| Sunday,
May 16, 2004 This is
very long, but worth reading.
A View from the Eye
of the Storm
Talk delivered by a
famous Israeli scientist at a meeting of the International Advisory Board of
a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004
(When this was first posted, I was
not at liberty to name the author. I can now do so:
A
View from the Eye of the Storm Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of
the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national corporation,
April 2004.
HAIM HARARI, a
theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson Institute of Science
Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, of the Weizmann
Institute of Science.
During his years as
President of the Institute, it entered numerous new scientific fields and
projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one Billion Dollars in
philanthropic money, hired more than half of its current tenured Professors
and became one of the highest royalty-earning academic organizations in the
world.
Throughout all his
adult life, he has made major contributions to three different fields:
Particle Physics Research on the international scene, Science Education in
the Israeli school system and Science Administration and Policy Making.)
As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological
"entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman
suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of the
world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be a Government
official and I have no privileged information. My perspective is entirely
based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived
in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views as those of the
proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to question, when you visit a
country.
I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal
thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it only
in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader picture of
the region and its place in world events. I refer to the entire area between
Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab, predominantly Moslem, but
includes many non-Arab and also significant non-Moslem minorities.
Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel
and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in
the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central
issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a 100 year-old
Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is. The millions
who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder
happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its
black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent
reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one
village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam
Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own
people because of Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the
60ís because of Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of
his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The
Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do
with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do
with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally
dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if
Israel would have joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine would
have existed for 100 years. The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from
Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions,
larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion. They
have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe. These 22
countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP
smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP
of California alone. Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor
are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by
succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers. The social status of
women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago. Human
rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact
that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission. According to
a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under
the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab
world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates. The total
number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of
6 million Israelis. Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the
poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline. And all of this is
happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next
wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some
point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world.
It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for
cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders
and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region
blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western
Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except
themselves.
Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing the
failings of his enemies? On the contrary, I firmly believe that the world
would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood would have been
much more pleasant and peaceful, if things were different.
I
should also say a word about the millions of decent, honest, good people who
are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew up in Moslem
families. They are double victims of an outside world, which now develops
Islamophobia and of their own environment, which breaks their heart by being
totally dysfunctional. The problem is that the vast silent majority of these
Moslems are not part of the terror and of the incitement but they also do
not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this
applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many
others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to
express their views.
The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which have
always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present upheaval in
the region. These are the four main pillars of the current World Conflict,
or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the undeclared World War III".
I have no better name for the present situation. A few more years may pass
before everybody acknowledges that it is a World War, but we are already
well into it.
The first element is the suicide murder. Suicide murders are not a new
invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this expression,
only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of the Western
World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very potent psychological
weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor. The total number of
casualties from hundreds of suicide murders within Israel in the last three
years is much smaller than those due to car accidents. September 11 was
quantitatively much less lethal than many earthquakes. More people die from
AIDS in one day in Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of
Chechnya-based Moslem suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam
killed every month more people than all those who died from suicide murders
since the Coalition occupation of Iraq.
So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates headlines. It is
spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodies
dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the wounded. It
is always shown on television in great detail. One such murder, with the
help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the tourism industry of a
country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and in Turkey.
But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and no
preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide murderer. This
has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. The U.S. and
Europe are constantly improving their defense against the last murder, not
the next one. We may arrange for the best airport security in the world. But
if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order
to explode yourself and kill many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in
the midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal
detector? How about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel
period? Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and
the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode
in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and
hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will always
be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line will be the
target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat
reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict
border controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a
defensive way. And it is a war!
What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous
incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious
beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab
politician or religious leader has ever blown himself. No relative of anyone
influential has done it. Wouldn’t you expect some of the religious leaders
to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it, if this is truly a
supreme act of religious fervor? Aren’t they interested in the benefits of
going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naive children, retarded
people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly
sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the
supreme act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.
Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. The
poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there.
There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures,
countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with
explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more
despair in Saddam’s Iraq then in Paul Bremmer’s Iraq, and no one exploded
himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel,
inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life,
including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to
their own affluent well-being and their hunger for power.
The only way to fight this new popular weapon is identical to the only way
in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the
offensive way. Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that the
forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top of the
crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little
drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the head of the
"Family".
