January 12, 2010

Thugs in chief, A.N.S.W.E.R.

Via RedState

By Dr. Richard Swier

I received an interesting e-mail from the local Glenn Beck Meet-up Group about A.N.S.W.E.R. Florida. It seems A.N.S.W.E.R. Florida recently sent out an e-mail to all its members stating in part:

"Racism is like anything else in this world: in order to make it fall, you must smash it! That is why we are calling on all people to come out tomorrow, to organize a militant confrontation with the so-called “tea baggers.” Beating back these forces will require us to organize together, take the streets, fight the racists wherever they show their faces and drive them out of every community."

So what is A.N.S.W.E.R. Florida and why do they want to "organize a militant confrontation with the so-called 'tea baggers'"?....more

From A.N.S.W.E.R. Fl.

A.N.S.W.E.R. Florida., in the spirit of the national A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition steering committee, is working to build an anti-racist, peace and social justice movement. A central characteristic of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition's organizing strategy has been to work in partnership with the Arab American and Muslim community and other sectors in U.S. society who have been traditionally ignored. The anti-war movement must give voice to those who are most affected by the war. This has helped to create a truly multi-national anti-war movement that has included many Iraq war veterans and family members of soldiers. A.N.S.W.E.R./Florida affirms the belief that building such an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, multi-national movement is going to be the force that ultimately stops the U.S. war machine.

Florida Statewide Steering Committee
Jamal Alian, Muslim Student Association, Florida State University, Tallahassee
Lex Foster, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Daytona Beach
Naveen El-Nawawy, Muslim community activist Tampa
Michael Prysner, March Forward, Tampa
Antonio Franco, ANSWER-UCF, Orlando
Emmanuel Lopez, member, Unite Here, Local 355, Palm Beach
John Daly, Exec. Board, AFSCME Local 3041, Fort Lauderdale
Muhammed Malik, South Florida Palestine Solidarity Network Miami Dade, Miami
Nadia Abdallah, Palestinian American Organization, FAU, Boca Raton

National Steering Committee
IFCO/Pastors for Peace
Free Palestine Alliance - U.S.
Haiti Support Network
Partnership for Civil Justice - LDEF
Nicaragua Network
Alliance for Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines
Korea Truth Commission
Muslim Student Association - National
Kensington Welfare Rights Union
Mexico Solidarity Network
Party for Socialism and Liberation

h/t Mark

December 05, 2008

Front Line is deeply concerned following reports received of the abduction of Ms Jestina Mukoko by Zimbabwean security forces from her home in Norton Harare in the morning of 3 December 2008, at approximately 5:00 am. Jestina Mukoko is the Project Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), an organisation monitoring and documenting violence and human rights abuses across the country through a network of peace observers.

On 3 December 2008, at around 5:00 am, approximately fifteen armed men in plain clothes, driving a Mazda Familia with no registration plates, surrounded the home of Jestina Mukoko. Four of them broke in threatening the guard with guns and abducted Jestina Mukoko, while still in her nightdress. The abductors are suspected Central Intelligence Officers (CIO) and police agents. Jestina Mukoko´s son, who witnessed the abduction, reported the kidnapping to human rights organisations who are searching for her in police stations around Harare. As yet, her whereabouts remain unknown.

Front Line believes that the alleged abduction of Jestina Mukoko may be a result of her legitimate work in defence of human rights, in particular her work in documenting violence and torture in Zimbabwe. Front Line is concerned about the recent increase in the harassment of human rights defenders in Zimbabwe and is gravely concerned for the physical and psychological integrity of Jestina Mukoko.

We, the undersigned, are activists and human rights defenders, who, individually and in association with others, strive for the protection and realization of fundamental freedoms as well as the economical, social, cultural, civil and political rights in Bahrain and abroad.... We, thus:

1- Call upon the Bahraini Authorities to cease harassments of activists and human rights defenders, and eliminate all practices of its various organs, which are aimed at impeding the exercise of their rights and their role in the realization, protection and promotion of economic, social, cultural, civil and political Bahrain, including the introduction of those rights through the available means and mechanisms established by The United Nations and international human rights organizations.

2- call upon the Bahraini Authorities to stop activating and reforming all legislations promulgated during and post the era of the State-security measures, which confiscate the recognized basic rights and violate all norms, international covenants and treaties, including the rights of activists and defenders of rights.

3- Recognizing the important duties performed by human rights defenders, and the dangers they face, we call upon the current representative of the Secretary-General on human rights defenders to put Bahrain in the list of priorities and expedite the visit to Bahrain and meet with activists and defenders of rights there.

Signatories:

1. Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

2. Mohammed Al-Maskati, president of Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights.

3. Abduljalil Al-Singace, head of the Human Rights Office at the Movement Liberties and Democracy "HAQ".

4. AbdulGhani Al-Khanjar, spokesman of the National Committee for Martyrs and Victims of Torture.

5. Abbas Omran, a trade unionist and member of Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

6. Mohammed Saeed, human rights defender.

7. Layla Dashti, human rights defender.

8. Nader Al-Salatna, spokesman of the Committee of Unemployed and Underpaid and member Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights.

9. Naji Fateel, member of Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights – (Imprisoned for 5 years since December 2007).

