Rebuilding the 3rd Coast

Just listened to President's W Bush speech on Katrina. I have a few thoughts.
1. The economic redevelopment plan for Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi could transform and propel three of the nation's poorest states into mainstream standings. I don't think anyone who has not lived in any of these three states can appreciate the significance of this second "reconstruction."
2. Looks like the federal government will assume a greater planning and interventional role for all national disasters. I have mixed feelings about this. I suppose the federal government could require a mandatory emergency plan for all major cities, one that meets a minimum standard in accordance with federal requirements. Once approved and a copy stored centrally, then the local and state governments can take the lead role in determining when the feds are called.
3. A very ambitious speech overall, I think it will be well received by Americans. And as reported by ABC News.

America's Allies

In addition:
Do you feel that ______ is a close ally of the U.S., is friendly but not a close ally, is not friendly but not an enemy, or is unfriendly and is an enemy of the U.S.?"
Rank Close Ally/Friendly---Rank in: 2003/Rank in: 2004
1 Great Britain 74%/18%---1/1
2 Canada 48/37---2/2
3 Australia 44/36---3/3
4 Israel 41/31---4/4
5 Japan 30/37---6/5
6 Mexico 27/47---5/6
7 Italy 26/43---6/7
8 South Korea 25/31---9/8
9 Germany 24/46---14/10
10 Sweden 23/44---12/12
Others of note
11 Spain 22/43---8/9
+12 Netherlands 21/41---10/10
+12 Taiwan 21/38---12/12
14 India 20/42---21/17
15 Norway 18/41---11/14
16 France 17/38---18/17
17 Greece 16/44---16/15
18 Brazil 14/38---14/17
+19 Russia 11/45---18/20
+19 South Africa 11/42---18/15
+19 Chile 11/35---22/22
+22 Colombia 10/33---22/24
+22 Argentina 10/38---17/20
24 Pakistan 9/24---22/22
25 China 5/36---25/25

Personal notes:
1. France was never that high
2. India has risen fairly fast
3. Where is Poland?

Looting and Liberty

Sure I have known about looting, but I never really gave it much thought. When Baghdad was liberated, it entered my mind and was assigned a seat in the waiting room. When I came to re-evaluate it, it was in the context of whether Iraqis are ready and capable of democracy. After all, at the first opportunity for free actions, they chose looting as self-expression of liberty. I know that the looting was over played in the media, but that it did occur was clearly demonstrable.
Now looting has re-entered my waiting room due to Katrina. At first I did not recognize it, for we were in a different country with a different people. And without a doubt it needed to be stopped. Even here civilization is a thin veneer. Which then made me realize that if we live that close to chaos here in the States, yet still are able to function as a democratic society, then certainly the Iraqi can as well. Funny enough, this made me feel a bit more certain that democratization of the Middle East can be successful.

As an aside, when the Kobe earthquake left many people homeless, order and respect appear natural to the Japanese. No looting was reported.
Speaking of Japan, congratulations to Koizumi and his reform platform electoral endorsement!

Katrina: State and the Feds

As witness by the response to Katrina, there needs to be a review not of blame but how things can be done better the next time. The state alone cannot be expected to handle such crisis and there is where the federal government should enter the picture. The question is how the feds enter the equation, at the call of the local/state government who best know the terrain devastated, or should the feds intervene as it sees fit. This last option seems rather presumptuous (having the available resources does not mean having the knowledge necessary to act) and smacks of big government and big brother.

A nice companion piece of the capability of the feds by Daniel Hanninger:

The popular impression left the past week-- that the government was wholly unprepared for Katrina--is not true. Significant U.S. military assistance was on alert throughout the week prior to Katrina's landfall. Why those highly trained and drilled assets did not move into New Orleans sooner is a question that should now sit at the center of a debate over who should have the authority--the states or the federal government--to be the "first mover."

According to accounts provided by several sources involved with preparations for Katrina, the Pentagon began tracking the storm when it was still just a number in the ocean on Aug. 23, some five days before landfall in Buras, La. As the storm approached, senior Pentagon officials told staff to conduct an inventory of resources available should it grow into a severe hurricane. Their template for these plans was the assistance DoD provided Florida last year for its four hurricanes.

And a week earlier than this, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an executive order delegating hurricane decision authority to the head of the Northern Command, Adm. Timothy J. Keating. Four days later, as the tropical storm soon to be named Katrina gathered force, Adm. Keating acted on that order.

