Category — Middle East

The electoral map this year, as in 2004, portrays something other than plain electoral potential.   See one here.   It’s absolutely true that these Red and Blue State distinctions today stand for something other than objective politics.  Anyone who’s lived in either of the colored enclaves knows that they’re insular social systems, with the natural tendency to grow more insular and self-reinforcing, especially during times of stress like an election season. 

Here in Connecticut, our company of the “coastal elites” has no real opposition, and has been especially liberal in its open contempt for that which is not itself.  Politics here is simply white noise, containing all the possible ideas about humankind, but with the same old fantastic historical narratives about how to create a good society. 

Nothing meaningful gets done, because what really matters is the perpetuation of the steely states-of-mind that come from social and cultural stratifications.  Unfortunately, as the ruling classes yammer and assert their worldview into empty space, the ”culture” around them grows more  noisy and chaotic and unstable.   Mass immigration and emigration, and  the blessed end of the ’60’s generation’s power are all happening at once, and the future is unknown. 

What can we expect in the next thirty years?  We don’t know.   America has, ’til now, managed the Hobbsean-Lockean problem - the rule of man versus the rule of law - although rule by courts is essentially rule by man, and rule by minoritarianism is just as wicked.  Still, we have no pockets of cultural entropy like Lebanon, yet, unless it’s Detroit.  We have no lethal tribal, sectarian or ideological wars. Not yet.  But do we have reason to believe that, in forty years,  New York City, or Baltimore won’t look like Beirut does today. 

Or Boston.  When the last restraining vines of the Yankee myth systems have been pruned away and burned, and the levelling blandishments of capitalism  and consumption no longer flatten the passions, will the coercive tools of progressive government  be enough to keep the peace?  I don’t think so.  And by the way, that Yankee myth system isn’t useful because it’s upheld by a Yankee bloodline - that began to disappear in the New England sterility of the 1840’s - but because it knits together a common culture.  Take it away with no replacement and you have third-century Rome, or the Middle East today.  

As for the Middle East, is it accurate to attribute the troubles there to irrational colonial borders,  or post-colonial pseudo-statehood, or poverty, or despotism or lack of economic mobility?  These all add to the poison, no doubt, but is there any category for the plain perversity of human self-assertion, and the moral malfunctions that cause it?  Not today. 

It’s unfashionable to fit Western Enlightenment modes of conduct to the “senseless” hate and murder in the Middle East because it’s culture specific, so we’re left with no disciminating capacities at all.   And for that reason, we can’t even evaluate the past, present and future for ourselves.   If  Hartford, with eleven shootings in a single afternoon, isn’t the land of the Droogs, what is?  In one week, these events have faded from memory.  Who are we today?

It’s a long way from The White Man’s Burden on the express train to moral nullity, but we’ve made the journey without a stop for the mail.  Today, in a multiculutural stupor, we’re close to accepting arranged marriage, female circumcision, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, the oppression of women and children in general, exceptions to religion/state barriers for Muslims, and the vagaries of Shari’a Law in parts of America, and in many parts of Europe.   All of these adjustments will lead to more  more extreme adjustments to others, and they won’t necessarily be Muslims, but some other group with a claim to legitimacy and indulgence. 

45 years ago I read a dreary thesis on political legitimacy, written by some figure in international relations, and whose name I’ve completely forgotten.  He concluded that free-thinking, tolerant Britain was the most stable country in the world, where the totalitarian USSR and its constituent countries, were fragile pressure-cookers.  Britain’s social vigor then was attributed to the usual assortment of virtues assigned to free-societies. 

Completely ignored was Britain’s post-industrial torpor, Commonwealth immigration policies, declining aspirations, the stirrings of a ”New” Labor every bit as dogmatic and certain as the old hereditary ruling class,  and the burning, destructive fever known as the  1960’s.  Britain is in steep decline today, with a continuous current of emigres to other English-speaking lands.  We should pay attention. 

Barack Obama is not the Messiah; his new title is Master of the Obvious (MotO).  For example, there’s this little nugget of wisdom from Mr. MotO—wait for it—an American president can’t just snap his fingers and erase generations of religious and ethnic tensions in the Middle East.  How does the man sleep at night when he knowingly withheld this earth shattering information?  If we’d known about this, the whole Middle East thing would have been solved years ago.