If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid of it
and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserable childhood,
organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism. The United States
understands this now, after September 11. Russia is beginning to understand
it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that most of Europe
still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seems that Europe will
understand it only after suicide murders will arrive in Europe in a big way.
In my humble opinion, this will definitely happen. The Spanish trains and
the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized
World in fighting this horror is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe
wakes up, this unity will not be achieved.
The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. Words can be lethal.
They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps
also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as part of their
professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are childish, in
comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute deliberate
fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are talking
about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that
September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better,
a Jewish plot.
You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf
and his press conferences when the US forces were already inside Baghdad.
Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But to stand, day after
day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to everybody to be
lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only happen in
this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court jester,
but this did not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving him
equal time. It also does not prevent the Western press from giving credence,
every day, even now, to similar liars. After all, if you want to be an
antisemite, there are subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that
the holocaust never happened and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never
existed. But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the
case. When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media
report them as if they could be true.
It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch
suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of western TV
cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly believes them. It is
a daily routine to hear the same leader making opposite statements in Arabic
to his people and in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by Arab
TV, accompanied by horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a
powerful weapon of those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything.
Little children are raised on deep hatred and on admiration of so-called
martyrs, and the Western World does not notice it because its own TV sets
are mostly tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even
though most of you do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jaseera, from time
to time. You will not believe your own eyes.
But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in Berlin,
carrying banners supporting Saddam’s regime and featuring three-year old
babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press and by
political leaders as a peace demonstration. You may support or oppose
the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace
activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in
mid-day, eats, observes families with old people and children eating their
lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the bill. She then blows herself up,
killing 20 people, including many children, with heads and arms rolling
around in the restaurant. She is called martyr by several Arab
leaders and activist by the European press. Dignitaries condemn the
act but visit her bereaved family and the money flows.
There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called the military
wing, the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called
the political wing and the head of the operation is called the
spiritual leader. There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian
nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western
media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They
provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebels
who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He
is now being outperformed by his successors.
The third aspect is money. Huge amounts of money, which could have solved
many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are channeled
into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder. In the inner
circle are the terrorists themselves. The money funds their travel,
explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerable targets. They
are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters, planners,
commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living, usually a very comfortable
living, by serving as terror infrastructure. Finally, we find the third
circle of so-called religious, educational and welfare organizations, which
actually do some good, feed the hungry and provide some schooling, but
brainwash a new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle
operates mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments
but also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle
that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable
and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle
that leads the way in blaming everybody outside the Moslem world, for the
miseries of the region.
Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes sure
that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and
incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts of this same outer
circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner
circles. The horrifying added factor is the high birth rate. Half of the
population of the Arab world is under the age of 20, the most receptive age
to incitement, guaranteeing two more generations of blind hatred.
Of the three circles described above, the inner circles are primarily
financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by
Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes. These
states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the
wholesale murder vendors. The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi
Arabia, but also by donations from certain Moslem communities in the United
States and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations of European
Governments to various NGO's and by certain United Nations organizations,
whose goals may be noble, but they are infested and exploited by agents of
the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course, will be the next victim of
major terror, when the inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The
Saudis are beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles,
while still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.
Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on their
loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in Europe, not in
the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad "soldiers" join packaged
death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while some of their leaders ski in
Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in Paris with her daughter, receives
tens of thousands Dollars per month from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian
Authority while a typical local ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting
to Arafat, receives only a cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for
performing murders at the retail level. The fourth element of the current
world conflict is the total breaking of all laws. The civilized world
believes in democracy, the rule of law, including international law, human
rights, free speech and free press, among other liberties. There are naive
old-fashioned habits such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not
using ambulances and hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of
dead bodies and not using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in
history, not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all
of the above as we observe now. Every student of political science debates
how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic election
and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society must also
have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying to kill him?
Can a government listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug
dealers? Does free speech protects you when you shout fire in a crowded
theater? Should there be death penalty for deliberate multiple murders?
These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an entire new set.
Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you
return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church
taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every
ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their
targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and
carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to
kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid
terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an
arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always
surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the
Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the
dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.
Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a
well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed
by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing
hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes,
promising in public TV interviews to do more of the same, while the
Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts but continues to
host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a great
dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or France
would have done, in such a situation.
The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the
rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice
hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a
heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a
law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is
unthinkable, international law does not address killers shooting from
hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected by their Government
or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who sends
children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and
cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International
law does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and
comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just
claims to be too weak to arrest him. The amazing thing is that all of these
crooks demand protection under international law and define all those who
attack them as war criminals, with some Western media repeating the
allegations. The good news is that all of this is temporary, because the
evolution of international law has always adapted itself to reality. The
punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder,
not during and not after. After every world war, the rules of international
law have changed and the same will happen after the present one. But during
the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.
The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it? In the
short run, only fight and win. In the long run only educate the next
generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and must be
destroyed by force. The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here we
need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power to women, more
education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible and access to
Western media, internet and the international scene. Above all, we need a
total absolute unity and determination of the civilized world against all
three circles of evil.
Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driver and
return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may remove the tumor
itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new blood from
reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby preventing new "supplies"
from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it is best to do both.
But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realize
that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more years. In order
to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the terrorist regimes, so that no
Government in the world will serve as a safe haven for these people. I do
not want to comment here on whether the American-led attack on Iraq was
justified from the point of view of weapons of mass destruction or any other
pre-war argument, but I can look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now
that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states
remain: Iran, Syria and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps
Sudan should be added to the list. As a result of the conquest of
Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by
territories unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the
Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria
is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant
strategic change and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries.
It is not surprising that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite
uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the American plan was actually to
encircle both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting situation.
In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran and
its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in
all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy over Western
culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute elaborate
terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies. It
is clearly trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. Its so-called moderates and
conservatives play their own virtuoso version of the good-cop versus
bad-cop game. Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind
much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the Hizbulla and, through
it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at
least in Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekhistan and
Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which
includes, as minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in
Iraq. Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran, try to
appease it and refuse to read the clear signals.
In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial resources
of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to understand the subtle
differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida and Hamas and the Shiite
terror of Hizbulla, Sadr and other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it
serves their business needs, all of them collaborate beautifully.
It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer circle,
which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor
all donations from the Western World to Islamic organizations, to monitor
the finances of international relief organizations and to react with
forceful economic measures to any small sign of financial aid to any of the
three circles of terrorism. It is also important to act decisively against
the campaign of lies and fabrications and to monitor those Western media who
collaborate with it out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.
Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the
recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not for
the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not matter. What
matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the result and that
they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will surely end up
being extremely costly to other European countries, including France, who is
now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding veils and including others
who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will pay even more.
Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean free
elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial system,
civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel, exposure to
international media and ideas, laws against racial incitement and against
defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals, places of
worship and children, then yes, democracy is the solution. If democracy is
just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime will be
elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most
inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria and, to a certain extent,
in Turkey. It will happen again, if the ground is not prepared very
carefully. On the other hand, a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan,
may be a better temporary solution, paving the way for the real thing,
perhaps in the same way that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in
Russia and would not have worked in China.
I
have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it takes
us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly and painful
the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is the key. Its
understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of World War II, may
cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before the tide will turn.
===================================
Subject: "public convenience"
http://www.dailynews.com/cda/article/
print/0,1674,200%257E20954%257E2136463,00.html
---- Roland Dobbins
For your convenience this exit is closed....
Subject: A Constitutional Issue
I know that actually reading and following the words
of the U.S. Contritution is considered an outmoded concept (by all major
parties), but I don't recall the two thirds vote in both halves of Congress
that would allow John Kerry to serve as a U.S. Senator, let alone President.
Amendment XIV: Section 3. No person shall be a Senator
or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President,
or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any
state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as
an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or
as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the
Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or
rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such
disability.
If anyone thinks that J. F. Kerry's activities in and
on the behalf of Vietnam Vets Against the War doesn't constitute giving aid
and comfort to the enemies of the United States, they didn't pay attention
to what the man himself has said; not to mention the official credit for
victory recently given to American Fifth Columnists by the (communist)
government of Vietnam.