10. Hasan Abdulnabi, the president of the Committee of Unemployed and Underpaid (Imprisoned for 7 years since December 2007).

11. Mohammed Al-Singais, Head of Committee to Combat High Prices - (Imprisoned for 5 years since December 2007).

12. Maitham Sheikh, Member of the Committee of Unemployed and Underpaid – (Imprisoned for 5years since December 2007).

13. Shaker Mohammed Abdulhussein - the Committee of Unemployed and Underpaid – Detained and under prosecution since April 2008).

14. Hassan Kathom Ebrahim Ahmed - Member of the Committee of Unemployed
and Underpaid work – (Detained and under prosecution since April 2008).

15. Sadeq Jawad Al-Fardan - Member of the Committee of the Committee of Unemployed and Underpaid – (Detained and under prosecution since April 2008).

16. Ali Mohamed Habib Ashoor - Committee for the Defense of the Detainees – (Detained and under prosecution since April 2008).

17. Habib Mohammed Habib Ashoor - Committee for the Defense of the Detainees – (Detained and under prosecution since April 2008).

18. Sayed Omran Hameed Adnan - member of the Committee Against 1% - (Detained and under prosecution since April 2008).

19. Fadhel Abbas Mohamed Ashoor - member of the Committee to Combat High Prices – (Detained and under prosecution since April 2008).

November 18, 2008

I was googling "Iraqi Veterans Against The War" + "George Soros" and wasn't surprised to see this article via American Thinker

New York Magazine - "Money Chooses Sides".
The investment banker Robert Wolf first met Barack Obama one afternoon in December in a midtown conference room. Obama was in town to deliver a speech at a charity dinner for children in poverty at the Mandarin Oriental—but also to pursue another, less high-minded, but more momentous, objective: to begin the process of attempting to pick Hillary Clinton’s pocket.

The conference room belonged to George Soros, the billionaire bête noire of the right. After talking to Soros for an hour about his prospective bid for the White House, Obama walked down the hall and found assembled a dozen of the city’s heaviest-hitting Democratic fund-raisers: investment banker Hassan Nemazee, Wall Street power Blair Effron, private-equity hotshot Mark Gallogly, hedge-fund manager Orin Kramer. Most had been big-time John Kerry backers in 2004. Most had a connection to the Clintons. All were officially uncommitted for 2008.[...]

Wolf was wowed by Obama that afternoon: his straightforwardness, his “bold and impressive” early stance against the Iraq war. He handed Obama his card and said, “I’d like to get to know you more.” Obama phoned the next day. “When we hung up, he said, ‘I’ll call you after the holidays,’ and I’m thinking, Yeah, right, he’s gonna call me,” Wolf says. But call Obama did. The next week, they had dinner in Washington, just the two of them, on the night that George W. Bush gave his speech announcing the surge of additional troops into Iraq. “I felt so honored to be sitting down with him for two hours on an occasion like that,” Wolf recalls, “knowing that he was going off to be interviewed on television later.”

Within ten days, Obama had announced his intention to run and Clinton was officially in. A story in the Times reported that Obama had nailed two A-list New York donors: Soros and Wolf. But though Soros’s backing was a symbolic coup, it’s Wolf who has emerged as Obama’s most copious cash collector in the city so far—hosting two high-dollar cocktail parties, making countless calls, harvesting more than $500,000. As Wolf tells me about the soirées he’s hosted, he reaches into a meticulously organized scrapbook, takes out a photograph of him and Obama grinning madly, and tells me that I can keep it. “The way Barack has taken this nation with his rock-star status,” he says, “it’s very exciting!”

Robert Wolf is the President & Chief Operating Officer for UBS Investment Bank. He also serves as Chairman & CEO for UBS Group for the Americas.

Hopey, changey has a lot of IOU's.

Possibly related - Swiss protest UBS bailout.
Statement on indictment of UBS executive Raoul Weil.
Soros called to account by US politicians over global financial crisis.

Video - 11/13 George Soros was testifying about congress perception that hedge fund industry as the main factor of collapsing the current financial market.

On September 16, 1992 George Soros was responsible for devaluing the Euro which came to be known as "Black Wednesday".

Interesting link in comments from Mongol - Soros-Funded Democratic Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy Font

Posted by SH United Islamic Jihad at 12:49 PM | | | digg this

November 06, 2008

Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and the country's president, Hosni Mubarak, in Egypt's first prosecution of a blogger. Kareem Amer criticized his college on his blog as "the university of terrorism" and Mubarak's regime a "symbol of dictatorship".

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said today in a statement that Kareem Amer has now completed his second year in prison....

Kareem has delivered a message saying how he is feeling at the moment: " I dream of leaving the prison…but I will never let anybody bargain away my freedom and destiny, even if I am forced to spend my whole life in prison, freedom of my thoughts and my writing are much more valuable to me and I will never bargain them away, whatever the price”.

Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, who is now visiting Kareem in Borg Al Arab prison in Alexandria said:

"ANHRI denounces the continuing injustice brought about by delaying the appeal which was presented to the court sixteen months ago. These procedures should not take more than six months. ANHRI call on the public prosecutor to consider the appeal immediately and investigate allegations concerning the torture of Kareem at Borg Al Arab prison"

October 20, 2008

They're pulling a game off the shelves because Muslims object to a single song.