And most interesting of all, Mr. MotO dropped a dime on Iran.  Did you know a nuclear armed Iran poses “a grave threat”?  I’m flabbergasted.  All this time I thought one of the world’s largest oil exporters really needed the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.  How wrong was I?

No wonder the media worships the ground Mr. MotO walks on.  With pearls of wisdom like this, we’re in for a bright and glorious future under his leadership.

Meanwhile, the Democrats’ focus is Iraq, the pre-911 World, and getting the nitwit Hillary Clinton into the Oval Office

The Arab European League is worth a look.

Click on “English”, review their Vision and Agenda. It’s standard universalist lefty boilerplate, appropriated for the purposes of pleasing servile, multi-culti lefty Euro-clods. But it emphasizes the Arab diaspora in especially obtuse terms. It’s unclear whether the Middle East is the Home and European Islam is the diaspora, or the other way around.

Just a quick review of the scrolling topic reel to the right of the home page will tell you all you need to know. It’s going to be a long, long fight, and let’s hope we’re never going back Over There. Let them swing.

What’s 30% of sixty zillion jillion dollars?

Well, think of it this way. That’s three out of ten who can go to work for the DNC, the DLC, the CDC, the MVD or teach at major American universities.

With the indirect help of the Pachys, the Donks are moving toward what Denmark has. The GOP spent like fools with a credit card, making the lower taxes harder to maintain. The extra money generated by increased tax payments flowed into the general fund. The Dems, after promising to cut out pork, killed every pig that crossed their path.

So now comes the call for higher taxes. Below is one result of the increase, flight to lower tax states and countries. The other is the open border invitation for illegals to help fill the void.

High income taxes in Denmark worsen a labor shortage

As a self-employed software engineer, Thomas Sorensen broadcasts his qualifications to potential employers across Europe and the Middle East. But to the ones in his native Denmark, he is simply unavailable.

Settled in Frankfurt, where he handles computer security for a major Swiss corporation, Sorensen, 34, has no plans to return to the days of paying sky-high Danish taxes. [snip]

Born and trained at Denmark’s expense, but working - and paying lower taxes - elsewhere in Europe, Sorensen is the stuff of nightmares for Danish companies and politicians searching for solutions to an increasingly desperate labor shortage.

People like Sorensen, and there are many, epitomize the challenges facing the small Nordic country, long viewed across Europe as an example of how to keep an economy thriving and a society equal.

Young Danes, often schooled abroad and inevitably fluent in English, are primed to quit Denmark for greener pastures. One reason is the income tax rate, which can reach 63 percent. [snip]

But today young Danes can easily choose not to pay for the system’s upkeep, once they have siphoned off what they need. For starters, as citizens of the European Union they are entitled to work in any of the 27 EU countries. [snip]

There is only one way to kill capitalism - by taxes, taxes, and more taxes. –Karl Marx

Taking a page out of Marx’s book, the libs work on destroying what they despise, individual enterprise.

This should tell you we’re far too decadent for our good.

New York’s $25,000 dessert sets Guinness record

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A day after New York City came up with a $1,000 bagel, a local restaurateur unveiled a $25,000 chocolate sundae on Wednesday, setting a Guinness world record for the most expensive dessert.

Stephen Bruce, owner of Serendipity 3, partnered with luxury jeweler Euphoria New York to create the “Frrozen Haute Chocolate,” a blend of 28 cocoas, including 14 of the most expensive and exotic from around the globe.

The dessert, spelled with two Rs, is infused with 5 grams (0.2 ounces) of edible 23-karat gold and served in a goblet lined with edible gold. At the base of the goblet is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds.

The sundae is topped with whipped cream covered with more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier, which sells for $2,600 a pound.

It is eaten with a gold spoon decorated with white and chocolate-colored diamonds, which can also be taken home. [snip]

Four years ago, Bruce unveiled a $1,000 ice cream sundae called Golden Opulence, a staple on his menu and a favorite with rock stars, socialites and other celebrities.

