I've read the reported translation of a letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. If the letter is real and if the translation is accurate, people who are against what is happening in Iraq for noble reasons, need to rethink their position.
Some things that caught my attention:
The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate- over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas, is in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon their exit and before un-Islamic forces attempt to fill this void, whether those whom the Americans will leave behind them, or those among the un-Islamic forces who will try to jump at taking power.
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The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.
The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity.
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And it's very important that you allow me to elaborate a little here on this issue of popular support. Let's say:
(1) If we are in agreement that the victory of Islam and the establishment of a caliphate in the manner of the Prophet will not be achieved except through jihad against the apostate rulers and their removal, then this goal will not be accomplished by the mujahed movement while it is cut off from public support, even if the Jihadist movement pursues the method of sudden overthrow. This is because such an overthrow would not take place without some minimum of popular support and some condition of public discontent which offers the mujahed movement what it needs in terms of capabilities in the quickest fashion. Additionally, if the Jihadist movement were obliged to pursue other methods, such as a popular war of jihad or a popular intifadah, then popular support would be a decisive factor between victory and defeat.
(2) In the absence of this popular support, the Islamic mujahed movement would be crushed in the shadows, far from the masses who are distracted or fearful, and the struggle between the Jihadist elite and the arrogant authorities would be confined to prison dungeons far from the public and the light of day. This is precisely what the secular, apostate forces that are controlling our countries are striving for. These forces don't desire to wipe out the mujahed Islamic movement, rather they are stealthily striving to separate it from the misguided or frightened Muslim masses. Therefore, our planning must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring the mujahed movement to the masses and not conduct the struggle far from them.
(3) The Muslim masses-for many reasons, and this is not the place to discuss it-do not rally except against an outside occupying enemy, especially if the enemy is firstly Jewish, and secondly American.
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We don't want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to the students and the people of Qandahar alone. They did not have any representation for the Afghan people in their ruling regime, so the result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them. Even devout ones took the stance of the spectator and, when the invasion came, the amirate collapsed in days, because the people were either passive or hostile. Even the students themselves had a stronger affiliation to their tribes and their villages than their affiliation to the Islamic amirate or the Taliban movement or the responsible party in charge of each one of them in his place. Each of them retreated to his village and his tribe, where his affiliation was stronger!!
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Indeed, questions will circulate among mujahedeen circles and their opinion makers about the correctness of this conflict with the Shia at this time. Is it something that is unavoidable? Or, is it something can be put off until the force of the mujahed movement in Iraq gets stronger? And if some of the operations were necessary for self-defense, were all of the operations necessary? Or, were there some operations that weren't called for? And is the opening of another front now in addition to the front against the Americans and the government a wise decision? Or, does this conflict with the Shia lift the burden from the Americans by diverting the mujahedeen to the Shia, while the Americans continue to control matters from afar? And if the attacks on Shia leaders were necessary to put a stop to their plans, then why were there attacks on ordinary Shia? Won't this lead to reinforcing false ideas in their minds, even as it is incumbent on us to preach the call of Islam to them and explain and communicate to guide them to the truth? And can the mujahedeen kill all of the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried that? And why kill ordinary Shia considering that they are forgiven because of their ignorance? And what loss will befall us if we did not attack the Shia? And do the brothers forget that we have more than one hundred prisoners - many of whom are from the leadership who are wanted in their countries - in the custody of the Iranians? And even if we attack the Shia out of necessity, then why do you announce this matter and make it public, which compels the Iranians to take counter measures? And do the brothers forget that both we and the Iranians need to refrain from harming each other at this time in which the Americans are targeting us?
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Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable - also- are the scenes of slaughtering the hostages. You shouldn't be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men and their description of you as the shaykh of the slaughterers, etc. They do not express the general view of the admirer and the supporter of the resistance in Iraq, and of you in particular by the favor and blessing of God.
And your response, while true, might be: Why shouldn't we sow terror in the hearts of the Crusaders and their helpers? And isn't the destruction of the villages and the cities on the heads of their inhabitants more cruel than slaughtering? And aren't the cluster bombs and the seven ton bombs and the depleted uranium bombs crueler than slaughtering? And isn't killing by torture crueler than slaughtering? And isn't violating the honor of men and women more painful and more destructive than slaughtering?
