and Britain's Gordon Brown have indicated that they will play along; Hillary Clinton has called on George W. Bush to do the same, and France's Nicolas Sarkozy is mulling it over. The problem with this petite insurrection is that it will likely prove a mere irritation to Chinese leaders, who are inclined, at best, to make tiny and temporary gestures of reform in response. As a bit of moral pageantry--in which Bush hardly has the moral authority to participate--it allows elites to make a symbolic stand while gorging themselves on the Olympian spectacle. Where is the space for real dissent--by workers, by athletes, by movements--in all this?
A more enduring if more arduous path to improving human rights would sidestep the nationalism implicit in any Olympics boycott. It begins by creating leverage on China through pressing the transnational corporations that exploit cheap Chinese labor and rely on foreign direct investment from China to keep their profits flowing. The sports extravaganza in Beijing in August can provide the occasion to publicize this campaign, but its targets must also include the boardrooms of Western corporations and the ministerials of the WTO.
#1
The Olympics is a international carnival side show owed and operated by a cartel of self important elitist who bamboozle the masses with flash and show using the athletes as nothing more than sock puppets to make a living off of. Hype, hype, hype.
#2
Sadly, ever since the cold war ended, the Olympics have simply held no interest for me at all. Now that I don't watch TV anymore either, they matter even less.
Besides being nothing more than a venue for pro's now, far too many of the 'sports' are total bunk and silliness. I'm sorry but snow boarding and freestyle skiing do not qualify in my mind as olympic sports.
Today more than ever, the olympics remind me nothing more than of Tom Sullivan's "The Mickey Mouse Olympics" Not for the cold war aspects but for the silliness of bio-engineered athletes and a venue that has lost all sense of real purpose.
#3
Olympic TV is great because it doesn't bother to show much competition, but lots of human interest stories. Like the barefoot dancing champion who is trying to win a medal for her great grandmother's third cousin by a second marriage, who died in 1954. I get all choked up just writing about it. NOT!!!
This land is my land,
It isn't your land.
If you don't get off,
I'll shoot your head off.
I have a pistol,
And it is loaded.
This land is private property.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
04/24/2008 20:32 Comments ||
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Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting Inc. said.
Saudi Arabia's influence as the biggest oil exporter would wane if the fields are as big as advertised, and China and India would become dominant buyers of Persian Gulf oil, said Peter Zeihan, vice president of analysis at Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas. Zeihan's firm, which consults for companies and governments around the world, was described in a 2001 Barron's article as ``the shadow CIA.''
Brazil may be pumping ``several million'' barrels of crude daily by 2020, vaulting the nation into the ranks of the world's seven biggest producers, Zeihan said in a telephone interview. The U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf and adjacent waters would be reduced, leaving the region exposed to more conflict, he said.
``We could see that world becoming a very violent one,'' said Zeihan, former chief of Middle East and East Asia analysis for Strategic Forecasting. ``If the United States isn't getting any crude from the Gulf, what benefit does it have in policing the Gulf anymore? All of the geopolitical flux that wracks that region regularly suddenly isn't our problem.''
Tupi and Carioca
Brazil's state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA in November said the offshore Tupi field may hold 8 billion barrels of recoverable crude. Among discoveries in the past 30 years, only the 15-billion-barrel Kashagan field in Kazakhstan is larger.
Haroldo Lima, director of the country's oil agency, last week said another subsea field, Carioca, may have 33 billion barrels of oil. That would be the third biggest field in history, behind only the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia and Burgan in Kuwait.
Analysts Mark Flannery of Credit Suisse Group and Gustavo Gattass of UBS AG challenge the estimate for Carioca. Lima, the Brazilian oil agency director, later attributed the figure to a magazine.
Flannery told clients during an April 16 conference call that 600 million barrels is a ``reasonable'' estimate and suggested Lima may have been referring to the entire geologic formation to which Carioca belongs.
Supply Boost
Carioca is one of seven fields identified so far in the BM- S-9 exploration area, part of a formation called Sugar Loaf.
If additional drilling by Petrobras, as Petroleo Brasileiro is known, confirms the Tupi and Carioca estimates, the fields together would contain enough oil to supply every refinery on the U.S. Gulf Coast for 15 years. Petrobras said it needs at least three months to determine how much crude Carioca may hold.
Zeihan said that beyond supply gains from Brazil, it will take a tripling of Canadian oil-sands output and greater fuel efficiency to end Western reliance on Middle East oil.
The U.S. imports about 10 million barrels of oil a day, or 66 percent of its needs, according to the Energy Department in Washington. Saudi Arabia was the second-largest supplier in January, behind Canada.