Both desserts are sold only with advance orders. Bruce said he has received inquiries about his latest creation, mostly from Europeans planning to visit New York.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if soon we get a call from a Middle Eastern prince or Shah willing to give something sweet to his many wives on his next trip to the city,” Bruce said. [snip]

Who’s collecting this on the other end?

                       Stay away from me.  Go CARE about someone else.

In 1992, when Bill Clinton said “I feel your pain” to AIDS patient Bob Rafsky during a campaign stop, he seemed to mean it.  And he did, in the same way he felt all the narcissistic sentiments of his various realities to come.  We learned that, as he continued to emote and feel things during his priapic presidency, the facts and values of his emotions varied a great deal.  But, whatever his faults, Clinton was a lone act; he just wore the comedy and tragedy masks and didn’t try to institutionalize his pathos.  For that, we have George W. Bush and Compassionate Conservatism.

“Compassionate Conservatism” as a theoretical approach to social problems is the creation of Marvin Olasky, professor/journalist,  former communist, Jewish atheist turned Born Again Christian, Yale grad and former Bush advisor.  The term derives from Olasky’s study of the relative successes of government and private programs in relieving the effects of poverty throughout American history.  Olasky’s ideas and conclusions were the basis for faith-based initiatives, some of them adopted by GWB as governor to Texas and later as President.  

Compassionate Conservatism passed Olasky’s empirical tests.  It had less to do with religion than it did with communitarian possibilities , and almost nothing to do with the administrative state as a dispenser of compassion.  Bush, however, has infused his administration with a soft compassionate conservatism, and pushed the phrase front stage, and  thence into that deplorable family of catch-phrases inflicted upon historians and the public by political dream merchants.   These phrases define eras, visions, goals, national purposes and the evanescent pursuits of political generations, not of “the people” themselves.  

The last full century was fouled by such blinding banalities - New and Fair Deals, New Frontiers, New Convenants, New This, New That, Straight-Talk Express, WIN, and lots more, plus that apotheosis of mawkish liberal romanticism, stewed with a touch of Albert Speer,  The Great Society.  All of them foundered in some way on the shoals of reality.  As vessels for everyone’s different wishes and interpretations, they could never really function as democratic programs.  

As a digression, what the hell was The Great Society?  Someone tell me.  If the New Haven of today, with its brutalist architecture, bloodstains and cement foliage resembles the progressive vision of 1968,  someone needs to be punished for the artwork and the final rendering.  Liberals reduced the faded,  but restorable illuminated script of American urban life to loopy spray-can graffito, not only in New Haven but in every old city in the country because they cared about the inhabitants!   Listen, Uncle Sam.  Wherever I hurt, please don’t touch me there.

The same is true of Compassionate Conservatism, which to me seems to be the spiritual rationale for the President’s  swelling sympathies for anyone who can make it across an American border, to holders of burdensome mortgages, or to a select few who can lay claim to natural rights somewhere across the seas.  Despite Mexican towns emptying of young men, most who never return, despite the  deepening Latin despotism that make it desirable to leave and abandon hope of change, despite tyrannical stasis in the Middle East among our allies, our indiscriminate goodness survives the contradictions and goes looking for another heart to heal.   And we haven’t even gotten to sub-prime borrowers and their angst.

Now Bush is  waxing sympathetic about injustice in Myanmar, which is not a moral gradient he needs to scale to remain compassionate, and which fades into insignificance anyway in the shadows of monstrous injustices in Africa and the Middle East.  No doubt Rice can make a compassionate case for the Burmese/Myanmaris who must be saved by the ameliorative West.  It’s lunacy. There’s a natural limit to caring; it’s cheap, its reality is unknowable, and conservatism is not about pain, its  simply about liberty and justice for all.   You don’t attain either of these things by sloshing in sentimentality. 

With George Bush we got prescription drug subsidies,  support for affirmative action, a volcano of dollars for the orgy of corruption and graft that followed the genuine suffering of Katrina,  open borders, and Bush’s promotion of his four C’s of “civility, courage, compassion and character” (First Inaugural Address),  but not a word about The Constitution or his governing philosophy.  When you have no governing philosophy to defend as President, just a boundless heart,  then the office is your personal hair shirt.  The last time we went down this road, we got the constipated spirituality and crabbed pieties of Jimmy Carter.  Maybe we’re better off this time.  I’m not sure yet.