All of these questions and more might be asked, and you are justified. However this does not change the reality at all, which is that the general opinion of our supporter does not comprehend that, and that this general opinion falls under a campaign by the malicious, perfidious, and fallacious campaign by the deceptive and fabricated media. And we would spare the people from the effect of questions about the usefulness of our actions in the hearts and minds of the general opinion that is essentially sympathetic to us.
This letter indicates that the terrorists are aware of internal and external politics and public opinion. This is eye opening.
First, thanks to P6 for coming out and to T3 for setting us out.
Delphi files for bankruptcy. For people outside of Detroit this is small time news. Probably about as important as new cases of Avian Flu.
Sometime around the late nineties, both Ford and GM began to spin off their parts making enterprises (for Ford, it was Visteon) so they could become leaner and meaner, focusing more on building cars (and financing their purchase--a significant source of profit for both companies). In the case of Delphi, a deal was cut by GM that stipulated that if Delphi went under, GM would still provide for Delphi employees if Delphi went under.
GM doesn't appear to have those resources, but they still have the obligation.
A good friend of mine predicted that GM would file bankruptcy, SOON.
The following two stories appeared in The Washington Post. Both were above the fold.
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official SaysBy Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 14, 2005; Page A01The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
Then, there was this one:
Iraqi Sunnis Battle To Defend Shiites Tribes Defy an Attempt by Zarqawi To Drive Residents From Western CityBy Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 14, 2005; Page A01BAGHDAD, Aug. 14 -- Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said. The fighting came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of six American soldiers.
Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said.
The contrast is left up to the reader to think about. This one makes me laugh, sigh, and wonder what's going on in the administration.
The HUGE LIE of this false doctrine infects every aspect of the dopamine distraction theatre {politics} by which we alleviate the excruciating boredom of lives essentially devoid of interior psychological value or meaning. Boredom is merely the seeing of how empty I am...dependent on exterior stimuli to validate my existence. What do I look forward to upon awakening in the morning? Newspaper, FOXNEWS on TV, email, input from co-workers, an exchange with my current companion...all of which cover-up an incipient state of anxiety...a desire to avoid being-here-now with how I am - with my avidity, fears, aversions and dreams of how my life should be.
J.H. Kunstler writes with typical flair in the Guardian about how cheap energy and relative peace have helped create a false doctrine, to which I only add that sooner than we expect or can even imagine, the unsustainable bubble of our dopaminergic consensus hallucination will be most rudely popped by a sharp prick from the thermodynamic real world.
The big yammer these days in the United States is to the effect that globalisation is here to stay: it's wonderful, get used to it. The chief cheerleader for this point of view is Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times and author of The World Is Flat. The seemingly unanimous embrace of this idea in the power circles of America is a marvellous illustration of the madness of crowds, for nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that globalisation is now a permanent fixture of the human condition.
Today's transient global economic relations are a product of very special transient circumstances, namely relative world peace and absolutely reliable supplies of cheap energy. Subtract either of these elements from the equation and you will see globalisation evaporate so quickly it will suck the air out of your lungs. It is significant that none of the cheerleaders for globalisation takes this equation into account. In fact, the American power elite is sleepwalking into a crisis so severe that the blowback may put both major political parties out of business.
The world saw an earlier phase of robust global trade run from the 1870s to a dead stop in 1914. This was the boom period of railroad construction and the advent of the ocean-going steamship. The great powers had existed in relative peace since Napoleon's last stand. The Crimean war was a minor episode that took place in backwaters of Eurasia, and the Franco-Prussian war was a comic opera that lasted less than a year - most of it the static siege of Paris. The American civil war hardly affected the rest of the world.
This first phase of globalisation then took off under coal-and-steam power. There was no shortage of fuel, the colonial boundaries were stable, and the pipeline of raw materials from them to the factories of western Europe ran smoothly. The rise of a middle class running the many stages of the production process provided markets for all the new production. Innovations in finance gave legitimacy to all kinds of tradable paper. Life was very good for Europe and America, notwithstanding a few sharp cyclical depressions and recoveries. Trade boomed between the great powers. The belle époque represented the high tide of hopeful expectations. In America, it was called the progressive era. The 20th century looked golden.
It all fell apart in 1914. Historians are still baffled about what really brought on the first world war. What did France or Britain really care about Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of a country already in deep eclipse? There were no active contests over territory at the time, not even in the Asian or African colonies. And yet the diplomatic failures of that fateful summer led to the great slaughter of the trenches, the death of a substantial portion of the younger generation, and a virtual nervous breakdown of authority in politics and culture. It would take a depression, fascism, and a second world war to resolve these issues and a new round of globalisation did not ramp up again until the mid-1960s.