Before the hurricane arrived in New Orleans, Adm. Keating approved the use of the bases in Meridien, Miss., and Barksdale, La., to position emergency meals and some medical equipment; eventually the number of emergency-use bases grew to six. And before landfall, Adm. Keating sent military officers to Mississippi and Louisiana to set up traditional coordination with their counterparts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As well, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered the movement of ships into the Gulf.

By the Pentagon's account, it carried out these preparations without any formal Katrina-related request from FEMA or other authorities. The personnel behind the massive military effort now on display in Louisiana--airlift evacuation, medical, supply, and the National Guard--was on alert a week before the hurricane. According to Assistant Secretary McHale, "The U.S. military has never deployed a larger, better-resourced civil support capability so rapidly in the history of our country."

So where were they on the two days of globally televised horror? Why, for instance, didn't DoD fly all this help close to New Orleans as soon as it saw Katrina coming? The answer, in military argot, is that you don't deploy troops beneath a bombing run; Katrina predictably would have wiped out any help put in her uncertain path, just as she rolled over the Big Easy's wholly unprotected "first responders."

Then there's American history, tradition and law. Once disaster arrives, several federal laws designed to protect state sovereignty from being swept aside by a Latin-American-style national police force dictate that a state's officials, specifically the governor, is supposed to phone the federal government and describe what they need. If asked by Homeland Security, DoD will send in the cavalry. But this is one audible at the line even Don Rumsfeld doesn't get to call.

And the limitation of the local/state government by Adrienne McPhail:

Once home to 500,000 people, with more than one-fourth living in poverty, New Orleans the city and Louisiana the state, failed their people long before the rains and winds of Hurricane Katrina tore through their state.

The murder rate in New Orleans is 10 times the national average. To test the response of the poor living in their numerous projects, last year researchers had police fire 700 blank rounds in a city neighborhood one afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire.

The city’s school system went broke this past year, as they were unable to pay their teachers. Meanwhile, dozens of school employees are under indictment for corruption.

Fifty-five of the state’s 78worst schools are in New Orleans. Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin was once the general manager for Cox Communications in southeast Louisiana. Prior to holding this position he had no experience in public office.

While there will be plenty of blame to go around in this tragedy, there can be no denying that the first line of defense in such disasters is the mayor, then the governor, then the federal agencies. The US Army Corps of Engineers have been building levees along the Mississippi River since the late 1800s and it was no secret in New Orleans that they were not built to withstand anything stronger than a Category 3 storm.

Battle for the Border

There is currently a combined US and Iraqi military offensive to clear the border of western Iraq with Syria. Not surprisingly there is little to no mention of it in the mainstream media. I guess in order to maintain the illusion that Iraq is Vietnam, the US military cannot be portrayed as taking any initiative for offense. Better maintain the charade that US soldiers are just hapless victims. But you can say no thanks to the MSM and reading the Fourth Rail.

Katrina

A week has passed since Katrina hit the gulf coast. Plenty has already been written on it. Some are simply ridiculous in assigning blame to W Bush and or global warming. These are pathetic and their refutations are readily available elsewhere. In addition, the contest for political control of rescue effort between local/state politicians and the federal government in Louisiana is also pathetic. Take this story about medical relief. This situation must be resolved as a similar crisis can be a result not of a natural disaster but from possible terrorism attack. Finally, with all the attention going toward human rescue, lets also remember others needs rescue as well.
General contacts can be found here including for Lousianna SPCA.
Best wishes for the victims all.

Soldier's Morality

From today's WSJ on an important but rarely discussed topic.

War Wounds
Breaking a Taboo, Army Confronts Guilt After Combat
West Point Professor Pushes Military to Talk to Troops About Battlefield Killing
A 'Blood Curdling' Sound
By GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 17, 2005; Page A1

Not long ago Maj. Peter Kilner posted on an Army-sponsored Web site a short essay he had written on the morality of killing in combat.

The topic had long fascinated the West Point philosophy and ethics professor. Outside of the pacifist movement, though, no one had shown much interest in his work on the subject. This time the response from his fellow officers surprised him.

One officer emailed him about his experience after opening fire on a car fleeing a U.S. Army roadblock in Iraq. "What I'll never forget about that engagement was listening to the family react when they saw the inside of the car and their loved one without a chest," the officer wrote. "I know what I did was right. But I'll never lose the sound of that grief-stricken family." The sound was "blood curdling," he added in a later email to a reporter.