Persian Gulf nations accounted for 23 percent of U.S. imports, compared with Brazil's 1.7 percent share. Brazilian crude output rose 1.9 percent last year to 2.14 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency.
``Hemispheric energy independence sounds a little pie-in- the-sky given that this hemisphere already is generating one- third of overall global demand,'' said Jason Gammel, an oil analyst at Macquarie Bank Ltd. in New York. ``It's pretty tough to talk about self-sufficiency unless we were to see food-based biofuels taking an even bigger role in the next five to 10 years than is already mandated.''
Offshore Fields
Zeihan predicts a 2012 start to production at Tupi. Technology needed to tap fields like Tupi, which sit hundreds of miles offshore beneath thousands of feet of rock, sand and salt, hasn't been developed, he said.
Petrobras, Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Norsk Hydro ASA plan to start pumping oil from eight Brazilian fields in the next 2 1/2 years that will produce a combined 1.02 million barrels a day, enough to supply two-thirds of the crude used by U.S. East Coast refineries.
More discoveries will follow in Brazil's offshore basins, most of which have yet to be opened to exploration, Zeihan said. Repsol YPF SA, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Devon Energy Corp. are among the producers scouring Brazil's waters for reserves.
``The finds they've got so far are just the tip of the iceberg,'' Zeihan said. ``Brazil is going to change the balance of the global oil markets, and Petrobras will become a geopolitical supermajor.''
#3
Petrobras, Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Norsk Hydro ASA plan to start pumping oil from eight Brazilian fields in the next 2 1/2 years that will produce a combined 1.02 million barrels a day, enough to supply two-thirds of the crude used by U.S. East Coast refineries.
Definitely good news. Anything that breaks the OPEC stranglehold would be good news. So when can we expect the price of gasoline at the pump to come down or should I be more cynical?
#4
``We could see that world becoming a very violent one,'' said Zeihan, former chief of Middle East and East Asia analysis for Strategic Forecasting. ``If the United States isn't getting any crude from the Gulf, what benefit does it have in policing the Gulf anymore? All of the geopolitical flux that wracks that region regularly suddenly isn't our problem.''
that's a feature, not a bug....
between this, green gas, frankenfoods, yup, America extends its dominance to the 21st century as well........
The key problem for Hillary's campaign is that normal people reel back in horror at her association with the Clinton administration. (Which is why, as her supporter, I refer to her as simply "Hillary.")
Coulter jumped the shark a while back, so let's see how bad she can be ...
If Hillary could run exclusively on her record since becoming a senator from New York, she'd be a relatively moderate Democrat who hates the loony left -- as we found out this week when a tape of Hillary denouncing Moveon.org surfaced. Think Joe Biden in a pantsuit.
But because of her unfortunate marriage, ...
for which Clinton?
... Hillary comes with a cast of undesirables like James Carville, Paul Begala, Terry McAuliffe, Joe Conason -- and of course Bill Clinton, along with his trusted impeachment manager Larry Flynt. Buy one, get the entire dirt-bag collection free!
In her revisionist history, she forgets that Hilde was part-and-parcel of Clinton I. Carville, Begala, Conason, etc., were as much her as Bill. That is what people recoil from
No one wants those people back.
She's got a point there ...
Even semi-respectable Democrats look sleazy by their association with the Clintons. No serious Democrat defended Clinton over his "presidential kneepads" incident with Monica Lewinsky. OK, that's not including adult film star Ron Jeremy, if you consider him a serious Democrat. Which I do.
To the contrary, if Coulter could put down her keyboard and fire up her memory she'd remember that a lot of serious Democrats defended Bill back when he was playing 'hide the cigar' with Monica. Remember the mantra, "it's all about sex"? That was uttered by serious Democrats, both office holders and pundits. And it worked. Bill survived.
That's why cable TV producers had to call in the O.J. defenders to flack for Clinton during his impeachment.
Cable TV producers call the same people regardless. I'm surprised they didn't have the same people out there on 9/12 ...
Any Democrats still clinging to Hillary at this point appear to be soulless climbers desperate for jobs in the next administration.
A lot of embittered Dhimmis cling to Barack for the same reason: more than just wanting Bush gone, or Republicans gone, they want their phoney-baloney jobs back, and they need a Dhimmicrat to do that. Barack looks like their meal ticket so that's who they're with for now, but if Hilde managed to win the nomination they'd bow and scrape as necessary to get in good with her. It's all about being Deputy Assistant Undersecretary ...
So repellent are Bill Clinton's friends (to the extent that a sociopathic sex offender with a narcissistic disorder can actually experience friendship in the conventional sense) that B. Hussein Obama's association with a raving racist reverend and a former member of the Weather Underground hasn't caused as much damage as it should.