Greg Hemsath
What the Constitution doesn't do is determine who
it is who can make a decision of record in those instances. The obvious
intent of the Amendment was to leave the South leaderless during
Reconstruction (and the same rules were applied by the occupation forces to
keep the leadership class of the South from holding local public offices;
one of the main reasons for the success of the Klan which became a shadow
government. Of course I refer to the original Klan disbanded by Nathan
Bedford Forest as part of the Hayes/Tilden election compromise and
deal, not the present Klan which began in the North and is an entirely
different proposition.)
And a second question is, absent a Declaration of
War, who is an "enemy" of the United States? One of those technicalities
that would be decided by a formal Declaration of War, which we ought to have
had in Viet Nam, against Iran after they stormed the embassy, and Iraq both
times.
Subject: Re: Greg Hemsath, Aid and Comfort, Sunday,
May 16, 2004
Here's an opinion from a lawyer who obviously doesn't
have much use for John Kerry, but who admits the "aid and comfort"/treason
accusation is meritless.
http://www.rightnation.us/forums/index.php?showtopic=37308
The same law that protects John Kerry also protects
Greg Hemsath himself, if he only stopped to think about it. After all, a
malicious person could claim that Hemsath was inciting armed violence, and
charge him on that grounds. That is why we have constructed a firm
distinction between political speech and "overt acts."
Andrew D. Todd
Indeed.
===============================
Subject: Library at Alexandria rediscovered?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3707641.stm
- Roland Dobbins
================================
Subject: Bletchley Park boffins seek Holy Grail,
Knights Templar.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/14/tech/main617553.shtml
--- Roland Dobbins
Which is in fact very interesting. The whole saga
of the Knights Templar is worthy of more study; unlike the silly "Da Vinci
Code" stuff that seems to have taken over my local bookstore, there is some
reality in the notion that the Templars actually recovered the Grail. There
is also tradition although little evidence that the Grail (an actual cup,
possibly plated in silver or gold, according to some traditions) was brought
to England by Joseph of Arimathea.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
-- William Blake (1757-1827)
But the Da Vinci Code has it all wrong. The
tradition, put forth among other places in a book I have seen recently
revived, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, is that Jesus may have married: not
Magdalene, but Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha; the Sons of Martha
inherited service, the Sons of Mary inherited "that good part"...).
Apparently there is evidence that the Albigensian Heresy had connections
with this notion. The Rosicrucians and some other secret societies have held
that the biological descendents of Jesus still exist and are the legitimate
rulers of the world.
And it is certain that the Templars had some
extraordinary secret treasures, and that many of them including a rather
sizable war fleet escaped the purges, and after the Order was formally
disbanded continued to play a part in history...
Subject: Speech may be free, but listening will cost
you
SOMEbody clearly was not paying attention to Justice
Scalia's little speech. (Hint: they're wearing a uniform...)
From:
http://www.forbes.com/business/services/
newswire/2004/05/10/rtr1366017.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two media companies and two of
their reporters accused the U.S. Marshals Service in a lawsuit Monday of
violating their constitutional rights by confiscating recording devices
during a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and erasing his
remarks.
--------------------------------
Some Views about Cochran:
Dear Dr Pournelle, Mr Cochran has a marvelous grip on
language but has quite lost it with his attacks on those who prefer a robust
and confrontational attitude to places and people like Al Quaeda and Saddam
Hussein. It seemed quite out of character.
It's one thing to believe that the interests of the US
and UK were not served by invading Iraq. It's quite another to despise those
who thought otherwise, such as Tony Blair, who is not a particularly warlike
person.
This is especially unbecoming when it leads him to say
things like "There is no such thing as islamofascism. Almost every Arab
government is a boring bureaucratic despotism."
The first sentence is so plainly wrong one really
doesn't know where to begin, and the second is a non sequitur. I mean it is
quite beside the point. Most of us are aware, not least "serving officer",
that islamofascists and Arab governments are far from the same thing.
If by 'islamofascist' one means someone intent on
imposing Islam by authoritarian means, the present government of Iran fits
quite nicely, as did the Taliban.
If instead one means someone intent on using Islam to
impose the authority of a fascist clique, such people certainly exist and
are well organized - even Hussein's government could depict themselves as
Islamic for propaganda purposes - but Islamic fascists are not necessarily
part of any government. Any more.