Slowly, Maj. Kilner's writings -- which encourage officers to talk to their troops about the morality of killing in combat and the guilt that often comes with taking another's life -- have begun gathering a wide audience.

Instructors at a military-police school in Missouri have passed them around to spur discussions on the morality of killing. At the Army's school for newly minted chaplains in South Carolina, Maj. Kilner's writings are being incorporated into a new course to be offered later this year on how to counsel soldiers on the morality of war. Recently a battalion of troops from the 101st Airborne Division gathered to discuss his theories on killing prior to deploying to Iraq later this fall.

"Until recently I have never seen anyone address a group about their feelings on killing," says Maj. Kilner. "It is just impolite conversation...like asking someone have you had an abortion?"

Four years of heavy combat, however, are slowly altering the way the Army talks about this long-taboo subject. It's a shift that Maj. Kilner, along with other Army officers and military psychiatrists, say is long overdue.

Drawing from a wide body of philosophy, Maj. Kilner argues that killing is morally acceptable when the enemy poses a threat to values worth fighting for, such as life or liberty, and there are no nonlethal options to avoid the threat. Shades of the same argument have been used for centuries by rulers and soldiers to justify killing on the battlefield.

Maj. Kilner is pushing America's current crop of Army officers to help their soldiers confront the morality of killing on a personal level. Failure to address these issues in training, Maj. Kilner argues, can sometimes disable soldiers in combat, and leave them more prone to psychological traumas after the battle is finished.

"My goal is to break the taboo. Let's start talking and see what develops," Maj. Kilner says.

The U.S. military's views on how to equip soldiers to kill grew out of work by Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall during World War II. Gen. Marshall determined that fewer than 25% of U.S. riflemen in combat fired their weapons.

"Fear of killing rather than fear of being killed was the most common cause of battle failure," he wrote. Critics have since raised questions about the reliability of Gen. Marshall's data, but the premise of the report -- that many soldiers balked at pulling the trigger -- has been widely accepted.

To overcome this resistance the Army began training soldiers on lifelike pop-up targets that more closely resembled what they would see in actual combat. Soldiers repeat the same drills until their reactions become second nature.

The training has worked. By Vietnam 90% of soldiers fired their weapons. Maj. Kilner, who went to Iraq as part of a team writing the official Army history of the war, recalls interviewing a soldier in Kirkuk who had been walking a patrol when a sniper's shot grazed his uniform.

"The soldier heard the round, turned and fired two shots into the enemy sniper's chest and kept walking just like he would have on the range. His company commander was so proud," says Maj. Kilner.

Such reflexive training is good because it keeps soldiers alive, Maj. Kilner says. But it can also cause problems. "When military training has effectively undermined soldiers' moral autonomy they morally deliberate their actions only after the fact," he wrote in a 2002 article in Military Review, a U.S. Army military journal.

Soldiers who can't justify their actions will be more likely to suffer crippling guilt, nightmares and post-traumatic stress, he suggested.

To help soldiers, commanders must let soldiers who are carrying out lawful orders know that feelings of guilt after combat are natural and not "a sign of moral culpability or mental weakness," he says.

Maj. Kilner, 39 years old, became interested in killing and combat stress at a time when the Army was giving it little thought. He hasn't seen combat himself, but he served as an infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. Afterward, the Army sent him to Virginia Tech in the mid-1990s to get a graduate degree in philosophy. Looking for an area of study that would be relevant when he returned to teach at West Point, he decided to explore the moral justification for killing in combat.

He immersed himself in the philosophical literature of war. "After a few months I was a good pacifist wondering if I could continue my army career," he says. Searching for answers, he decided to conduct some research and took out a small advertisement in a U.S. Army professional journal. "If you have killed in combat and you feel justified please send me your comments. I'd like to talk with you," he wrote. The responses ran the gamut. One World War II veteran sent him page after page of Biblical verses. Some veterans sent long, detailed accounts of their own experiences with killing. He also got some "absolute hate mail," he says. A retired colonel and Vietnam veteran wrote him a two-page letter, which he still has, asking: "Who are you to say that what I did was wrong?" The passionate and fevered responses convinced him he was onto something.

He finished his graduate degree in 1998 and went to West Point a few months later. Shortly after 9/11 he penned an essay for Military Review, a U.S. Army professional journal, arguing that "soldiers deserve to understand who they can kill morally and why those actions are moral." In the essay he argued that U.S. soldiers should function as "the last line of defense for the rights of life and liberty" and are "morally obliged" to use lethal force to defend the innocent. U.S. troops must also be willing to assume additional risk to themselves and their subordinates to minimize damage to civilians.