Wait ...
On one hand, Obama pals around with terrorists. On the other hand, Hillary pals around with James Carville. Advantage: Obama.
Again, wait. Wait til September and you'll be hearing more about Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn. Wait til October and you'll be seeing ads from 527s replaying 'God Damn America'. We'll see how repellent Snake-Boy is then ...
Asked why he would be friends with the likes of Weatherman Bill Ayers, Obama said: "The notion that ... me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."
That's a slick answer -- even "Clintonian"! -- but the problem is, Ayers and his Weatherman wife, Bernadine Dohrn, won't stop boasting about their days as Weathermen.
It's not simply that they haven't repented. To the contrary, those were their glory days! And Ayers isn't just someone who lives in the neighborhood: He and Dohrn were there at the inception of Obama's political career, hosting a fundraiser for Obama at their home back in 1995.
They've turned respectable, which is a sad indicator of where American society is today.
Besides wanton violence, including a dozen bombings of buildings such as the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, historic statues and various police stations, the Weathermen's "revolutionary" activity consisted primarily of using the word "motherf-----" a lot, dropping LSD, coming up with cutesy phrases -- like "the Weather Underground" -- and competing over who could make the most offensive statements in public. (I also believe Dohrn may have set the North American record for longest stretch without bathing.)
At one rally, Dohrn famously praised the Manson family for murdering Sharon Tate and others, shouting: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"
In a better country, just saying "Dig it!" in public would get you 20 years in the slammer.
Dohrn has recently tried to clarify her Manson remarks by saying it was some sort of "statement" about violence in society and, furthermore, that she said it while under sniper fire in Bosnia. Also recently, the members of the Manson family have distanced themselves from Ayers and Dohrn.
At other rallies, Dohrn said, "Bring the revolution home, kill your parents -- that's where it's at."
After a Chicago Democratic official, Richard Elrod, became paralyzed while fighting with a privileged looter during the Weathermen's "Days of Rage," Dohrn led the Weathermen in a song sung to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay":
Lay, Elrod, lay,
Lay in the street for a while
Stay, Elrod, stay
Stay in your bed for a while
You thought you could stop the Weatherman
But up-front people put you on your can,
Stay, Elrod, stay
Stay in your iron lung,
Play, Elrod, play
Play with your toes for a while
Only because of a merciful God is the author of that ditty, Ted Gold, not teaching at Northwestern or the University of Illinois now, alongside Dohrn or Ayers. That's because Gold is no longer with us, having accidentally blown himself up with a bomb intended for a dance at Fort Dix for new recruits and their dates.
While trying to assemble the bomb at an elegant Greenwich Village townhouse that belonged to one of the revolutionaries' fathers, the bungling Weathermen blew up the entire townhouse, killing Gold and two other butterfingered revolutionaries. Leave it to these nincompoops to turn their glorious Marxist revolution into an "I Love Lucy" sketch.
We've seen that in numerous places in Gaza and Pakiwakiland. An old cop friend of mine once said, "if all the criminals were smart, the prisons would be empty." What continues to delay the Revolution is that most of the accolytes are just as dumb ...
So in addition to being stupid and violent, the Weathermen were also incompetent terrorists. Would that Timothy McVeigh had been so inept!
If he had only said he bombed the building in Oklahoma City to protest American "imperialism," McVeigh, too, could be teaching at Northwestern University, sitting on a board with and holding fundraisers for presidential candidate B. Hussein Obama.
I'm hearing a great deal of complaints about John McCain's disavowal and disapproval of a North Carolina GOP ad that shows Jeremiah Wright's "God d*** America" sermon and hits two local Democrats for endorsing Barack Obama.
Does no one else see what's going on here?
How many other North Carolina Republican Party ads have you heard about this year? Last year? The year before that?
By criticizing the ad, McCain turned it into a national story, which means the ad is likely to be replayed on the cable networks and linked on YouTube and discussed on the talk shows and talk radio and written about in newspapers and magazines. This ad has 76,000 views on YouTube already, and it was posted online Tuesday.
And McCain gets to take the high road, saying he doesn't want to see negative campaigning done on his behalf.
He might as well say, "I want to win this campaign because I have better policies, not because my opponent associates with domestic terrorists who placed a bomb in a women's bathroom in the Pentagon. I want to win this campaign because I have better ideas, not because my opponent (as Karl Rove put it) "attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America." I want to win because voters believe I can solve the country's problems, not because my opponent's wife says she hasn't been proud of this country for the past twenty-five years."
UPDATE: Opening his show today, Rush Limbaugh approvingly touts the ad as "an offshoot of Operation Chaos."