It may be significant that the first collapse of globalisation occurred as the coal economy was transitioning into an oil economy, with deep geo-political implications for who had oil (America) and those who might seek to control the other major region closest to Europe that possessed it (then the Caspian, since Arabian oil was as yet undiscovered). The first world war was settled by those nations (Britain and France) that were friendly with the greatest producer of oil most readily accessed. Germany was the loser and again in the reprise for its poor access to oil. Japan suffered similarly.
We are now due for another folding up of the periodic global trade fair as the industrial nations enter the tumultuous era beyond the global oil production peak, which I have named the long emergency. The economic distortions and perversities that have built up in the current era are not hard to see, though our leaders dread to acknowledge them. The dirty secret of the US economy for at least a decade now is that it has come to be based on the ceaseless elaboration of a car-dependent suburban infrastructure - McHousing estates, eight-lane highways, big-box chain stores, hamburger stands - that has no future as a living arrangement in an oil-short future.
The American suburban juggernaut can be described succinctly as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. The mortgages, bonds, real estate investment trusts and derivative financial instruments associated with this tragic enterprise must make the judicious goggle with wonder and nausea.
Add to this grim economic picture a far-flung military contest, already under way, really, for control of the world's remaining oil, and the scene grows darker. Two-thirds of that oil is in the possession of people who resent the west (America in particular), many of whom have vowed to destroy it. Both America and Britain have felt the sting of freelance asymmetrical war-makers not associated with a particular state but with a transnational religious cause that uses potent small arms and explosives to unravel western societies and confound their defences.
China, a supposed beneficiary of globalisation, will be as desperate for oil as all the other players, and perhaps more ruthless in seeking control of the supplies, some of which they can walk to. Of course, it is hard to imagine the continuation of American chain stores' manufacturing supply lines with China, given the potential for friction. Even on its own terms, China faces issues of environmental havoc, population overshoot, and political turmoil - orders of magnitude greater than anything known in Europe or America.
Viewed through this lens, the sunset of the current phase of globalisation seems dreadfully close to the horizon. The American public has enjoyed the fiesta, but the blue-light special orgy of easy motoring, limitless air-conditioning, and super-cheap products made by factory slaves far far away is about to close down. Globalisation is finished. The world is about to become a larger place again.
· James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
kunstler@aol.com
Niall Ferguson clearly sees that the obstacle to ''winning'' in Iraq is our reluctance to do what the British did in 1920: deliberately escalate attacks on civilians. And because, unfortunately to him it seems, the ''humiliation and torture of prisoners have not yielded any significant benefits,'' he is left with only one last proposal. We must maintain an occupation by bribing underprivileged immigrants to be mercenaries.That Americans will not accept these solutions is not a military setback but an advancement of our morality.
Mr. Ferguson's suggested course of action would only prove what history has shown, and what the British and the Iraqis can attest to; it would prove all that I've known since my brother, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed in Iraq last year: these conflicts are not marked by winners and losers, but by irreversible tragic acts against humanity that are embedded in the souls of the affected.Dante Zappala
Philadelphia, May 25, 2005
Niall Ferguson gave us a measure of that reality this week in a New York Times op-ed piece. Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard, argued that to defeat the insurgency in Iraq and establish a modicum of stability there would take one million U.S. soldiers and possibly 30 to 60 years.
The very least our government can do for the armed forces and the nation is to admit the true price of war - James Klurfeld - May 27, 2005
As we begin a long Memorial Day weekend, the least we can do is finally, even at this late date, be honest about how difficult and costly the war in Iraq is going to be for the men and women fighting and dying for us there.
Niall Ferguson gave us a measure of that reality this week in a New York Times op-ed piece. Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard, argued that to defeat the insurgency in Iraq and establish a modicum of stability there would take one million U.S. soldiers and possibly 30 to 60 years. That contrasts to the 138,000 soldiers there now and a prevailing belief that we will start to draw down troops next year - before the midterm elections.
Ferguson bases his estimates partly on the British experience in Iraq after World War I. The British, he says, put down an insurgency with a troop to population ratio of 1 to 23. The ratio there today is 1 to 174. He points out that the overwhelming number of British troops came from India, a type of manpower resource Washington doesn't have. And Ferguson says that many liberals in the United States don't grasp how high a price the United States will pay, in terms of its own security, if the mission fails and Iraq falls into civil war and chaos.