Bush says economy is in good shape despite recession fears.

more below from him

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

China threatens ‘nuclear option’ of dollar sales

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

· Blog - Dollar to collapse?

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Canada’s Dollar At Parity on U.S. Weakness, Commodity Surge

Canada’s dollar rose, trading equal to the U.S. dollar for the first time in 31 years, as climbing commodity prices boosted the outlook for the world’s eighth-biggest economy.

Oil prices jump above $82 a barrel

Commodities prices on Wednesday rose with crude oil hitting its sixth consecutive record high above $82 a barrel and spot gold approaching a near 28-year high of $730 an ounce troy. Base metals registered rises of between 2 and 10 per cent.

Agricultural commodities were down on profit-taking and signals that some food importing countries, such as India, had bought enough cereals for their inventories.

Crude oil jumped to a $82.51 after a larger-than-expected fall in US crude oil inventories last week.

China Freezes Some Prices in Move to Contain Inflation

BEIJING (AP) — China’s government has ordered some prices frozen and told officials to closely monitor others in its most drastic step yet to contain a surge in inflation.

The order, issued late Wednesday, came after inflation rose to 6.5 percent in August — its highest monthly rate in 11 years — propelled by a double-digit rise in politically sensitive food prices.

The order stressed the importance of maintaining “market stability” ahead of a key Communist Party meeting next month. It said controlling inflation would affect China’s development, reform and stability.

Oil Up Again As Low Dollar Spurs Buying

Crude Futures Surpass $83 a Barrel, Driven Largely by Weakening Dollar

NEW YORK (AP) — Crude oil prices surged further into record terrain Thursday, breaching $83 a barrel as the weak dollar and some worrisome weather in the Gulf of Mexico spurred buying.

Gasoline futures jumped as well. {snip]

A weak dollar supports oil prices by making futures cheaper for foreign investors, noted Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Fimat USA LLC.

It also prompts buying by domestic investors, who sense that demand for Nymex oil is rising overseas, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

Bush Optimistic About Economy

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Thursday cited “some unsettling times” in the U.S. housing and credit markets as he sought to assure jittery Americans that the economy basically is in good shape despite worries about a recession.

…and the question is, what’s this all about?”

For starters, it’s about our failure to save for the future. With childish glee we buy anything we see in a hedonistic frenzy: plasma screen TV, cars with a 60 month loan package, 5000 sq ft houses with ARMs, lavish vacations, spa treatments, plastic surgery, every electronic gewgaw, and oversized waistlines. If not borrowed through a bank, then on plastic it goes.

Given that we ceased manufacturing most of these items through offshore means and outsourced many more jobs, our capital (dollars) followed the production and jobs. This is one reason.

Here’s another. We will not fix the drain on the tax base by Medicare, Medicaid, Prescription drug plan, and Social Security. Instead, we financed this huge burden by selling Treasury bonds and T-bills. Worse, the government uses abnormal accounting methods to cover the gaps. When they amalgamated the Social Security fund with the general fund, it permitted the Great Society programs to survive until they enrolled too many voters to scrap it. When one robs Peter to pay Paul, Paul never complains.

So what happens?

The entire outflow of capital (dollars) goes somewhere; they convert to treasury notes with a guaranteed rate of return of principal and interest (future taxes). Countries are investors like everyone else; they go where the return rate is best.

The pop of the housing bubble forced banks and mortgage companies, by banking law, to initiate foreclosure proceedings. By law, at 120 days, bad loans are collected or written off against profit, which really electrifies the stockholders. The market saw them bail out of lending institutions, resulting in the drop in stock prices: Countrywide, Citi, Stanley Morgan, and Merrill Lynch to name some.

The Fed jumped in to improve liquidity by reducing interest rate by 50 basis points. The stock market went up, the banks took happy pills, and there was joy in Mudville.

Except

Other countries didn’t like the rate change (they lend money from overnight to 30 year investment bonds) and cashed in dollars for something other than greenbacks. Anything worked fine. The US is required to redeem these notes, which we pay for with Pounds, Euros, Swiss Francs, Ryials, clamshells, or worse gold. The US just became poorer.