Posted by: Mike ||
04/24/2008 12:23 ||
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#1
I'm having a hard time understanding the problem with this ad, other than the fact that it effectively ties Obama to an anti-America, anti-white, anti-everything-not-black preacher.
I heard someone saying that the dems are claiming this ad is racist? HUH?
#2
The Clinton campaign has now chimed in and called the ad outrageous and is also asking for it to be pulled. That ought to keep the ad in the national spotlight for at least one more cycle.
I've been mulling over that weirdly hysterical anti-Hillary editorial in yesterday's New York Times in which the voice of America's liberal establishment turned on the candidate it had endorsed only a couple of months previously for going negative, "waving the bloody shirt of 9/11", etc.
If I were a timeserving party hack - which is to say a "superdelegate" - wondering about my support for Hillary, Pennsylvania ought to confirm the shrewdness of my judgment: Obama's a hopelessly weak candidate with minimal appeal beyond blacks and upscale white liberals who enjoy the kinky frisson of racial guilt. But, if I were a timeserving party hack who reads the Times, I'd be struck by the ferocity of its assault on a woman it's admired for 15 years and I'd be thinking, whoa, I don't want that kind of publicity if that's the price of sticking with Hill...
There are no good choices for superdelegates right now. But, if you survey the landscape via the pages of the Times, the Hillary option looks like it comes with more potential for blowback. The media's over-glamorization of and over-investment in a weak novelty candidate will influence more calculations than the grim demographic arithmetic of Pennsylvania.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/24/2008 12:19 ||
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After being pummeled 55% to 45% in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was at a loss for explanations. The best he could do was to compliment his supporters in an email saying, "you helped close the gap to a slimmer margin than most thought possible." Then he asked for money.
With $42 million in the bank, money is the least of Sen. Obama's problems. He needs a credible message that convinces Democrats he should be president. In recent days, he's spent too much time proclaiming his inevitable nomination. But they already know he's won more states, votes and delegates.
His words wear especially thin when he was dealt a defeat like Tuesday's. Mr. Obama was routed despite outspending Hillary Clinton on television by almost 3-1. While polls in the final days showed a possible 4% or 5% Clinton win, she apparently took late-deciders by a big margin to clinch the landslide.
Where she cobbled together her victory should cause concern in the Obama HQ. She did better and he worse than expected in Philadelphia's suburbs. Mrs. Clinton won two of these four affluent suburban counties, home of the white-wine crowd Mr. Obama has depended on for victories before.
In the small town and rural "bitter" precincts, she clobbered him. Mr. Obama's state chair was Sen. Bob Casey, who hails from Lackawanna County in northeast Pennsylvania. She carried that county 74%-25%. In the state's 61 less-populous counties, she won 63% and by 278,266 votes. Her margin of victory statewide was 208,024 votes. . . .
The Democratic Party has two weakened candidates. Mrs. Clinton started as a deeply flawed candidate: the palpable and unpleasant sense of entitlement, the absence of a clear and optimistic message, the grating personality impatient to be done with the little people and overly eager for a return to power, real power, the phoniness and the exaggerations. These problems have not diminished over the long months of the contest. They have grown. She started out with the highest negatives of any major candidate in an open race for the presidency and things have only gotten worse.
And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. . . . His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.
Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.
Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. . . . He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.
But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.
Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/24/2008 06:37 ||
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#1
for all his talents, he is ready to be president
Why, he's very bright and well-spoken, g(r)omgoru. He has beautiful teeth and equally beautiful thousand dollar suits, paid for by the beautifully compensated law careers of his wife and himself...and his terribly interesting friends. I'm afraid nothing more comes to mind at the moment, but no doubt it will, shortly.
#8
Im old fashioned, to me commie means believing in abolishing private property, nationalizing the means of production, and a dictatorship of the proletariat. SF liberals pushing their particular view of the 2nd amendment may not be nice, but its not communism. I admit, Im odd that way.
#9
Does it possibly come under the guise of cultural Marxism, LH?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/24/2008 17:41 Comments ||
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#10
Menhaden Snogum is onto something, TW. This has been the Repubs' problem for a long time now.
I don't like that it's true, and I yearn for a time when it won't be. But in a time in history when the much of the human race cannot maturely or intelligently filter through the deceptions of mass media, having the best ideas isn't enough. Excellent communication - and communicators - with charisma are necessary to get your point across, nearly as much as good ideas.
If I ever needed proof that humans are flawed, this issue is it.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/24/2008 17:44 Comments ||
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#11
I'll grant you that he's smart and a trained constitutional lawyer. And sure, he can whip a crowd up into a frenzy. Other than that, I don't see why or how he would make a good President or VP.