"We must remember our calling: to risk ourselves to protect the innocent," he wrote. The essay drew little attention until the Iraq war. Soldiers began returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder rates comparable to Vietnam. In July 2004 , the New England Journal of Medicine reported that some 17% of returning Iraq veterans suffered from depression, severe anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hard evidence linking guilt from killing to post-traumatic stress is limited. One 1999 study concluded that Vietnam veterans who had killed suffered more acute post-traumatic stress symptoms than those who hadn't. The study by Rachel MacNair, a psychologist and pacifist, relied on data from the Congressionally funded National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study from the mid-1980s.

Many soldiers, though, say the connection between killing and combat stress is real. Lt. Jonathan Silk, who led a platoon of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, says that his soldiers were particularly shaken by their first and only big daylight battle. "You could see what weapons did to people. You could see bodies destroyed and torn apart," he says.

During the fight his men were cheering. Just a few hours afterward , Lt. Silk says his gunner was shaking. Another soldier "wouldn't stop talking....There was an emotional crack in his voice," he says.

He asked his commanders to send a team of mental-health counselors to talk to his troops. "My gunner was very focused on the fact that he killed a large number of enemy," Lt. Silk says. In the session with the counselors they talked through why he had to open fire.

Eighteen months later the images from the fight still linger. "I have a constant-playing video of [the battle] in my head," Lt. Silk says. The fight convinced the 36-year-old officer that he needed to talk more with his troops about killing prior to combat. Typically soldiers playing the enemy in training exercises will pop back to life immediately after they are "shot." In the future Lt. Silk says it may be useful to have the dead remain on the ground. Soldiers at the end of the battle would have to explain why they killed and why it was justified.

He also says he will talk more with his troops after combat. "It is great to see the president telling us how just our cause is...But he is not doing the killing with us. Soldiers need to hear it from their immediate leaders, and those leaders need to understand why killing is right," he says today.

Haunted by the Incident

There is no established program or training for commanders who want to talk with their soldiers about killing and its aftermath, leaving soldiers and commanders to cobble together their own solutions. The captain who emailed Maj. Kilner about his reaction to the checkpoint shooting wrote he was so haunted by the incident when he got home that he couldn't fall asleep without downing a six pack of beer.

At the time of the shooting he was overseeing a checkpoint near Fallujah when a car approached and then abruptly tried to flee. He let loose a volley of 28 rounds, tearing off the passenger's chest. "The passenger I killed had a loaded AK-47 on his lap that I didn't see when I first shot," he writes in an email.

After he returned to the U.S. he saw a mental-health counselor, which helped. So did talking to friends. "But a part of it was going to confession and believing that I was placed in the situation by a higher power who knew I made the right decision. Whether I follow these beliefs out of comfort or convenience I guess I won't know the answer until the afterlife," he recently wrote in an email from Iraq, where he is in the midst of his second year-long deployment.

He asked not to be named because he hasn't told his family about his combat experiences. "I am not sure they accept the fact that I am a combat arms officer who doesn't see the sanitized side of war," he added.

A Family's Reaction

Other soldiers say they felt sadness only after they returned to the U.S. Sgt. Darrell Borst, a 22-year-old soldier who fought in Iraq with the 1st Armored Division, wasn't bothered by his combat experience until his aunt asked him at a homecoming party if he had killed anyone. When he answered yes the room fell silent. "My family's reaction really bothered me. There was sadness in their eyes. It still bothers me today," he says. "It is like they remember you in a certain way and now you are different."

Such reactions explain why some officers are trying to figure out how to prepare soldiers before they're ever put in a position to kill. Lt. Col. Eric Conrad, a commander from the 101st Airborne Division whose soldiers recently gathered to discuss Maj. Kilner's writings, worried how his 400-soldier battalion would react to the carnage they were likely to see. None of the soldiers in his unit are front-line combat troops. Instead the unit consists of military police, intelligence soldiers, engineers, truck-drivers and communications specialists.

In a conference room at the division's home in Ft. Campbell, Ky., Capt. Jerry Moon, one of Col. Conrad's unit commanders, passed out copies of Maj. Kilner's essays to all of the officers in the battalion. The next day he asked the group of officers why it was OK to kill.

"If you don't do it over there, they will come over here and do it to your family like the World Trade Center," said Lt. James Stewart. "It is our Constitution or their radical Islam." Other officers cited the brutality with which the insurgents have killed Iraqi and Western hostages, casting them as subhuman psychopaths.