To correct this, we will have to reduce the National Debt, (not just the deficit) by either cutting spending, raising taxes plus manufacturing goods here once more. Putting Americans to work in jobs we offshored starts the program. Getting the illegals out and cutting welfare programs forces the non-workers to change or get hungry.

We will find foreign imports more expensive; buying them will be inflationary (Remember Carter’s stagflation). To cut off the outflow of money, interest rates go up on short term borrowing which cuts into corporate growth, further damaging the economy. What say you Yogi. Something about Deja?

We can correct all this. We will have to put the socialist/liberals/Marxists on Thorzine to quiet them down

Now read the above links again to see just how serious this will be.

One more item needs addressing. China is threatening to utilize the “nuclear option” of dumping dollars onto the open market ($1.33 trillion), which would require our redeeming them, or suffer bankruptcy.

In past times, this construed an act of war.

    DENNIS KUCINICH IN SYRIA, BLESSES EVERYONE BUT AMERICANS

Eligible bachelor, pacifist hunk and Ohio Representative, Dennis Kucinich was in Syria last week cuddling the region-stabilizing Bashar Assad for his open-door policy to Iraqi refugees.   The population-expanding meddling in the Iraq War of the Syrian and Iranian regimes has encouraged Iraqis friendly to both countries to take refuge across their borders.   

Experts here conclude that these population-expanding and stabilizing policies were met with approval by the impish hair-dye tester and apple-doll head model, Dennis Kucinich (D-Emented).  Syria and Iran both seek to redress the population imbalance by sending terrorists to Iraq to stop the sectarian violence by killing Iraqis,  a “fair” policy almost certain to meet with Kucinich’s endorsement.

Assad’s intimidation, murder and assassination policies in nearby Lebanon have enabled the American left’s much-admired and peace-oriented Hezbollah to threaten the destabilizing Israeli state to the south.   This reporter believes that Kucinich endorses murder, assassination, and Islamic totalitarianism as a means to continue the  “peace-process”  slaughter, and to promote stability in the region as long as it is legal.

Experts here also believe that American forces, claimed by liberals to be already short on the necessities of  war, lacked the disinfectant supplies that would be needed after Kucinich hand-shaking.  Legal scholars and compassionate conservatives here believe that Kucinich’s blessing of American forces would almost certainly violate Constitutional restrictions on religious expression, and that Kucinich wished to avoid offending Islamist Al Qaeda beheaders worldwide.

WorldNet Daily Online  (Sep 6, 2007) had this to say:  

After praising Syria following a meeting in Damascus with President Bashar Assad, Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich declared he will not visit troops in Iraq during his Middle East tour because he considers the American military presence in Iraq to be illegal.

“I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation….I don’t want to bless that occupation with my presence“,   Kucinich said in Lebanon according to the Associated Press. “I will not do it”…

It is not known when Representative Kucinich will slither back to Washington, DC.

          HAWAII SURFER DONATES BOARDS FOR GAZANS

From Yahoo News Online, August 21, 2007, Dateline Jerusalem.

An 86-year-old Jewish surfing guru from Hawaii is bringing good vibrations to the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Dorian Paskowitz, a retired doctor who has been surfing for 75 years, donated 12 surfboards to Gaza’s small surfing community on Tuesday in a novel gesture to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

“God will surf with the Devil if the waves are good”, Paskowitz said.  “When a surfer sees another surfer with a board, he can’t help but say something that brings them together.”

Tanned and shirtless, Paskowitz emerged grinning at the Israel-Gaza border crossing after handing over the dozen boards to Palestinian surfers waiting on the other side.

He said he was inspired after reading a story about two Gaza surfers who could not enjoy the wild waves off the coastal strip because they had only one board to share between them.

….He described his mission as a “mitzvah”, Hebrew for a “good deed”.

During his visit, Paskowitz said he wanted to “do something spectacular”, like getting all the surfers and paddling around the waters of Gaza”.  But those plans were scuttled by security concerns.