#16
I'll disagree. He's perfectly capable of heading some Diversity Outreach fiefdom in Chicago's City Org. Past that? Over his head. By the way, let the wife screech some more. I like that
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/24/2008 23:10 Comments ||
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By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - As the temperature rises in the southern mountain vastness of Afghanistan and the melting snow floods the rivers, a blizzard of militancy awaits North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops. At the same time, Pakistan is firmly in the spotlight as Western dignitaries flood to the country to back the new government's resolve for peace talks with local militants to lay down their arms to pave the way for the isolation of al-Qaeda.
Most recently, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana were in Pakistan to support the government's initiative. Senior government and military officials from the United States are expected soon.
In what has been hailed as a significant move, the sub-nationalist Pashtun Awami National Party government of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) released controversial senior pro-Taliban mullah Sufi Muhammad, after he agreed not to engage in violence. This followed a visit to NWFP by Miliband, during which he met top leaders.
The governments in Islamabad and Britain have greeted the deal with Sufi as a "landmark success", but the military distanced itself from the move, concerned it has more to do with political gamesmanship than realities on the ground, in which uncompromising new players have taken over from people such as Sufi, a moderate by comparison.
And in one way the government's peace program plays right into the hands of the Taliban: the more the security forces halt their operations in the tribal areas, the better the Taliban can launch their spring offensive in Afghanistan, which is only weeks away.
Already, the Taliban have had one of their most "peaceful" runups to a spring offensive since being ousted in 2001, given Pakistan's political turmoil following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last December and elections in February, and various ceasefires in the tribal areas with the Pakistan military.
Contacts in the tribal areas tell Asia Times Online that by early May the Taliban will have sent all their thousands of men, arms and supplies into Afghanistan. The mood, according to the contacts, is upbeat, and commanders expect May and June to be especially "hot" for foreign troops.
The Taliban also made it clear on Monday that they will keep the noose tight on NATO's supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan. They seized two workers of the World Food Organization in Khyber Agency. The workers were rescued by Pakistani security forces after an exchange of fire - and this on the same day that Sufi Muhammad was released.
Overtaken by time
Sufi Muhammad is a founder of the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM), a movement started for the enforcement of Islamic law in the Swat Valley and Malakand regions in NWFP. On his release after six years in jail on Monday, he was taken to the chief minister's residence to sign a peace deal with the government. He was quoted as saying that he condemned violence and believed in peaceful co-existence.
Sufi rose to prominence in the mid-1990s during Benazir Bhutto's second administration (1993-1996), when his armed followers blocked key roads to back their demands for the implementation of Islamic law in their area. Bhutto subsequently repeatedly claimed that the armed rebellion was set up by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to destabilize her government. In the late 1990s, Nawaz Sharif's government granted Sufi's demand and framed Islamic laws for the Swat Valley.
After September 11, 2001, Sufi gathered approximately 10,000 untrained armed men to fight against the US invasion of Afghanistan, despite Taliban leader Mullah Omar's opposition. Most of them were either killed or arrested by the Americans or kidnapped by local warlords for ransom. Sufi managed to escape unhurt from Afghanistan, only to be arrested at the border and jailed in Pakistan.
In his absence, the TNSM regrouped under Maulana Muhammad Alam and was allowed to operate with the tacit consent of the ISI. But Sufi's son-in-law Mullah Fazlullah, who had become radicalized after meeting al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, wanted to take the group in a different direction.
He established his own radio station to deliver firebrand anti-establishment speeches, and his popularity sky-rocketed in the Swat Valley. He brushed off warnings from Sufi and the ISI to cool down and listen to the dictates of the local authorities.
In was clear Fazlullah was taking instructions from al-Qaeda, and Sufi and Alam distanced themselves from him before expelling him from the TNSM.
Fazlullah now runs his own "TNSM", overwhelmingly comprising youth from the Swat Valley, Dir and Malakand. He also has close ties with Pakistani Taliban hardliner Baitullah Mehsud in the South Waziristan tribal area.
When the Pakistani military mounted an operation in the Swat Valley last year against Fazlullah, the locals surrendered at the first push and Fazlullah was forced to retreat. But he was then joined by Uzbek fighters and a guerrilla war continues. The deep radical influence of al-Qaeda's ideology has changed the dynamics of the insurgency in the region.
The upshot of this is that making deals with Sufi is of little significance - Fazlullah was quick to announce to the media that he had nothing to do with the peace agreement. That is, the insurgency in the Swat Valley will continue, and in the bigger picture, the Taliban will prime their guns without hindrance.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/24/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Only weeks until the start of the dreaded Taliban Spring Offensive? I shall have to buy new shoes!