"Serving officer" can I'm sure argue for himself, but
might feel it beneath his dignity. Just for completeness, "serving officer"
noted that there was a "lead in the press on the Chemical Weapons that were
going to be used in Jordan", a story I noted myself on Google News. To say
"There were no chemical weapons in Jordan" is a 'straw man' argument.
"Serving officer" never said there were, though as a matter of definition
there may have been. He is probably referring to articles like this:
< http://us.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/26/jordan.terror/
> "At issue is the presence of a large quantity of sulfuric acid among the
tons of chemicals seized by Jordanian authorities. Sulfuric acid can be used
as a blister agent, but it more commonly can increase the size of
conventional explosions".
To say such a cache was not chemical weapons is
disingenuous, and Cochran's other remarks sometimes grate even more harshly.
Phlogiston was not a stepping stone to thermodynamics. There are a great
many "theys" who want America and all Americans, and everyone who thinks
like them, garrotted, beheaded, drawn, quartered, and burned, whether
justifiably or not, and don't you ever underestimate them. Don't you dare.
It may be fashionable to refer to Arabs as ragheads
but they represent a culture which in its time was the leading light of the
world and could be again. There are a billion Moslems world wide, fewer than
there are Christians, but a great many Christians also detest everything
Western culture stands for, so it won't be just Al Quaeda who will be
gunning for "you".
Every woman who yells at her husband in public or who
cuts off a man in traffic, every irreverent TV comic slandering someone's
cult leader, will have individuals and packs coming for you in ways you
cannot anticipate and it won't matter if the military significance of their
attacks is a comparative pinprick, because it's not the body of western
culture - industry, lives, money - they are really trying to kill. It's the
mind, and more importantly the heart. I'm not convinced by opinion polls
which show changes in favourability or otherwise, if only because Cochran's
baseline of "a couple of years ago" relates to when the Islamic world was
recoiling from the attack on the two towers.
It's not some trivial animadversion to recent events
you have to deal with - it's a long-standing grievance of peoples and
cultures who feel that history has passed them by. That, by they way, is why
China is not the threat some people think. History has definitely not passed
China by, nor is it likely to. But in most parts of the world an unreachable
antipathy will exist against the West and all it stands for, simply because
you are successful and they are not. That includes Brazil. From time to time
a LatinoAmerican around 1904 might feel quite happy about trade goods from
the elephant to the North, but that didn't stop the likes of Rubén Dario
calling Teddy Roosevelt a militaristic buffoon in terms of unforgettable
poetry ("To the worship of Hercules you have joined that of Mammon") where
envy mixed with anger. After five hundred years of pioneering Brazil still
has fat sloppy pirates on the Amazon who murder explorers and yachtsmen for
a few dollars and change. Lula might make a difference but it's more likely
to this spectator to be a very long term development, and in the meantime
the US will be held to standards which no petty dictatorship in Latin
America, the Islamic world, could possibly meet.
So what is a poor superpower to do? Should the US be
shamed by the behaviour of its prison guards? Absolutely. Just like certain
dark tales of the Marine stockade at Parris Island are an indelible stain on
your history.
Does that mean, as the Chinese would argue, that such
policies expose US hypocrisy in its criticisms of the human rights records
of other nations? No, because in the first place there will be public trials
of the malefactors - which will not go unnoticed, I promise you; in the
second place, two wrongs do not make a right.
Does it mean the end of US war aims in Iraq? No,
because June 30th is not that far off anyway. When the first riots erupt and
the Governing Council is beheaded in front of reporters, should the US
reinvade? You will do what you need to survive as a nation. So far, nothing
new.
Greg Cochran is right that no clear and present
Islamic military threat, nor some pandemic like AIDS or the Spanish lady,
could seriously menace civilisation as we know it; but a régime of
harassment and hatred would cut power to the dynamo of the West, even more
than any oil shock. This is something which "Serving officer" clearly
understands, and which Mr Cochran to his discredit dismisses if he thinks of
it at all.
If Cochran meant to say that he and the likes of
"Serving officer" can have no common discourse, that would be about right,
but just whose argument will be as dead as phlogiston in two decades? That
is less clear. (A propos, when Carnot crystallised the uses of steam in the
language of Physics - two decades after the death of Priestley - he used as
a theoretical crutch the idea of "calorique" which like the ether flowed
unseen and which, like phlogiston, was just as erroneous. But productive
errors nonetheless).