Arthur Rashkovan, a 28-year old surfer from Tel Aviv, said Paskowitiz’s project was part of a larger effort called “Surfing for Peace,”, aimed at bringing Middle Eastern surfers closer together.  He said eight-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater, who is of Syrian descent, is expected to arrive in Israel in October to take part in the drive……

                                               * * * * * * * * * *

The account of this blinding idiocy continues for several more paragaphs.  Being of a certain age, I’ve paddled in the hot pools of the sybaritic lifestyle that has boiled Paskowitz’s brain to cream cheese; I know that he means well, but still have a rough time conjuring a Jam-wearing Yassar Arafat shooting the curl, unless it involved a pistol and a Hasidic Jew.

Paskowitz’s effort is the moral dead end of upper-middle class fancies, the place where the trimmed hedges conceal the despair and devolution of the Palestinians, whose unemployment, choked ambitions and hatreds will never be washed away by blue water, health drinks and bikinis.   Kelly Slater, of Syrian descent, probably does not live in Syria.

Finally, when surf bunnies go looking for a gnarly dude, do they have an 86-year-old in mind?  Probably not.  Go back to Hawaii, you dope.

 

The battlefield is about the size of Texas; four times the size of New England.  Its average annual temperature is like that of Massachusetts.  Its capital city is on the same latitude as Phoenix, Los Angeles and Memphis.  It’s mountainous, dramatically uplifted more than a million years ago by the thrust sheets of the advancing Indian subcontinent.  Roughly half of the country is contorted by its definining feature, a majestic but forbidding mountain range.  The capital is Kabul, the battlefield is Afghanistan and the mountain range is the Hindu Kush.

The Hindu Kush, translated by some historians as “Hindu Killer”, is a Himalayan extension of the Alpine system of Europe and North Africa.  It’s officially part of the Pamir-Karakoram chain of the Himalayas;  it angles southwest from Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, the Durand Line.  There are seven mountain passes which have served as highways for invaders and trade at least since 1500 BC, when invaders from Central Asia brought what linguists now call the Indo-European languages to the region.

Alexander The Great, after marching and fighting the width of Afghanistan, used the Khawak Pass to reach Samarkand in 330 BC.  He led his starving army over the 12,000 foot snowy pass, and then west back through the Khyber Pass on the modern Hippie Trail to Kabul.  Today it’s likely that Taliban and other tribal fighters use the same passes for the purpose of fighting NATO and American troops.  The blood of thousands, maybe millions, of nameless soldiers and unaffiliated warriors has been spilled here since the first Aryans arrived 5000 years ago.

Afghanistan borders six countries.  Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west and south, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China to the north.  Its China border lies at the dead end of the valley of the Wakhan Corridor.  The Wakhan is a 150-mile long, ten-mile wide geographic tendril, like an appendix, projecting northeast, between Pakistan to the south and Tajikistan in the north to the Chinese border.  It’s an atavistic survival of Britain’s Great Game with Russia, a border anomaly established to deny Russia access to the Indian Ocean.   Marco Polo used the valley almost eight-hundred years ago to travel that portion of The Silk Road.  Today it’s a remote, hostile patch, the habitat of the Marco Polo sheep, and probably the route used to smuggle drugs to China.

The short account is that humans have been scrambling over, fighting for, and surviving in this land for 50,000 years.   It was Hellenized by the Macedonians and their successors, converted to Buddhism by adherents from India, ignored militarily by the Romans but conquered and converted by Muslims, trampled by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, by Darius and other Persians and Parthians; invaded by Turkic tribes, by the British, the Russians and Americans.  Simulataneous with low-grade warfare, it was also a web of routes for The Silk Road, the commercial paths taken by bearers of luxury goods from the east to the Mediterranean world.  The world’s first mobile shopping mall.

The material for Julius Caesar’s silk curtains probably came through Afghanistan from China, over rocky, barren trails now prowled by American Rangers and Special Forces.  Julius and other Romans who possessed silk, believed that it grew on trees.  Julius, Augustus and Tiberius had intermittent difficulties with the Parthians, who, along with the Afghan Kushans, controlled the trade routes through Afghanistan.  The Romans were not welcome there.  The Parthians left no written account of themselves, but must have known the origins of silk.  Perhaps they played the first lasting joke on the Romans.  They told them it was gathered like fruit and nuts.