#2
No, tw. Buy popcorn (or cracker jacks). It should be entertaining.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
04/24/2008 11:40 Comments ||
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#3
But I do need new shoes, Rambler. On the other hand, I may have overdone the popcorn a bit over the past year. There have been so many occasions to, after all.
Remember the Iraqi government's Basra offensive, launched a month ago and quickly declared a failure by an overwhelming majority of the talk show and editorial commentators? "Basra Blunder" was the headline of a column that received wide distribution; the column described Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as an inept, impulsive figure "in way over his head."
Today, Maliki and Iraqis in general have earned the right to sneer at such instant and shallow media negativism, for Knights Charge (code name for the anti-Shia gang offensive in Basra and southern Iraq) is proving to be an extraordinarily significant political and military operation with rather heady long-term payoffs.
That's key -- understanding Knights Charge is an integrated political-military operation. Maliki made it clear that this multidimensional operation was planned and executed by the Iraqis themselves and that the United States was not consulted. For this, his insta-critics chastised him. But Maliki knows his enemies, particularly Mahdi Army chieftain Moqtada al-Sadr.
Sadr would tout U.S. "prior approval" as proof Maliki is "a puppet." Instead, a democratically elected prime minister who happens to be a Shia ordered his nation's troops to strike a Shia gangster. The Iraqi government took the initiative -- now it stands to reap several impressive political benefits.
Even attempting Knights Charge signals increasing Iraqi confidence in their own capacities. Confidence does not ensure competence -- cockiness can get you killed -- but experienced military trainers and teachers know achieving trainee or student competence requires building confidence.
Knights Charge, however, was much more than a confidence-building measure; it may be the most decisive example of a country-building measure we have seen since Saddam fell in April 2003.
Knights Charge involved 15,000 soldiers deployed in six Iraqi Army combat brigades and one police brigade, or roughly two divisions of troops. I have helped plan division-sized mobile operations. Basra and Baghdad are complex urban terrain; moreover, they are politically complex, which amplifies risks. Planning the movement of seven brigades is itself a sophisticated task; executing the plan requires a sophistication that only comes from experience.
Knights Charge put boots and wheels and tracks on roads and into combat. Units coordinated supporting fires and maneuvered in close combat. Sometimes they failed. They needed U.S. and British artillery and air support -- but note they called for it. Here's the battle's bottom line: The various Shia gangs performed much worse. On April 20, The New York Times ran a story that said the Iraqi Army had taken the last Mahdi Army-controlled neighborhood in Basra.
The offensive put several serious Iraqi military problems on display -- tough, immediate medicine -- but what matters is how the leadership corrects them. Desert Storm demonstrated that some soldiers in some Iraqi units are unreliable. In 1991 and 2003, American forces exploited this moral flaw. During the early stages of Knights Charge, a disgusting percentage of Iraqi soldiers fled combat. The Iraqis have since sacked and publicly shamed 1,300 soldiers, which says Iraq's current leaders intend to fix the flaws.
When Knights Charge began, I wrote that the Maliki government knows first and foremost it is waging a political war. Long ago, it decided to isolate and "suffocate" Sadr. In the wake of Knights Charge, Sadr is being publicly mocked.
Fierce Iraq Kurd and Sunni Arab political support for Knights Charge has strengthened Maliki's government -- that's nation-building by the Iraqis themselves. I believe this was the Iraqi government's key strategic domestic objective. In over their heads or a heady move?
Knights Charge demonstrates the Iraqi democratic government's expanding reach and increasing effectiveness. Iran's mullah dictatorship will always try to destabilize Iraq, that's a given. But now Tehran says publicly it supports the Iraqi government's counterinsurgent efforts. Why? Fair bet the smart mullahs have noticed the political success of Knights Charge as well as the Iraqi military's improving counterinsurgency capabilities. Unfortunately, the Basra blunderbusses in the American media haven't.
Muhammad Al-Munajid: "Some of these heretics say: 'Islam is not the private property of anyone.' So what do they want? They say: 'No sect has a monopoly on Islam.' So what do they want? They say: 'We want to issue rulings.' Someone who is ignorant, who does not know any Arabic, or who has no knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence wants to issue rulings?! They say: 'We reinterpret the texts.' There is a very dangerous conspiracy against the religion of Islam in newspapers and in what these people say. A journalist, or one of those lowlifes, wants to... These people are a mixture of Western, local, and imported ideologies, but they want to express their views with regard to religious rulings. This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people - the prerogative of knowledgeable people, not of fools or heretics.
[...]
"The problem is that they want to open a debate on whether Islam is true or not, and on whether Judaism and Christianity are false or not. In other words, they want to open up everything for debate. Now they want to open up all issues for debate. That's it.