For me the problem is that from every important
actionable viewpoint I think Mr Cochran is right. There were better targets
than Iraq. But it wasn't clear at the time, not to me, not to Bush, not even
to Powell or Blair, and to claim otherwise is what strikes me as puerile.
Regards, TC
-- Terry Cole admin@maths.otago.ac.nz System
Administrator Dept. of Maths and Stats, Otago University PO. Box 56, Dunedin
tel:64-3-4797739 NEW ZEALAND fax:64-3-4798427
As I have told Greg many times, I agree with his
analysis but not the conclusion that all those who didn't, or now don't,
agree are idiots. I said at the time we invaded Iraq that I had severe
misgivings, but once we were committed we needed to do it well; and I still
believe that. I also believe that reasonable people, including John Kerry,
could vote for the resolution authorizing the invasion although I would not
have.
And I still believe that the biggest cost of Iraq
is opportunity cost: for that kind of money we could build a Space Navy and
give ourselves independence of Middle Eastern oil. Let the Europeans and
Japanese handle the situation since they will need the oil; we can see that
we don't.
I trust our military to be able to break things,
kill people, and win wars. No one in history has been better at it, and with
fairly small forces given the numbers of people involved. But I do not trust
our, or any, military with being able to build nations in Arab lands and
still be the splendid force we sent into there.
I trust the United States to muddle through and
find a way to build a new occupation force, a constabulary and military
government force: the Marines have often been able to do this, and the
Marines are the closest thing we have to the kinds of forces that can both
win wars and impose order and build a civilization without becoming
something other than Marines; but the process is expensive, and takes a long
time, and has to play out in the drama of domestic politics and elections
under the tender scrutiny of the Media; and if anyone purports to know what
that will bring, he is either wiser or more foolish than me, and by a lot.
Subject: Cochran on chemical weapons
>> And Greg Cochran answers: >> There were no chemical
weapons in Jordan. I checked. >> Now that we've got that out of the way, it
gets a little more difficult
If that is the case, then what does Mr. Cochran do
with:
http://us.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/26/jordan.terror/ , which reports
"In a series of raids, the Jordanians said, they seized 20 tons of chemicals
and numerous explosives." with the intention of "the attack would have mixed
a combination of 71 lethal chemicals, which they said has never been done
before, including blistering agents to cause third-degree burns, nerve gas
and choking agents."
Sure sounds like chemical weapons tome.
Akiva
================ "Nothing is ever what it seems but
everything is exactly what it is." - B. Banzai
Volunteers Replacing American Iraq Losses
Jerry
I found this interesting.
Ed
The U.S. Army, which is taking the bulk of the
casualties in Iraq, is still getting more volunteers than it needs.
Standards have remained high, but the numbers needed have gone up as well.
With over 6,000 casualties in Iraq during the last year, the number of new
troops needed this year has been increased from 72,000 to 77,000. Most of
the wounded troops return to duty, but all are out of action for days, or
months, or forever in the case of the dead and crippled. This is all
uncharted territory for the army, as it has been over 150 years since it was
in a long war with an all-volunteer force.
The army has about eleven percent of its total
(active and reserve) strength in Iraq, and the casualties are, in a
historical first, disproportionately non-combat troops. This means that
those joining the army can't guarantee they will stay away from combat by
enlisting for a non-combat job. If you go to Iraq or Afghanistan, you are
going to be shot at. Army basic training has been made longer, and more
combat oriented as a result.
Anyone going to Iraq has a 4-5 percent chance
of getting hurt. But so far that has not caused a decline in volunteers,
despite media reports recruiting would suffer. There may yet be a decline in
volunteers, and the army is paying close attention to recruiting efforts in
order to detect any problems early, so they can try and counter them. One
thing the army has noted is the increasing number of volunteers who are
joining up not for the educational benefits or the money. Now a major
incentive is patriotism. Many young Americans believe that Islamic radicals
are a real threat to the United States and want to do something about it.
But in past wars, this sort of enthusiasm diminished as the war went on.