As the officers talked Capt. Moon quietly pulled out a book entitled "Offerings at the Wall," a catalog of mementoes left at the Vietnam Veteran's memorial in Washington. He flipped to a page dominated by a worn photograph of a Vietnamese soldier and his young pigtailed daughter left at the memorial by a U.S. soldier. Then he read aloud the anonymous letter that accompanied it:

"Dear Sir , for 22 years I have carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day we faced one another...Why you didn't take my life I'll never know. You stared at me so long, armed with your AK-47, and yet you did not fire. Forgive me for taking your life. So many times over the years I have stared at your picture and your daughter, I suspect. Each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt....Forgive me, Sir."

The room fell silent. Lt. Travis Thebeau, a 31-year-old intelligence officer spoke first. "We all go in with the idea that it is us or them. I don't think that will hold up for an 18- or 19-year-old kid. Maybe it holds up when he pulls the trigger. But it won't hold up 10 years down the road," he said.

Capt. Moon suggested that he and his fellow soldiers could find comfort in the knowledge that they "fight for a cause that is morally sound. We extend liberties to people," he said. But even Capt. Moon worried that was not enough. "What if public opinion swings against this war? If the American people don't see this as a just war does that making the killing harder?" he asked. The officers shrugged. Col. Conrad urged his officers to keep the discussion going with their soldiers.

"If you raise the subject here your soldiers are going to know they can come back to you later," he suggested.

Perhaps the importance of this topic is not the topic itself, but that the topic be discussed by those most intimate with it.

the fantastic four

No, not a movie review. From the Times UK:

A Sunday Times reporter spent two months as a recruit inside the Saviour Sect to reveal for the first time how the extremist group promotes hatred of “non-believers” and encourages its followers to commit acts of violence including suicide bombings.

The reporter witnessed one of the sect’s leading figures, Sheikh Omar Brooks, telling a young audience, including children, that it was the duty of Muslims to be terrorists and boasting, just days before the July 7 attacks, that he wanted to die as a suicide bomber.

After the attacks that claimed 52 lives, another key figure, Zachariah, justified them by saying that the victims were not “innocent” people because they did not abide by strict Islamic laws. In the immediate aftermath the sect’s leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said: “For the past 48 hours I’m very happy.” Two weeks later he referred to the bombers as the “fantastic four”.

. . .

Speaking to a group of teenagers and families, he declared it was imperative for Muslims to “instil terror into the hearts of the kuffar” and added: “I am a terrorist. As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist.”

Ofcourse Blair is correct that such people should be deported. It would be ridiculous to protect the rights of those who seek to destroy you. Read it all. (HT LGF)

Embers in the East and "no mas" from Africa

Two items of note of late.
Firstly the brewing tension between democratic Poland and authoritarian Belarus by Kamil Tchorek.

MINSK -- While western Europe focuses on terrorism in London, the terror state of Belarus, dominated by dictator Alexander Lukashenko, is treated in the tradition of Neville Chamberlain's "faraway country of which we know little."

This is a mistake. Aside from the close though little-known historical and cultural ties that the West has with Belarus -- Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a leading figure in the American Revolution and an early advocate of democracy and emancipation, was born and bred in these parts -- the Moscow-backed regime in Minsk poses a security risk to Europe.

Two years ago Saddam Hussein's closest aide, Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti, was captured carrying Belarus passports for himself and Saddam's notorious sons. After a recent state visit from Tehran, the flag of Iran has been left to decorate the main thoroughfare in Minsk. Mr. Lukashenko is arming himself with cutting-edge Sukoyev Su-30s.


Last week, in a chilling echo of the Balkan conflict, Belarus special forces stormed buildings used by the nearly 500,000 strong ethnic Polish community -- some of whom live in the village of Kosciuszko's birth. The woman who leads the Union of Poles, Andzelika Borys, yesterday was questioned by police; her deputy and four other Union activists are in prison. Minsk is trying to replace her with a quisling. In protest, Warsaw last week withdrew its ambassador from Minsk.

Poland, Belarus' western neighbor and the EU's largest new member, is taking a far tougher line with Mr. Lukashenko than much of Europe. Poland has provided refuge for Belarusian émigrés who support the democracy movement, and has allowed the Belarusian opposition to use Warsaw as a place to work with Western NGOs and diplomats, assemble and speak freely without fear of reprisal.