"It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief. So where's the conspiracy? They say: Let's have freedom of thought in Islam. Well, what do they want?
"They say: I think, therefore I want to express my thoughts. I want to express myself, I want to talk and say, for example, that there are loopholes in Islam, or that Christianity is the truth.
"Then they will talk about freedom of belief, and say that anyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants... If you want to become an apostate - go ahead. You like Buddhism? Leave Islam, and join Buddhism. No problem. That's what freedom of belief is all about. They want freedom of everything. What they want is very dangerous.
[...]
"Freedom of thought, within some constraints, is blessed. Islam calls for thinking, for interpretation, and for the use of the mind. But as for freedom of heresy, which allows anyone to criticize whatever he wants in Islam, saying, for example, that he does not like the punishment for apostasy, that he doesn't like the punishment for drinking alcohol, or that he does not like the punishment of stoning adulterers - this is barbarism.
"They ask: Why should a thief have his hand chopped off? Some of them say that this is 'too much.' Two-three much on you and your rotten mind. If you abolish this punishment, you will see the rise in thefts. On the other hand, people feel their property is secure because of this punishment."
#1
Well, every time they jack up the price of our oil, their food gets more expensive. If they want reasonably priced food, they can sell us reasonably priced oil.
#2
High inflation + low interest rates gets us close to a Japan like situation with negative real money rates.
Yet the stock market seems to be holding its own and rising. We have not experienced negative economic growth and it takes two consecutive quarters to be an official recession. However, famous investors have stated that we are already in a recession.
#3
OPEC is shooting itself in the foot. Fear of shortages has led to a mad scramble to buy every last drop of oil at any price. It's a bubble that's bound to burst. Already US gasoline consumption has dropped year over year, and infrastructure changes making oil an ever smaller part of the economy will accelerate so even after the price comes down there will be less demand than would otherwise have been the case. The more ridiculously high the price goes the greater the incentive to develop alternatives, and developing them we are. There are opportunities aplenty, and whether the next big thing comes from algae or biomass or cellulose, petroleum will no longer be the only game in town. Petroleum producers will have only themselves to blame. They made the research and development not just possible, but inevitable.
There was a time when much of the world's wealth was tied up in whale oil; without it cities would have gone dark. We get by fine without it since we found subsitutes. Just as New England whalers had to find other other things to do, the petrol merchants will have to discover other lines of work. Maybe they can go back to pearl diving and camel trading. Everyone likes pearls. And camels. Who doesn't like a nice camel?
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
04/24/2008 13:40 Comments ||
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#4
What these goat-r*ping primitives do not understand is the only thing between them and occupation and enslavement by China is the United States Navy.
#5
Get a grip. The price of oil is not being set by OPEC, it is being set by the US, Europe, India and China. OPEC determines how much to produce and we determine how much to pay for it. There's no evidence OPEC is intentionally producing less. Perhaps the price of oil has more to do with the US$1.5 trillion the Chinese are sitting on and their use of it to influence our economy and election. Wait till December.
#6
Petroleum producers will have only themselves to blame.
Huh, how about the legion of NIMBY'ists out there who've blocked the access to and exploitation of reserves and the political hacks who pander to them? How about the Envirowinnies who use the Californista standards for pollution control for entire swaths of the country that don't have the mix of population concentration, topography, and weather that bedevils the beautiful people? Imagine we could get a 20 percent instant savings on energy consumption just in dropping the pollution controls.
McCain's Hollywood advantage Lindsey Myers, Brown Daily Herald (student paper, Brown University)
If Americans vote at the ballot box, they also express their political preferences at the box office. And recent cinematic trends suggest that conservatism is not as moribund as some hope and others fear.
An intriguing case in point is the inability of Hollywood to translate the unpopularity of the war into domestic box office success. Major studios have produced movies highly critical of Bush's war on terror with some of Hollywood's most bankable stars.
However, every one of these movies bombed at the box office. Consider "Rendition" with Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, "In the Valley of Elah" with Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Thereon or "Lions for Lambs" with Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. These box office flops led Jon Stewart to quip at the Oscars that "Withdrawing the Iraq movies would only embolden the audience. We cannot let the audience win."
Posted by: Mike ||
04/24/2008 07:21 ||
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#1
Hollywood's actual response is that they can't sell anti-war dramas, so they are going to try and sell anti-war *comedies* next.
They have several in the pipeline right now, starting with "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay":
#2
Geez, 'moose, I wish you wouldn't have told me that. Ruins my entire weekend, and it's only Thursday.
Posted by: BA ||
04/24/2008 10:03 Comments ||
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#3
It does look like it will be funny.