The historian’s routine explanation for Afghanistan’s long travail is that it lay at the “crossroads” of competing civilizations; that it was the junction between south and central Asia and the Middle East.  These designations are entirely theoretical to the historian-geographer.  They mean nothing.  The human explanation for the boiling activity in the region is that the wars of conquest that tortured Afghanistan for 5000 years were wars for local power, for goods, and to a lesser degree, religion.  They were fought for the things that fill the voids left by deprivation, insecurity and the anxieties of hard-scrabble life.   It hasn’t ended.

The communist coup staged in 1978 led to the Soviet invasion, and then to the Taliban in large part because of American indifference.  Millions were killed and exiled in the civil and religious wars of the past thirty years.  Today Afghanistan resembles nothing as much as itself of a thousand years ago.  Ghosts everywhere, in every corner of every mud hut and mountain pass.    It is our obligation to bring the country back to life. 

America’s first War on Terror

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain, respectively, met in 1786 in London with the Tripolitan Ambassador to Britain, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. [snip] …questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the nascent United States republic. Jefferson and Adams, in their subsequent report to the Continental Congress, recorded the Tripolitan Ambassador’s justification:

… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Thus as Joshua London’s Victory in Tripoli elaborates in lucid prose, an aggressive jihad was already being waged against the United States almost 200 years prior to America becoming a dominant international power in the Middle East. Moreover, these jihad depredations targeting America antedated the earliest vestiges of the Zionist movement by a century, and the formal creation of Israel by 162 years—exploding the ahistorical canard that American support for the modern Jewish state is a prerequisite for jihadist attacks on the United States.

Prevarications about history have the same results as those in science. The pinkies are wrong on global warming as well as history. Altering or deleting inconvenient facts fails to amend history. Adulterated positions may carry the moment, but never the day.

One neither can prove truth wrong, nor fallacy right; obfuscation of facts is merely a temporary position.

In Iraq, we are dallying with the future. As our gunboats crushed the Barbary Pirates, we shall have to repeat that confrontation again on a grander scale. The Marquis of Queensbury or the Geneva Convention rules will not be followed. Prepare thyself!

The unintentionally funny and nearly defunct LA Times reported on July 15th that about “45% of all foreign militants in Iraq……are from Saudi Arabia”.  15% are from Syria and Lebanon, with 10% from North Africa.  The stats came from “US military figures, and were made available to the Times by the senior officer”.   Nearly half of the 135 detainees in US military custody are Saudis. 

What can we deduce from a sample of 135 cage-hangers?  Thousands of troublemakers are in Iraqi custody, many of whom might even lie about their names and country of origin. So the LA Times report is based on a sample of 135 guys, half of whom have Riyadh Planet Hollywood ID cards.  I have information from a reliable participant in the war that Chechens even fall out for morning terrorist formation, and stray Pakistanis, Westerners and lots of others.   Iranians, too, are a small but vocal minority shouting  “HERE!”.

The same enigmatic “US military figure” said that 50% of all  Saudi fighters in Iraq go there as suicide bombers.  An interesting statistic, to say the least. To derive it, one needs to poll all of the free-range “Saudi fighters” about their life plans, and whether they have round-trip tickets.   It’s fair to say they don’t show up for interviews.

But the Times  raised two worthy questions, probably intentionally.  We are “allied” with the Saudis in the inaptly-named War on Terror, and Bush Herbert Walker and Bush George Dubya are unashamedly friendly with figures in the disgusting monarchical House of Saud.  Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the royal’s “national security advisor” is a pal of the House of Bush, as is King Abdullah.   

Then there’s The Carlyle Group, in which Bush Herbert Walker is a  prospering partner.  Those interested can investigate it on their own.  It’s the most powerful ethical missile in the left’s arsenal of accusations about the Bush family’s relationship with the Saudis.   The Carlyle Group has wide access to Saud investment funds.  There’s also Herbie’s lecture tours in Arab lands, paid for by the Saudis, and generous gits to his Presidential Library for scholarships to Andover, Dubya’s prep school.

It is, at this point, obligatory to mention that 15 of 19 hijackers on 911 were Saudis. Bin Laden is a Saudi.  Saudi Arabia has lots of sand and oil (although the oil power might be shaky).  Saudi Arabia is profligate with walking-around money, and has a national strategy of buying off enemies and buying up friends.  There’s a lot more, none of which is particularly damning for the Bush family, but appearances are everything.   The Saudis are low, self-seeking, and devious; relationships are contaminated by their presence in them, and our leaders should know it.