Although the game is already pressed, packaged, and reportedly sitting in the back rooms of many worldwide retailers awaiting its original Oct. 21 debut, gamers eager to get hold of it will have to wait at least another week while the offending content is expunged. Updated versions of the game are expected to be shipped to stores during the week of October 27.

This is ridiculous. Gamers, whatever platform you game on, do not buy this game. Let's show Sony that it is not in their financial interest to kowtow to Islamotards.

H/T: Terry66

July 18, 2007

Sounds like good news:

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya's highest judicial body commuted to life in prison on Tuesday the sentences of six foreign medics who have been on death row for infecting children with the AIDS virus, an official said.

"The Judicial Council decided to commute the death sentence to life in prison," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who has been granted Bulgarian citizenship, could serve out their sentences in Bulgaria, as the two countries have an extradition treaty

Let's keep our fingers crossed that these people get sent to Bulgaria to *ahem* "finish out their sentences."

As the old saying goes, however, follow the money.

The decision came after the childrens' families dropped their call for the death penalty following a compensation deal worth millions of dollars.

Yeah, if I truly believed someone deliberately injected my kid with the AIDS virus, I'm not going to take cash over the death penalty. Especially if I'm in Libya, not known for its soft stance towards Westerners.

I believe these people were railroaded to cover up shoddy conditions at the hospital, and then Qaddafi figured out a way to wring cash back from the EU after the payout he had to give in the Lockerbie case.

But, that's just me. I also think that once we got hold of his WMD technology, we should have thanked him with another bombing run.

Yanno, cuz we missed the last time.

March 07, 2007

France has put it's collective foot down. They have taken enough grief, and they are finally fed up.

Not with the car and bus burnings, the daily riots, the vandalism and graffiti or the near-constant outpouring of Muslim rage in their streets.

No, France is OK with that... but the evil BLOGGERS have got to go!

According to Peter Sayer, IDG News Service:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The article went on to say:

The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

So one can only assume that the French government is not nearly as concerned with the daily violence as they are with people finding out about it.

Hat-Tip: Gregor at The World's Reality

February 14, 2007

Google caught criticism, and rightfully so, for disclosing user identification data to the totalitarian communist government of the People's Republic of China, thereby condeming at least some of those users to harsh repression by the ChiComs.

Now, Google has agreed to comply with a subpoena issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and this writer is wondering if Google's compliance in this case will be viewed in a similar way to Google's cooperation with the ChiComs:

I wonder how YouTube users will feel about the company’s disclosure of personal information. While there was a fair amount of concern raised when the subpoenas were issued, I’m going to guess that most YouTube users will tolerate or even support the company’s decision. Perhaps the rest will stop linking their personal information to accounts used in illicit activities. Privacy experts report that it’s the simple things that get most people burned.

h/t : Glenn.

January 31, 2007

So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause.

"Long live the sovereign people! Long live President Hugo Chavez! Long live socialism!" said National Assembly President Cilia Flores as she proclaimed the "enabling law" approved by a show of hands. "Fatherland, socialism or death! We will prevail!"

Fatherland? Where have I heard that term before?

December 11, 2006

It seems Pakistan's new law negating the need for four male witnesses to a rape is not being met with open arms by his fellow members of the Religion of Seething.

KARACHI (Reuters) - Thousands of Islamist protesters demonstrated in southern Pakistan on Sunday against a new law that reduces the burden of proof on rape victims by allowing them to seek justice without the need for four male witnesses.

The Women Protection Bill, signed into law last month, was seen as a key test for President Pervez Musharraf's philosophy of "enlightened moderation" for his predominantly Muslim country.

The protest in the country's biggest city of Karachi came a day after Musharraf ruled out any changes to the law despite calls from the Islamists.

Apparently, this law is so horridly wrong, it's going to turn Pakistan into a "free sex zone."

"We reject this law because it is unIslamic and also against women rights," Fazal-ur-Rehman, a senior leader of the main Islamist alliance and opposition leader in the National Assembly, parliament's lower house, told the rally.

Rehman said the law is a conspiracy to make Pakistan a "free sex zone".

I don't know what Mr. Rehman is complaining about. Sex outside of marriage is still punishable by 5 years in prison, and adulterers are still allowed to be stoned to death.

October 14, 2006

I was unable to post this earlier for some reason, so am trying again. The basic situation here is that, like Rusty, I'm not sure what comes next. Rusty asks:

So, is leaving the answer? Or is there something else we should be doing?

I think we have to leave for two reasons. One is that we ultimately have to draw-down until we disappear, so that the credit and legitimacy associated with victory over the Islamofascist insurgency in Iraq accrues to the new government. They need it, just as all newly formed governments need legitimacy. The other reason is that we now have other materializing challenges.

Note: I'm assuming that far from the MSM's conclusion that we're losing and that Iraq is a quagmire, we've essentially won. Barring some miracle the Sunni version of Islamofascism will be ejected, eventually. They're at a strategic disadvantage, and judging from their own communiques they know it.

But that leaves us with a dilemma.