Now, let's see....movie theaters......movers......moving and storage....
Nope, no more movie theaters. Guess I'll have to wait for the DVD.
#6
If you pay close attention you will see the anti-war movies are lowbudget affairs primarily designed to generate oscars and buzz and probably to create close relationshps between studios and actors. I don't think they are really expecting them to make money and they are certainly unwilling to slip their political messages into the blockbusters.
Note the messages in the Spiderman Franchise and 300 were very pro-conservative messages. I believe Iron Man will follow suit as well. Hollywood might be knee deep in liberal fantasies but they know what makes money and what doesn't.
#9
Spiderman Franchise and 300 were very pro-conservative
In the 60s, to deliver a 'moral' message Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry had to employ scifi to get around the establishment of that time. By setting the stories in a 'fictional' environment it allowed little morality tales to seep through the walls of good old boy obstructions. Nothing different today other than the identity of the censors.
#10
Hollywood's biases are showing in the movies they try to sell. There are many good stories about the current conflict worthy of telling--about bona fide heroes. For some reason Hollywood keeps spinning their tired old biases in which few Americans are interested. Most of the today's so-called stars wouldn't know one end of a firearm from the other.
#11
Hollywood as we know it has become an echo chamber for liberal elites who are out of touch with reality and out of touch with the American public.
What they fail to realize is that you can fool all of the people some of the time and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
#12
Last movie I saw in a theatre was "300." Can't remember the last one I saw before that. Hollyweird's offerings have left me cold for a long, long time. Between the crap on the screen and the overpriced crap at the concession stand, not to mention the too-often rude, noisy patrons, who in their right mind would WANT to go see a movie these days?
Watching a movie at a theatre these days reminds me a lot of the worse parts of air travel. Neither one is a pleasant experience and I avoid them whenever possible.
Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 ||
04/24/2008 18:10 Comments ||
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#13
Ummm, lets see, antiwar comedies?
MASH and Hogan's Heroes come to mind, both were wildly popular, and damn good too.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/24/2008 23:15 Comments ||
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#14
Kelly's Heroes
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/24/2008 23:18 Comments ||
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#15
Wonder how Iron Man will stack up - can go either way with that. Previews make it pretty obvious guys with tablecloths on their heads are the evil ones.
Just two days ago, most commentators were saying that there is no way Hillary can overcome Obamas lead (both in delegates elected and in popular votes). By midnight of election night, with all the vote tallies in, suddenly the commentators were abuzz with the new question, Can she possibly do it, after all?
It always amazes me how swiftly the narrative can change. Seemingly in an instant, serious commentators reverse the direction of their analysis and change their tone of voice, while their excitement level shoots upwards. Monday, it was all: No matter what happens in Pennsylvania, Obama has the election all locked up. Wednesday morning, it is What a great, gutsy victory it is for Hillary. Hillary is really a fighter. She won labor-union households, those over 40 years old, white men and white women, churchgoers, huntersand most of these by high margins. She won Catholics by 70 percent. These are the groups a Democratic nominee must win against McCain in November.
Some are even now working out the arithmetic to show that it is possible for her to win the popular vote by the last primary, June 6. Possible, but not likely. As one of my favorite bloggers, Orrin Judd, is prone to say: "The conventional wisdom is always wrong."
Posted by: Mike ||
04/24/2008 07:13 ||
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#1
Hang on the last big one is North Carolina. It looks like Obama. If so watch the how swiftly the narrative changes again!
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.
Although it has been embroidered with the ersatz regalia of antiquity, the Olympic torch relay does not, in fact, date back to the ancient Greeks or even to Pierre de Coubertin, the organizer of the first modern games, in 1896. It was the brainchild of Carl Diem, who spearheaded the 1936 Berlin Olympics under the approving gaze of Josef Goebbels and Adolf Hitler. Designed by Krupp--the German munitions company whose owners were indicted for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg--the torch was carried into the Olympiastadion by the elegant and very Aryan 1,500-meter runner Fritz Schilgen in front of a phalanx of swastikas and the cameras of Leni Riefenstahl, who documented the whole affair in her paean to the Nazi physique and spirit, Olympia. 
Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting Inc. said. 
The key problem for Hillary's campaign is that normal people reel back in horror at her association with the Clinton administration. (Which is why, as her supporter, I refer to her as simply "Hillary.") 
Remember the Iraqi government's Basra offensive, launched a month ago and quickly declared a failure by an overwhelming majority of the talk show and editorial commentators? "Basra Blunder" was the headline of a column that received wide distribution; the column described Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as an inept, impulsive figure "in way over his head." 
The following are excerpts from an interview with Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid. The interview aired on Al-Majd TV on March 30, 2008. 