This policy is buoyed by American legislation. Washington's Belarus Democracy Act 2004 grants financial backing to promote human rights and democratic development in Belarus. But as evidenced by a letter from the Polish foreign ministry to European leaders last month, at the start of the crisis, Poland is having to work to get the EU to follow suit.

In private, some EU diplomats emphasize that it is important not to antagonize Russia, an ally of Belarus, and dismissively claim that Poland has an interest in raising its profile through conflict.

But Poland's Eastern policy is set to get tougher still. After elections next month, Poland's ruling ex-communists are likely to be replaced by the conservative opposition. When I recently interviewed a leading candidate for prime minister, Jan Rokita, he spoke of foreign policy in positively neoconservative terms. "This now ends the period of mild politics," he said of the crackdown on the Polish minority. "Ours will be a simple message: Lukashenko must go. I will do all I can to help the Belarus opposition and I will want the EU to engage rather than look the other way."

On Monday, Mr. Rokita's colleague and presidential candidate Donald Tusk crossed into Belarus to show the Polish community there that they aren't alone. Since then, Belarusian Poles who met with Mr. Tusk have been jailed, and one of the prisoners, Andrzej Pisalnik, who edits the Polish-language newspaper, has responded by going on hunger strike.

Meanwhile, also on Monday, an emerging opposition leader, Alexander Milinkevitch was in Poland. "This is not an ethnic minority problem," Mr. Milinkevitch told me. "This is a civil rights problem for all Belarusian people from whatever background. Lukashenko is destroying civic society and we've got to stop him."

Mr. Milinkevitch believes that there is a European tendency to consign the current crisis between Warsaw and Minsk to the realm of bilateral relations. To continue to believe this, he argues, would play into Mr. Lukashenko's hands. His immediate wish is for Europe to rally round Poland in support of democracy in Belarus.

The shared vision of Jan Rokita and Alexander Milinkevitch is rooted in history. From the sixteenth century, Belarus was united with Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland in a state known as the "Rzeczpospolita Polska," or Polish Commonwealth. Much like in the United Kingdom or the U.S., citizens could belong to any or several cultural groups but swear allegiance to one state.

In such traditions tolerance is born. It is no coincidence that European Jews, Armenians and Protestants thrived in the Rzeczpospolita when they were hounded elsewhere. The Rzeczpospolita also produced Europe's first written constitution, which was defended militarily by Kosciuszko, who was born in Belarus of Lithuanian stock, spoke Polish, and was awarded American citizenship.

It is also unsurprising that the Czarist and Soviet empires attempted to rub out this history. "Until perestroika I thought I was Russian, and a minor Russian at that," commented Mr. Milinkevitch. "All my life, like everyone in Belarus and Ukraine, I'd been told that Russian history was our history, and that we didn't have our own. Now that we have learnt about ourselves, we want change."

As a means of coercion, President Lukashenko is doing everything to russify the nation and make sure the historical links with Poland aren't restored. He has changed the national flag from the medieval red and white Belarusian banner it was in the 1990s to a near copy of the Soviet era symbol. He has closed Jewish, Polish and Belarusian schools and established Russian replacements. For years he has touted plans to reunify with Russia, though they've never gone far.

Europe can stand by and watch Belarus, a European country, plunge into a totalitarian abyss. Or it can recognize and support the immense effort of so many Belarusians to become a democracy.

Unfortunately, I am skeptical the EU will do much. I first noticed the item at Chrenkoff on July 30th.

Second item is regarding the futility of aide to corrupt government with the delusional hope that somehow their poor and destitute constituents would benefit. Interview at Spiegel

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

In addition, there are two must read items from Belmont Club.

Islamofascism: First they came for the Jews

By Victor David Hanson:

First the terrorists of the Middle East went after the Israelis. From 1967 we witnessed 40 years of bombers, child murdering, airline hijacking, suicide murdering, and gratuitous shooting. We in the West usually cried crocodile tears, and then came up with all sorts of reasons to allow such Middle Eastern killers a pass.

...

Read it all. Good parallel.

WoT: Complaints and Rebuttals

Nicely reviewed by victor Davis Hanson
The popular complaints:

Either we were unfairly tilting toward Israel, or had been unkind to Muslims. Perhaps, as Sen. Patty Murray intoned, we needed to match the good works of bin Laden to capture the hearts and minds of Muslim peoples.

The fable continues that the United States itself was united after the attack even during its preparations to retaliate in Afghanistan. But then George Bush took his eye off the ball. He let bin Laden escape, and worst of all, unilaterally and preemptively, went into secular Iraq — an unnecessary war for oil, hegemony, Israel, or Halliburton, something in Ted Kennedy's words "cooked up in Texas."