Since I'm a bicycle enthusiast I've chosen to illustrate the dilemma as analogous to Lance Armstrong's choice of whether, and how, to allow Marco Pantani the win on the Mont Ventoux stage of the Tour de France in 2002. Armstrong's "big idea" was that by making a magnanimous gesture he'd create a strategic ally in his overall effort to win the Tour. But it didn't work out that way. The problem was that he didn't pull up soon enough, so Pantani (and more importantly Pantani's fans) knew that the victory had been gifted. Had Armstrong been more clever he'd have made the arrangement far less obvious, and still have won Pantani as an ally.

So, borrowing from this analogy we need to leave early enough that any final victories won't be attributed to the US. That's the bitter pill we must swallow in service of a larger goal.

I think the best way for us to accomplish this tricky transition, without sacrificing our own reputation and appearing weak (which would help Islamofascist recruitment like nothing else), is to simply move on to another military mission, or at least clear the decks so that we can be ready should we need to act. We can rightly say that we didn't leave because we were defeated, but because we had pressing concerns somewhere else. The draw-down probably should be gradual, but still faster than would have seemed prudent a few months ago. Maybe the Baker Commission will give us some cover?

And where should the next engagement be? The tulip or the star?

Tear it up.

I was unable to post this earlier for some reason, so am trying again. The basic situation here is that, like Rusty, I'm not sure what comes next. Rusty asks:

So, is leaving the answer? Or is there something else we should be doing?

I think we have to leave for two reasons. One is that we ultimately have to draw-down until we disappear, so that the credit and legitimacy associated with victory over the Islamofascist insurgency in Iraq accrues to the new government. They need it, just as all newly formed governments need legitimacy. The other reason is that we now have other materializing challenges.

Note: I'm assuming that far from the MSM's conclusion that we're losing and that Iraq is a quagmire, we've essentially won. Barring some miracle the Sunni version of Islamofascism will be ejected, eventually. They're at a strategic disadvantage, and judging from their own communiques they know it.

But that leaves us with a dilemma.

Since I'm a bicycle enthusiast I've chosen to illustrate the dilemma as analogous to Lance Armstrong's choice of whether, and how, to allow Marco Pantani the win on the Mont Ventoux stage of the Tour de France in 2002. Armstrong's "big idea" was that by making a magnanimous gesture he'd create a strategic ally in his overall effort to win the Tour. But it didn't work out that way. The problem was that he didn't pull up soon enough, so Pantani (and more importantly Pantani's fans) knew that the victory had been gifted. Had Armstrong been more clever he'd have made the arrangement far less obvious, and still have won Pantani as an ally.

So, borrowing from this analogy we need to leave early enough that any final victories won't be attributed to the US. That's the bitter pill we must swallow in service of a larger goal.

I think the best way for us to accomplish this tricky transition, without sacrificing our own reputation and appearing weak (which would help Islamofascist recruitment like nothing else), is to simply move on to another military mission, or at least clear the decks so that we can be ready should we need to act. We can rightly say that we didn't leave because we were defeated, but because we had pressing concerns somewhere else. The draw-down probably should be gradual, but still faster than would have seemed prudent a few months ago. Maybe the Baker Commission will give us some cover?

And where should the next engagement be? The tulip or the star?

Tear it up.

July 07, 2006

It's "deja vu all over again". Apparently the ideological tie that afflicted the US Presidential Election six years ago, and the deadlock that Thomas Mann has been writing about for a number of years, isn't just an American thing. If Europe is becoming less convinced of its cultural bet on appeasement, as a result of recent events, that may simply mean the impasse is spreading. In the US the primary impact of the Hamdan Decision is to defer to congress certain powers of war-making that the founders intended the executive fulfill, because... indecision may be bad all the time, it can be downright catastrophic in the midst of a war. We just can't bring ourselves to the point of lifting the burden of our own "Mexican Stand-Off" from the Executive. So, we pass the buck to congress where they can wrangle and bloviate about things while we twiddle and dance. Like, we really have such a luxury.

At precisely the time in history when we need to be decisive, we're afflicted with paralysis. We've got two approximately equal sides, equally convinced that they're right, and in diametric opposition to one another about critical issues that can impact not only whether we suffer a massive attack, but ultimately whether we lose the conflict outright. And, like I said, it's not just us.

So, what's going on?

Well, here's a possibility. Some years ago, in a fit of condescension, the rapping academic, Cornel West, suggested that the real difference between "conservatives" and "liberals" is not the nature of the important variables, but about how various contingencies are weighted. This may be true. In fact, I tend to think it is. If so, here's the problem: the way both sides conduct analysis doesn't take into account the contingent nature of that weighting, and how it's related to reality. We employ methods of analysis, argumentation, and decision-making that, in essence, mix all the uncertainties and certainties we perceive into a big pot. But the recipes we use to dole out the proportions are different.

In fact, it may be worse than that. If one side believes the odds that a particular ingredient will influence the result is less than 50:50 then that ingredient never makes it into the pot at all. The ingredient in that side's dish gets tossed. And then we promptly forget that we tossed it, and why. We act as though everything's tossed into the pot in proportions that are dictated by some transcendent reality that we understand by virtue of simply being human. It's the way we're made. It used to serve us well as hunter-gatherers, but perhaps no longer.