True, the Saudis have been fighting Al Qaeda, but for reasons of personal survival.   The ethical issues associated with advancing Wahabbism by subversion and Madrassa remain.  True, also, that the Saudis are troubled by Dubya’s strategies, worred about their extensive Iraq border and Persian ambitions.  This is a convergence of interests, ours and theirs.   They are not our friends. 

The reality is this:  We are allied with a vicious, reactionary, repressive Arab regime in our pursuit of liberalization of the Middle East.  We should be troubled by the first proposition in that last sentence, because they Saudis are troubled by the second.  The two can’t come together, and Dubya appears not to know it.

I find it problematical in my personal life to leave a job uncompleted. There is a righteous obligation to see tasks to the end, disdaining a poorly finished job.

Personified by original New Englanders as well as the rest of the colonials, this work ethic built this state, this country into what it is yesterday. Hardy woodchucks created the farms and woodlots that became Vermont and New Hampshire. Seafarers from ports in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut generated trade and wealth.

From the French and Indian War to Korea, we remained stalwart with those that fought at our side. We terminated the first rapacious jihadists, when Jefferson subdued the Barbary pirates. Through the pains of war, we kept the faith and stayed the path

In the mid 1960’s, America changed when the first spoiled generation came of age. They coveted material items, bought with others’ labor, rather than strive for them as in previous times. Never tempered in the forge of maturation, they believe in birthright and have a concomitant deficiency in sense of community. They became the me generation.

Vietnam showed this absence in an obtrusive fashion. Whether we should have or not fought there is moot. This generation demanded the politicos cut and run from there, acquiescence sold the people who worked with us into re-education and labor camps. Those who fought with the Arvin now get nothing except slum housing and pedicab work…if they’re lucky. This precipitated the slaughter in Cambodia for no reason except to exterminate the educated class. Our esteemed officials cared less; those with us paid and are paying the price.

Today, the left is executing the same nefarious diligence with Iraq. The Democrats want to cut and run immediately. Sell out to the heathens; care nothing for the Iraqis working with us. Once more, the boomer generation shows a repellent indifference for our obligations to the Middle East.

The Iraqi citizens, who assumed we would keep our word, acquire death sentences. Al Qaeda avows beheadings as soon as they ensnare those who accepted our word. That is fine with our culture of sensitivity advocates; they extend nothing to anyone adjudged a friend of the US.

Is it to be a bloodbath in Iraq? Shall we allow the leftists to isolate us from any association with other countries save Israel? They wish them destroyed. The message is the same for us.

When the wolves start eating sheep, they save the judas goat for dessert. It isn’t an honor.

Muslim group loses cartoons libel case in Denmark

COPENHAGEN, July 13 (Reuters) - A Muslim group lost a libel case on Friday against the leader of a Danish anti-immigrant party who had accused its members of treason for publicising cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. [snip]

“We are very disappointed with the verdict and are considering an appeal,” said Kasem Ahmad, a spokesman for the Muslim group. He added that the group would issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against Jyllands-Posten if it did not receive an apology from the paper.

“It’s too early to say any details of the fatwa,” Ahmad said. “The fatwa is the last step and will also satisfy Muslims in the Middle East.” [snip]

Definition: a fatwa is an automatic winning verdict in a Shari’a court. It allows for the celebration of diversity with heathenish barbaric behavior.
The next week or two should prove to be interesting.

Sudan resumes bombing civilian targets in Darfur: US envoy

KHARTOUM, July 13 (Reuters) - The Sudanese government has resumed bombing civilian targets in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur, the U.S. special envoy for Darfur said on Friday.

“After a halt in the bombing between the beginning of February and the end of April in 2007, the Sudanese government has resumed bombing in Darfur,” Andrew Natsios told a news conference in Khartoum following a visit to Darfur.

Perhaps we can have the Sudanese air force bomb terrorist hideouts. When they hit civilians, wedding parties and refugee compounds, the moonbat world doesn’t seem to mind.