In any case, there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.

That tale goes on. The Iraqi fiasco is now a hopeless quagmire. The terrorists are paying us back for it in places like London and Madrid.

Still worse, here at home we have lost many of our civil liberties to the Patriot Act and forsaken our values at Guantanamo Bay under the pretext of war. Nancy Pelosi could not understand the continued detentions in Guantanamo since the war in Afghanistan is in her eyes completely finished.

In this fable, we are not safer as a nation. George Bush's policies have increased the terror threat as we saw recently in the London bombing. We have now been at war longer than World War II. We still have no plan to defeat our enemies, and thus must set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq.

Islamic terrorism cannot be defeated militarily nor can democracy be "implanted by force." So it is time to return to seeing the terrorist killing as a criminal justice matter -- a tolerable nuisance addressed by writs and indictments, while we give more money to the Middle East and begin paying attention to the "root causes" of terror.

The factual responses:

Prior to 9/11, the United States had given an aggregate of over $50 billion to Egypt, and had allotted about the same amount of aid to Israel as to its frontline enemies. We had helped to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and received little if any thanks for bombing Christian Europeans to finish in a matter of weeks what all the crack-pot jihadists had not done by flocking to the Balkans in a decade.

Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, bin Laden declared war on America in 1998, citing the U.N. embargo of Iraq and troops in Saudi Arabia; when those were no longer issues, he did not cease, but continued his murdering. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for Western values, even though he was eaten within by uncontrolled envy and felt empowered by years of appeasement after a series of attacks on our embassies, bases, ships, and buildings, both here and abroad.

Iraqi intelligence was involved with the first World Trade Center bombing, and its operatives met on occasion with those who were involved in al Qaeda operations. Every terrorist from Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal to Abdul Yasin and Abu al-Zarqawi found Baghdad the most hospitable place in the Middle East, which explains why a plan to assassinate George Bush Sr. was hatched from such a miasma.

Neither bin Laden nor his lieutenants are poor, but like the Hamas suicide bombers, Mohammed Atta, or the murderer of Daniel Pearl they are usually middle class and educated -- and are more likely to hate the West, it seems, the more they wanted to be part of it. The profile of the London bombers, when known, will prove the same.

The poor in South America or Africa are not murdering civilians in North America or Europe. The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.

There was only unity in this country between September 11 and October 6, when a large minority of Americans felt our victim status gave us for a golden moment the high ground. We forget now the furor over hitting back in Afghanistan -- a quagmire in the words of New York Times columnists R. W. Apple and Maureen Dowd; a "terrorist campaign" against Muslims according to Representative Cynthia McKinney; "a silent genocide" in Noam Chomsky's ranting.

Two thirds of al Qaeda's command is now captured or dead; bases in Afghanistan are lost. Saddam's intelligence will not be lending expertise to anyone and the Baghdad government won't welcome in terrorist masterminds.

In fact, thousands of brave Iraqi Muslims are now in a shooting war with wahhabi jihadists who, despite their carnage, are dying in droves as they flock to the Iraq.

A constitution is in place in Iraq; reform is spreading to Lebanon, the Gulf, and Egypt; and autocracies in Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Pakistan are apprehensive over a strange new American democratic zeal. Petroleum was returned to control of the Iraqi people, and the price has skyrocketed to the chagrin of American corporations.

There has been no repeat of September 11 so far. Killing jihadists abroad while arresting their sympathizers here at home has made it hard to replicate another 9/11-like attack.

The Patriot Act was far less intrusive than what Abraham Lincoln (suspension of habeas corpus), Woodrow Wilson (cf. the Espionage and Sedition Acts), or Franklin Roosevelt (forced internment) resorted to during past wars. So far America has suffered in Iraq .006 percent of the combat dead it lost in World War II, while not facing a conventional enemy against which it might turn its traditional technological and logistical advantages.

Unlike Gulf War I and the decade-long Iraqi cold war of embargos, stand-off bombing, and no-fly-zones, the United States has a comprehensive strategy both in the war against terror and to end a decade and a half of Iraqi strife: Kill terrorists abroad, depose theocratic and autocratic regimes that have either warred with the United States or harbored terrorists, and promote democracy to take away grievances that can be manipulated and turned against us.

Do read it all.