Removing a single variable from the mix changes the very nature of the dish (worldview) that we're left with. In cooking, such a modest shift between, say, salt and sugar, changes the nature of the dish from savory to dessert. In the realm of foreign policy it changes the nature of the decision from war to diplomacy. And the problem is that some people have a built-in taste for one and not the other. The nature of the problem itself is secondary to how it's depicted. We start out with a preference for dessert, and so it's unlikely that we'll toss in much salt even if dessert is inappropriate for supper.

Ultimately, we end up with solutions that aren't all that closely tied to the problems we're attempting to resolve and people sort themselves into approximately equal camps... because we have no really unbiased way of resolving our uncertainties; especially those that co-blogger A.L.'s recent post identifies with the Rumsfeldian insight that there are "some things we don't know that we don't know". (And that set of unknown unknowns may be quite different for the two camps.)

Well, the point here is that this whole "mixing pot" method of analysis and argumentation may be wrong-headed to begin with. It's actually a short cut that people sort of adopted as the mainstream method some time ago, because it seemed to work well enough for many non-critical and non-complicated disagreements. It's easy, but it may also be inappropriate to a critical-path world.

A physicist named Edward T. Jaynes recently wrote a book about a methodological split in probability theory that I didn't know existed: Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. (h/t: Candace on NRO's PhiBetaCon) To make a long story short, it's a book extolling the virtues of Bayesian probability theory, which is a rather esoteric topic for the layman. But the basic idea of Bayesian probability is pretty simple, and intuitively realistic. It's that once an event happens, or we become certain of it's occurrence, it changes the contextual circumstances for the next choice or option in a critical path series of uncertainties or contingencies. That's kind of a mouthful, for the insight that "what happens matters".

For most of us the choices we thought we had prior to 9/11 changed radically as a result of that attack. But more to the point, we could have decided to look at our future some time prior to 9/11 by factoring in the odds that such an event would, or wouldn't, happen--and then have considered the difference between the two probability-sequenced critical paths. The idea here isn't so much about prevention of the attack, but about contemplation of the world such an event would leave us with. It enables us to make better decisions now, but it also does somethig else. It moves us inexorably in the direction of resolution...

Had we employed such an approach prior to 9/11 we might not be in the sort of near-deadlock we find ourselves in at the moment, where we seem unable to resolve whether the revelation of a secret-but-legal intelligence method places us in greater long term danger. How do we proceed to weight the various uncertainties, each of which will impact uncertainties further out or more distant? If we have no idea then we're more or less doomed to simply decide that there are too many uncertainties to deal with "realistically", and we end up with deadlock. And if instead we bit the bullet, and used some sort of critical path method, we still might not agree. In fact, we probably wouldn't. But at the very least we'd tend to know where the disagreements really lie and so could carefully monitor our uncertainties, adjusting the debate to fit the facts and contingencies as they become resolvable.

So, it's all about resolution. It's all about constructing a set of "lenses" for our poor tired society's eyes that correct for both near and far-sightedness at the same time. The bottom line is that we want our vision to improve, rather than degrade, over time.

So what do we need, at a bare minimum, to accomplish this? Well, I can think of two things that seem critical:

1. A "public intelligence system" that is efficiently self-correcting and transparent. That is, something other than mainstream media, which tends to propagate and justify mistakes rather than updating with chronologically-stamped revisions that facilitate decision-making and strategizing. Our current media has an interest in covering mistakes that are part of the critical path. Plus we need to learn to forgive such mistakes to some degree, in the interest of accurately resolving contingencies, so that we don't continue to debate things that have already been largely decided by events.

For instance: we don't need to keep debating indefinitely whether there were WMD in Iraq, and we can move on to a discussion of the significance of various kinds and stages of WMD that we know were there, or that we might find in the future, or that might have been developed had certain events come to pass. And we can dispense with concepts like "operational relationships" between al Qaeda and Saddam (or now the Mullahs) and can talk about contingent relationships between al Qaeda and other state actors that may or may not develop into "operational relationships" as a result of our actions, or inactions.

2. We also need an academic/research establishment that's more oriented toward this critical path/contingent mode of analysis, and is willing to talk in those terms to the public. Such an establishment would "raise the bar" for discourse, and I have no doubt that many of us in the intelligence consuming public would rise to the challenge. We're not as dumb as we look. If necessary we can employ technologies that help us "grasp" what's being discussed.

In other words at least some of the methodological issues that have distorted our social and hard sciences are endemic as part of the way we, as private individuals, do things. And this "two-dimensional viewpont" is embedded in the way we argue and debate issues. Well, often it's not even two but one-dimensional. This, we can't continue to tolerate, for while we get deeper and deeper into this Mexican Stand-off we're fighting an enemy that just doesn't have the same problem. They don't have the problem of paralysis because they're absolutists. Their minds are made up, and their debate, if it ever happened, is finished.

December 18, 2005

Cochabamba, Bolivia - Evo Morales, a leftist lawmaker and strident US critic who is leading Bolivia's presidential race, closed his campaign on Thursday, saying his movement was "a nightmare for the United States".

Thousands of Bolivians packed a soccer stadium in this central Bolivian city as Morales made a final plea for votes in his bid to become the country's first indigenous president in Sunday's election.

Morales, whose defense of coca leaf-growing has made him a pariah in Washington, said his Movement to Socialism party was a "political force that has the North Americans trembling."

It "is a nightmare for the United States", he said.