Even if you believe that Ferguson's estimates of manpower and time are high, the overall point is sobering: There has been and continues to be a tragic mismatch between the Bush administration's reach and its grasp. The administration grossly underestimated what it would take to make Iraq whole after the invasion. In fact, there were reports this week from a top meeting of U.S. military officials that the plan to start withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq next year is premature given the deteriorating military situation.
With the sharp escalation of bombings and new military operations, in fact, it looks as if we are at another one of those forks in the road in Iraq. The January elections have not led to any lessening of terror in the country, just the opposite. And the role of the United States - how long our troops will be there and in what numbers - is as uncertain as ever.
A just-released book, "Losing Iraq," by David L. Phillips, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department official, details how the Pentagon's civilian leadership willfully ignored detailed reports about what it would take to reconstruct Iraq. Phillips argues that much of the post-invasion chaos could have been avoided with better planning and a more realistic assessment of what was required.
This, of course, is the argument the Democrats made against President George W. Bush's handling of the war during last year's campaign. But since Bush won the campaign, the general attitude seems to be that the administration's mishandling of the reconstruction was either a phony political charge or, even if true, is now irrelevant. They won the election, so shut up.
That just can't be the case. There are Americans and Iraqis dying in Iraq every day, and the prospect is that the insurgency and the deaths from it will continue to mount. To me one of the great mistakes the president made about Iraq was not being honest with the American public about what the cost of the invasion and reconstruction would be. The danger was always that if things turned out to be much more difficult than the administration indicated - and that is clearly the case - the public would not be willing to stay the course. It's the lesson the administration should have learned from Vietnam.
If Ferguson is at all right in his assessment, the administration still isn't matching resources with mission. Either the mission is important enough to get it right and do what it takes, or we should be out of there.
Yes, there are some good signs in Iraq. The elections went far better than many had believed they would. There is a political process now as various parties begin to try to write an Iraqi constitution. There are beginning movements toward democratic forms of governance in the region. But the best reading is that this is all very delicate and could come crashing down, especially if there is no security inside Iraq.
Memorial Day is a time to remember and pay tribute to the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our security. It should also be the time that we give an honest assessment of what the men and women who are prepared to make that sacrifice now face in our latest battle for freedom.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc
(I'm reading off the beaten path for a bit...)
I figured that the sunday shows would be dealing with the Pope. At least one poster is upset at the coverage. But thinking back to Mike's cautious celebration on Ratzinger's nomination, I think much more (rather than less) analysis is in order. Listen to the English translation of Benedict's positions. He's talking about a culture of life, fighting against stem-cell research, and arguing for Spanish bureaucrats to act as conscientious objectors of sorts to same-sex marriage. The election of Bush, the Shiavo case (sp?), the fight for the judiciary, and Benedict XVI are all part of the same phenomenon.
And while Mike's happy about the return to prominence of what perhaps he'd call Old School Catholic values, I'd just ask about Pope Eugenius IV and Pope Nicholas V.
The historical reasons that prompted the modernizing process in Western Europe and North America are not necessarily structural components of modernity. Surely, Enlightenment values such as instrumental rationality, liberty, rights consciousness, due process of law, privacy and individualism are all universalizable modern values. However, as the Confucian example suggests, "Asian values" such as sympathy, distributive justice, duty-consciousness, ritual, public-spiritedness and group orientation are also universalizable modern values. Just as the former ought to be incorporated into East Asian modernity, the latter may turn out to be a critical and timely reference for the American way of life.
China has banned a Nike television commercial showing U.S. basketball star LeBron James in a battle with an animated cartoon kung fu master. The ad insults Chinese national dignity, it says.
Full monty here;
Video here;
Inner-resting control of images....,
Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential nominee John] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.
Now, to the folks who said that Kerry is what the terrorists want, how do you now respond? Will you at least admit that your comments were, at best, asinine?
Do you remember the "Shoe Bomber"? Do you remember that this happened after 9/11? Do you remember the anthrax deaths? Do you remember that this happened after 9/11?
Do you feel stupid now or what?!?!?!
Why did we go after Iraq?
I think it was because of Iraq's gift of $25,000 to the family of terrorists who blew themselves to bits when attacking Israel.
Iraq supported terrorism by doing this.
It wasn't about non-compliance.
It wasn't about WMDs.
It wasn't about a direct threat to the U.S.
It was about a threat to a U.S. interest. And that interest wasn't oil.
At least that's what I think.