Historically, after three years, the number of volunteers declined
dramatically. But in those past wars, mainly the Civil War and World War II,
the casualties were high. This is not the case in Iraq, a war with
historically very low casualties. No one knows what impact all this will
have. There are still enough troops coming back dead or maimed to remind
potential volunteers that this is a dangerous business. But since there is
no precedent for a situation like this, the army can only watch, and wait.
From
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/2004513.asp
Watch and wait: and wonder, what are we recruiting
for? The nature of the army determines the nature of a republic.
========================
Subject: both sexes on duty
Did this meme come from you, or to you?
You: "And again I
keep wondering: is there anyone at all who doesn't understand the
implications of putting young men and women together in situations like this
without supervision? Hasn't anyone ever read an elementary psychology book?
Or have any experience with units of mixed sexes? Or know much about what
young men will do to impress young women?"
Linda Chavez:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/lc20040505.shtml
"It is hard to know what led to this
breakdown in discipline. But one factor that may have contributed -- but
which I doubt investigators will want to even consider -- is whether the
presence of women in the unit actually encouraged more misbehavior,
especially of the sexual nature that the pictures reveal."
Lloyd Arnold Winterville, North Carolina
No data. Seemed obvious to me.
Subject: Wesley Clark checks in
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.clark.html
Broken Engagement The strategy that won the
Cold War could help bring democracy to the Middle East-- if only the Bush
hawks understood it.
By Gen. Wesley Clark
During 2002 and early 2003, Bush administration
officials put forth a shifting series of arguments for why we needed to
invade Iraq. Nearly every one of these has been belied by subsequent events.
We have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; assuming that
they exist at all, they obviously never presented an imminent threat.
Saddam's alleged connections to al Qaeda turned out to be tenuous at best
and clearly had nothing to do with September 11. The terrorists now in Iraq
have largely arrived because we are there, and Saddam's security forces
aren't. And peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which prominent hawks
argued could be achieved "only through Baghdad," seems further away than
ever.
Advocates of the invasion are now down to their
last argument: that transforming Iraq from brutal tyranny to stable
democracy will spark a wave of democratic reform throughout the Middle East,
thereby alleviating the conditions that give rise to terrorism. This
argument is still standing because not enough time has elapsed to test it
definitively--though events in the year since Baghdad's fall do not inspire
confidence. For every report of a growing conversation in the Arab world
about the importance of democracy, there's another report of moderate Arabs
feeling their position undercut by the backlash against our invasion. For
every example of progress (Libya giving up its WMD program), there's an
instance of backsliding (the Iranian mullahs purging reformist
parliamentarians).
What is certainly true is that any hope for a
"domino theory" rests with Iraq's actually becoming something that resembles
a stable democracy. But here, too, there has been little progress. Despite
their heroic efforts, American soldiers have been unable to make the country
consistently stable and safe. <snip>
Ash
Clark has earned the right to an opinion, but so
have many others.
Subject: Third world perspective on
Iraq
Jerry,
I’m heading back to Uganda today for a month or so.
Back in the states around June 10. I came across the following article in
one of Uganda’s two leading newspapers:
http://www.sundayvision.co.ug/detail.php?
newsCategoryId=134&newsId=360469
Tracy
Thanks!
=============================
Hi Jerry,
Found: Saddam's WMDs
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13168
- Paul
I think I have referred to this in View as well.
======================
Dr. Pournelle,
Here is a unique job opportunity a large proportion of
Chaos Manor readers undoubtedly will be interested in. Be sure to read the
details.
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
Respectfully submitted,
-- Earl Everett
===============================
Jerry
Maybe we're getting bad news from Iraq because the
reporters don't go where there is no news. Check this out, for example:
http://www.strategypage.com//fyeo/qndguide/default.asp?target=IRAQ.HTM
If it is even partly true, perhaps we should not pay
attention to journalists there.
Ed
'Twas ever thus. But we're still a long way from a
democratic republic.
==================================
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Not to distract from the political ramblings...
Now that you have broadband access you can more
readily see movies like the following, which is a 3D fly-through from here
to the Virgo Supercluster.
It's 25 Megs but well worth the download.
Imagine, if you will, future buyers of your books
getting a companion CD with a movie like this but flying through, say, the
Mote... It's the 21st century...
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~tully/outreach/movie.html
Regards,
Gary Alston
Beautiful!
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