I'm trembling, are you trembling?

Such a nightmare, whatever shall we do.

I know, when the awesome military might of the hyper-power Bolivia appears on the horizon off of our coasts, I shall dutifully urinate in my underwear and hide under the bed.

I've got a better idea. We need divine help in this crisis.

Dear Lord our God, we pray to you in our hour of need.
Our children cry, our women weep, our men cower in fear.
O God, please deliver us, your faithful, from the terrible onslaught of mighty prospective Bolivian (which is similar to Bovine, but not necessarily the same) president what's-his-name.

Save us O Lord, for we have no other recourse.

Amen.

November 30, 2005

A senior delegation of U.S. lawmakers, led by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the powerful chairman of the House International Relations Committee, was snubbed by Venezuelan authorities at Maiquetia International Airport in Caracas. The delegates were not allowed to disembark from their plane and eventually left.

Venezuelan officials denied reports that the incident happened, however, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Venezuelan government had in fact apologized for the incident.

It's my perception that Hugo Chavez's attitude toward international diplomacy will soon be indistinguishable from the attitude of North Korea's Kim Jong Il.

 

Companion post at Interested-Participant.

November 17, 2005

You got a beef with prisoners being held on the island of Cuba? Why don't you go bitch at the real torturing thugs, and quit pissing and moaning about us.

From Nordlinger's column on NRO:

It’s hard to take in the entire monstrosity that is Castro’s Cuba, but focus on one prisoner, if you will, as described and supported by Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, on the House floor:

"Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about Blas Giraldo Reyes Rodríguez, a political prisoner in totalitarian Cuba.

Mr. Reyes Rodríguez is an opposition activist and independent librarian . . . His life is dedicated to the proposition that the men and women of Cuba must be free: free to learn, free to worship, free to elect their leaders, free to enjoy their inalienable human rights. Independent libraries in Cuba, such as the one operated by Mr. Reyes Rodríguez, provide the indispensable service of circulating truth at a time when the tyrannical regime provides only propaganda. These heroic librarians often circulate the great works of anti-totalitarian literature, including the important writings of Václav Havel and Dr. Martin Luther King. Literature is a great danger to totalitarian regimes: books often provide the truth that tyrants seek to hide.

Unfortunately, in March 2003, as part of Castro’s condemnable crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy activists, Mr. Reyes Rodríguez was arrested. In a sham trial, he was sentenced to 25 years in the totalitarian gulag."

Reyes Rodríguez is suffering from ill health. The authorities have threatened to arrest his wife, for receiving visitors who expressed sympathy with her — this comes under “counterrevolutionary activities.�

Lincoln D.-B. concluded, “Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear: Mr. Reyes Rodríguez is languishing in an infernal gulag because he believes in freedom, truth, democracy, and human rights. His family is being constantly threatened because of these ‘dangerous’ beliefs. My colleagues, we must demand the immediate and unconditional release of Blas Giraldo Reyes Rodríguez and every other political prisoner in totalitarian Cuba.�

You want to whine about Gitmo? Tell it to Castro.

You want to whine about "secret" prisons? Tell it to the Chi-Coms.

You want to carp about Abu Ghraib? Go complain to Ayatollah Khamenei.

Just don't come crying to me, beeyotch.

September 02, 2005

Chavez is moving to consolidate power again. Yes the democratically elected President and self appointed Dictator of Venezuela is after control of that country's banking system.

A continuation of left-wing President Hugo Chavez's aim to create "socialism of the 21st Century", a number of foreign banks would be affected. Among them are Spanish institutions Banco Santander and BBVA. Both own Venezuelan banks - Banco de Venezuela and Banco Provincial respectively.

Hat tip: California Conservative.

Yeah I know but I'm waiting on a machine right now.

July 29, 2005

By Demosophist

I've never been convinced that the problem we confront with Totalitarianism 3.x is Islam, though there are certainly one or two mountains that need climbing for the people of the Ummah. There are, for instance, cultural reasons why most Muslims have a habit of avoiding statements that might put them at odds with other believers, even when there's deep disagreement. Tarek Heggy, a courageous Egyptian Muslim, satirizes this cultural duplicity by adopting an obvious artifice: "It is not I who criticizes and raises uncomfortable questions about the Ummah and its people, but my eccentric friend." Although an "inside joke," the purpose is far from humorous. If you haven't yet read Heggy's excellent series on Winds of Change that oversight can be easily corrected:

Thus Spoke My Eccentric Friend (1/5): Dreams of the Arabs
Thus Spoke My Eccentric Friend (2/5): A Word in the Palestinian Ear
Thus Spoke My Eccentric Friend (3/5): Rejecting Progress
Thus Spoke My Eccentric Friend (4/5): MI-6's Intelligence Failure
Thus Spoke My Eccentric Friend (5/5): What's in a Name?

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia and Anticipatory Retaliation)

June 13, 2005

You will recall that the original affidavit used to obtain an arrest warrant for Hamid Hayat claimed that he attended a terror training camp run by Maulana Fazlur Rehman. This article from the SF Gate notes that the FBI may have mistaken Maulana Fazlur Rehman for Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, who was recently released from jail in Pakistan after doing eight months--that's right eight months--on terrorism related charges.