The flip side of Soweto hip-hop. Probably requires a subscription to see the whole article, but as Salon is worth the loot, I'd suggest you do it. But in case you aren't moved, here's a snippet:
Tshepo Boikanyo signs his name on the dotted line and in an instant becomes the proud owner of a $70,000 BMW. The 33-year-old lawyer, dressed sharp in a black suit, glides across the floor of the BMW dealership to ogle his new car. "I considered buying a Jaguar, but I opted for the BMW after test-driving one. And this is a black dealership, so I felt I had to bring my business here," he says. Litha Nkombisa, one of the dealership's four owners, hands him a bottle of champagne and the keys to his titanium silver 525 Coupe. "You see, they take care of me here," Boikanyo says. "It's like a second home."
The entire article can be found here.
I hate being a two handed social scientist. but I've got to do it here. On the one hand, in as much there is nothing inherently revolutionary about being poor, brothers and sisters getting their loot on in South Africa is a good thing. It is ESPECIALLY good that the brothers and sisters are South African born and bred.
But on the other, neo-liberalism can only work for the bourgie. And it usually doesn't work for very long. What is striking about this article is that there is absolutely no discussion of politics in it. E. Franklin Frazier wrote the seminal text on the African American bourgeois class in Black Bourgeioisie. Perhaps it is high time someone begin to think about what a transnational black bourgeioisie would look like?
I've been trying to wrap my thoughts around the idea that politics is marketing by other means. Around a paradigm in which we don't elect representatives so much as hire them (Bush as CEO). I can't roll with it for a number of substantive reasons, but at the same time there is something very appealing in moving the focus of black politics towards market oriented activity. My father says over and over again that if black people want to build economic power there is tons of money to be made in black spaces like Detroit. As these communities are largely underserved, this strategy makes a great deal of sense, and has single handedly propelled Magic from a million dollar man to a 700 million dollar man.
One of the benefits here is that such a strategy only requires "black consciousness" to the degree that the individuals are actually AWARE of black people. Understand the difference?
And this model is easily portable. I know both Covington and Sudarkasa from my years at Michigan. When Cobb is talking about the new black critical mass, these are the folk he's talking about.
Tom Atlee 's definition of co-intelligence is "what intelligence would look like if we took wholeness, interconnectedness, and co-creativity seriously." His book, The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All, is intelligent in that sense: it is a terrific bricolage of Tom's learnings from his own experiences and from his many friends.
In a nutshell, Tom offers us a persuasive account of what we can do, and how, to change our world -- not for the better as we as individuals might define it, but as we might define it if we listened to each other closely enough to arrived at mutual understanding.
A quote from the Introduction:
Gone are the days when the worst we could do was conquer a neighboring tribe or overgraze a local hillside. We are reaching a point where individuals and small groups will be able to create, or destroy, almost anything. We have moved beyond the scale of centimeters and miles down into the microscopic, even subatomic realms, and up into the planetary and interstellar realms, from angstroms to light years, from nanoseconds to gigabytes. We break up atoms and chromosomes. And collectively we change forests to deserts. We litter the upper atmosphere with layers of space junk zooming around earth at hundreds of miles an hour. Our inventions are transforming the lives of our grandchildren's grandchildren -- and we do not have the foggiest notion how. And we are doing all of this faster and faster, more and more, bigger and bigger.The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All was officially released July 4. You can read a sample chapter, then order it from http://www.taoofdemocracy.com/index.html.Meanwhile, individually, we can directly comprehend only a tiny fraction of what we are collectively doing. Our individual senses, nervous systems and brains are not capable of taking in the gigantic effects, both current and potential, that our civilization's creativity is capable of generating. Our nervous systems are set to respond to what is here and now and obvious: we can not feel radiation, the population explosion, the vital information missing from our newspaper, the disappearing ozone layer. And when we are faced with any significant piece of the full information, we get overwhelmed.
Stop and think about this for a minute.
We cannot individually comprehend the range, depth and detail of the consequences we are collectively generating for ourselves.Well, if we cannot appreciate our circumstances individually, perhaps we can do it collectively. Unfortunately, our democracy is not designed for that. Even in those rare instances when it is not being manipulated by special interests, it operates on elections and polls, on the numerical adding up of our individual opinions. Logically speaking, this cannot do the job that is required; if we can not individually comprehend our circumstances, adding all our individual incomprehensions together will not improve our understanding.
Let's be co-intelligent about this, let's get the word out, let's blog it!