Reading the SF Gate article is like reading a press release from the ACLU, isn't it? Notice all the meme-like qualities of the article? The way the FBI is made to seem like they screwed the pooch, how very few terrorists have been convicted, yada, yada.

But even as the SF Gate goes out of its way to discredit the arrests of the al Qaeda suspects in Lodi, this news from Pakistan. Tell me, if the FBI simply mixed the names up, what is the real Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil doing on the run?? Pakistan Daily Times:

Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, former chief of Jamiatul Ansar (JA), has gone into hiding after the arrest of Hamid Hayat and Umer Hayat who told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that they received training from a Pakistani Al Qaeda camp allegedly run by Khalil.

Security agencies have begun efforts to arrest Khalil after Hamid Hayat and Umer Hayat were arrested in Lodi, California.

Sources said he was earlier released by security agencies after eight months’ detention. “Khalil was released on the condition that he separate himself from his militant activities but after this new development security agencies have resumed efforts for his arrest,� sources said.

December 05, 2004

by Demosophist

Richard Posner, on the brand-spanking-new Becker-Posner blog, manages to say in a few succinct words what I've been attempting to say in a far less economical way for over a year. One implication of the exposte anti-war argument concerning Iraq is that the Administration knew the probability of Saddam having WMD was zero, but chose to invade anyway for some unambiguously self-serving reason. That's essentially what all the "Bush lied" talk was about. The other, less well articulated, implication is that there was no estimate made of the probability, because it didn't matter. We would have attacked whether the probability of a future WMD attack from Saddam was 1 or 0, or anything in between. The former implication, that we knew the probability was zero and acted as though it were closer to 1 really has little merit. Had we known with certainty that there was no threat, then there'd have been no debate at all about the evidence. If it had been faked, the fakery would have been undetectable, because the deception would have been coldly premeditated. There would have been no bungling attempt at a poorly constructed "yellow-cake" document from Niger.

But the second implication at least has some small degree of merit. The administration may well have decided that the real issue was not whether Saddam was about to attack the US, but whether in the fullness of time, a radicalizing Arab Middle East would have become an unacceptable threat. If an administration had concluded that this was a significant probability, then the only question left would be where to intervene.

Which Middle Eastern nation presented the ripest opportunity? With the objective of "interfering with" the gradual development of a totalitarian Middle East, not only potentially capable of attack, but also capable of withholding oil resources (though there's an inherent conflict between obtaining resources to build weapons and cutting off the inflow of petro-dollars) Iraq seems ideal. Not only did it have a recalcitrant leader with parochially flawed strategic judgment, but he was also a crazy murdering S.O.B. About as unlovable a character as they make.

And geographically, Iraq is at the center of things in the Middle East. From there we could not only launch "our vanguard" for liberal democracy, to counter the Salafist vanguard for militant Islamism, but if necessary we could have a launch point for operations against other Middle Eastern threats as they emerged.

By the numbers, from Posner:

Suppose there is a probability of .5 that the adversary will attack at some future time, when he has completed a military build up, that the attack will, if resisted with only the victim's current strength, inflict a cost on the victim of 100, so that the expected cost of the attack is 50 (100 x .5), but that the expected cost can be reduced to 20 if the victim incurs additional defense costs of 15. Suppose further that at an additional cost of only 5, the victim can by a preventive strike today eliminate all possibility of the future attack. Since 5 is less than 35 (the sum of injury and defensive costs if the future enemy attack is not prevented), the preventive war is cost-justified.

A historical example that illustrates this analysis is the Nazi reoccupation of the Rhineland area of Germany in 1936, an area that had been demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. Had France and Great Britain responded to this treaty violation by invading Germany, in all likelihood Hitler would have been overthrown and World War II averted. (It is unlikely that Japan would have attacked the United States and Great Britain in 1941 had it not thought that Germany would be victorious.) The benefits of preventive war would in that instance have greatly exceeded the costs.

In the case of the Iraq War the probability isn't really made concerning Saddam, because the larger probability concerns the Islamist movement, as a whole. Having watched the Middle East slowly radicalize over a period of 40-plus years, leading inexorably to the 9-11 attacks... whether Saddam were an imminent or a growing and gathering threat may simply not have mattered.

Consider this analogy: You have reason to believe, with a probability of 0.5, that there's a ticking time bomb in a room of a larger building held by a terrorist gang, and the bomb is capable of destroying the better part of a city that can't be evacuated. (You can't evacuate the world, yet. Nor could we even evacuate a single country.) Your decision is whether to forcefully enter the building, which could endanger some hostages. The fact that the room may also contain fully automatic weapons and other ordnance wielded by thugs is important to your plan of entry, but it matters little to your decision of whether or not to enter if your cost-benefit calculation dictates that you must attempt to defuse the bomb. (I know there are a few problems with this analogy, such as the possibility that the thugs might trigger the bomb themselves if you enter, but in this scenario we assume that for some reason they can't do that.)

I guess the question arises as to whether you consult the public, but lets suppose that the calculations about the bomb involve some specialized knowledge that can't be shared with the public. Not only that, but you don't happen to enjoy a great deal of favor with the public so that they cannot simply take your word for the validity of your prediction. Your assessment of the probability of the larger risk is 0.5, but even after being told of it theirs is more likely to be something like 0.05 or even 0.005.

So, instead of presenting the larger but less familiar threat you present the lesser, but more familiar one... and hope that you can make a good enough case to convince people that the action is necessary.

If one consults the history of the run up to the Iraq War, the Bush administration did attempt to make a case that was concerned with the introduction of liberal government to Iraq, at least as a kind of humanitarian mission coupled to a larger strategic security. This argument sufficiently impressed Paul Berman and Bernard Kouchner that they each wrote eloquent defenses of the pending action on those liberal grounds alone. Neither, however, were widely read. Nor did they generate much of a political groundswell. One must doubt that had the case been made to the public on these grounds it would have had much heft. The lack of interest may simply have been because the case seemed more humanitarian than pragmatic. Even though there is a profoundly pragmatic reason for humanitarian action one is liable to be skeptical of such "unrealistic" naiveté'.

At any rate, the decision calculus of the public is probably a different topic, and in that calculus the issue of Saddamite WMD was the top priority. However, it's important to recognize that a top priority doesn't mean it was the only priority that concerned Americans, though it had been virtually the only priority of either "Old Europe" or the UN itself.

I guess the only point left to make is that if you're convinced of the growing threat of Islamo/fascism as even greater than the short term threat posed by Saddam, then you're also likely to be convinced that there's a greater expected cost to Arab Middle Eastern populations for the "act later" scenario. (See Armed Liberal for that argument.) In terms of Posner's calculus, acting in Europe during 1936 would not merely have saved more allied, but also a great many more German lives. (Few would have been cynical enough to have predicted the deaths of six million Jews .)

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia and Anticipatory Retaliation)

November 20, 2004

by Demosophist

I watch LinkTV via satellite every once in awhile, and it's just brimming with these authentic looking and rather exotic documentaries. I saw one today that stars a double amputee in Kampuchea, who invented some special wheelchair that he teaches people to use. Almost as an afterthought to this humanitarian presentation the filmmakers present the US bombing in the '70s and the land-mining of Cambodia that resulted in most of the amputees. And after mentioning that fact they more or less state flatly that the unconscionable bombing and mining left a disorder that "led to" the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. So if I were watching this program and wasn't aware of the details, and perhaps had an innate revulsion for war, I'd just assume that this was all presented honestly. The unavoidable inference is that the US = Khmer Rouge = genocide.

But what has always amazed me is that otherwise intelligent people who swallow this perspective also believe that they're "independent" in spirit, when they do so. It never occurs to them that they're being spoon fed a point of view, and that there are flaws in the tapestry that really ought to be questioned by an intelligent and independent spirit. Like, yeah there are power vacuums created by lots of circmustances that are negative, indifferent, or even positive... but they aren't always filled by genocidal murderers. Like the fact that if the families of the amputees are economically devastated, left to prostitution and begging, might not the ideology and legacy of socialism be partly to blame for the dearth of opportunities? Like the fact that if the aftermath of the bombing left a power vacuum in Cambodia, what about the overnight exit of American forces from Indochina at the behest of the "peace movement?" And this raises the question that if we suddenly pulled out of Iraq at the urging of the current peace movement (the more war, but later movement) would the role of that pullout in the resulting internecine turmoil be forgotten, and the consequences simply ascribed to US aggression again? You bet it would. The 'peace movement" stands around with wide eyes and hands displayed, palms forward, saying "We din't do nuthin'," and we wonder, are they just stupid? Or is something else going on.

I really wouldn't mind supporting an exotic and humanitarian mission if it weren't infused with the sort of mind poison these folks are sewing like seeds of change.

Lloyd Cohen, a law professor at George Mason University, wrote a paper recently about the "Palestinian Problem" that has a novel thesis. He says that the problem is really the consequence of Israeli lust. He's basically building a case that for cultural and circumstantial reasons Israelis have been swept up by the dream that they could trade land for peace, without noticing that the Arab populations and leadership in the region aren't motivated by a desire for peace, but by a desire for revenge. The "lust for peace" has distorted Israeli thinking and policy and led to the development of a cancer. So, I'm thinking that if this thesis applies to Israel, perhaps it has broader implications?

A theme of a book I feel is one of the seminal works of the young 21st Century, Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism, is that the peace movements of the last 150 years have been animated by "wishful thinking," which helps to explain their often self-destructive behavior. But my friend's thesis takes a step beyond that, to say that it's not merely a wish for, but a lust for peace that's the root of this evil. It makes sense because the tendency of lust to cloud the mind and induce a kind of tunnel vision, obscures causal chains that aren't part of the unnaturally narrowed focus of extreme desire. The concept explains not only the behavior of a few aging bell-bottom-wearing nostalgic ex-hippies or their modern deconstructionist emulators, but also the single-minded obsession of a Paul Krugman, or the lapse in professional judgment of a Dan Rather. And it's also something that could well have animated a Kerry administration had he won, in spite of what he claimed about his resolve to throttle the terrorists with his own bare hands.

I think it's time we begin to look beyond mere ideology, and to consider the role that lust may be playing at the heart of liberalism.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia and Anticipatory Retaliation)

November 10, 2004

by Demosophist

Hostage Slaughterhouses, Death Camps, Gulags

Anyone recognize The Beast?

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia and Anticipatory Retaliation)