Community vs Individuals

For a healthy and vibrant society to grow, individual rights must be safeguarded. This includes the right to anonymity. But an individual’s rights must not exceed that of the community good and cannot transcend the law.
With regard to the Plame flame games, a law may have been violated, and trust in the government is questioned. The reporters must yield their anonymous sources.

For a healthy and vibrant society to grow, individual rights must be safeguarded. This includes the right to property. The community cannot trample on this right in the name of common good. There can be no common good when individuals are not secure of their possession.
With regard to the recent Kelo ruling by the Supreme Court, it was a travesty. This ruling needs to be revised.

London

W in the Times

I've never thought Bush an eloquent speaker. In fact i frequently laugh during his speeches because it sounded funny for some reason. But then i read this interview published in the British Times (HT New Sisyphus).

THE TIMES: Mr President, last night you mentioned the link between Iraq and 9/11, but there's evidence of Iraq becoming a haven for jihadists, there's been a CIA report which says that Iraq is in danger of... are you at risk of creating kind of more of the problems that actually led directly to...?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No. Quite the contrary. Where you win the war on terror is go to the battlefield and you take them off. And that's what they've done. They've said, Look, let's go fight. This is the place. And that was my point. My point is that there is an ideology of hatred, an ideology that's got a vision of a world where the extremists dictate the lives, dictate to millions of Muslims. They do want to topple governments in the Middle East. They do want us to withdraw. They're interested in exporting violence. After all, look at what happened after September 11 (2001). One way for your readers to understand what their vision is is to think about what life was like under the Taleban in Afghanistan.

So we made a decision to protect ourselves and remove Saddam Hussein. The jihadists made a decision to come into Iraq to fight us. For a reason. They know that if we're successful in Iraq, like we were in Afghanistan, that it'll be a serious blow to their ideology. General (John) Abizaid (Commander of US forces in the Middle East) told me something very early in this campaign I thought was very interesting. Very capable man. He's a Arab-American who I find to be a man of great depth and understanding. When we win in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's a beginning of the end. Talking about the war on terror. If we don't win here, it's the beginning of the beginning. And that's how I view it.

We learnt first-hand the nature of the war on terror on September 11. And last time I went to Europe I said many in Europe viewed September 11 as a tragic moment, but a moment. I view September 11 as an attack as a result of a larger war that changed how I view the world and how many other Americans view the world. It was one of the moments in history that changed outlook. So as long as I'm sitting here in this Oval Office, I will never forget the lessons of September 11, and that is that we are in a global war against cold-blooded killers.

And you are seeing that now being played out in Iraq, and we're going to win in Iraq and we're going to win because, one, we're going to find (Osama bin Laden) and bring him to justice, and two, we're going to train Iraqis so they can do the fighting. Iraqis don't want foreign fighters in their country, stopping the progress toward freedom. And the notion that people want to be free was validated by the over eight million people who voted.

Frankly, I rejected the intellectual elitism of some around the world who say, "Well, maybe certain people can't be free". I don't believe that. Of course I was labelled a, you know, blatant idealist.

But I am. Because I do believe people want to be free, regardless of their religion or where they are from. I do believe women should be empowered in the Middle East. I don't believe we ought to accept forms of government that ultimately create a hopelessness that then can be translated into jihadist violence. And I believe strongly that the ultimate way you defeat an ideology is with a better ideology. And history has proven that. Anyway, you got me going. Starting to give the whole speech again.

What struck me, now that i think about it, is that he really does believe what he says. Unlike so many post-modernists (in the aftermath of WW2) who believes that human actions can only cause harm, thus it would be better to suffer (especially better if someone elses does the suffering). W still believes that human actions can do substantial good for humanity. In fact, i now wonder if the reason i find W speechs so goofy at times is because he is almost naive about his faith in humanity. Stark in a world so cynical and crass. Which makes me glad for smiling and laughing at his speech. It is a good thing. I like the W.

Independence Day

For those whose service have been rendered
Glad you have returned

within arms of wives and husbands
surrounded by family and friends
in restful eternal remembrances

For those still rendering service
We await your welcomed return

to safe harbors you have created
on the city you have made bright
in the brotherhood of men further forged

For those who await your time to serve
The opportunity awaits only your will

all will be received greater than given
as free individuals united in humanity
interdependent on Independent day.

Responsibility

and consequences being discussed at Neo-Neocon.

History Repeating

From Wikipedia:

Mamluks (also Mameluks, Mamelukes) (the Arabic word usually translates as "owned", singular: مملوك plural: مماليك) comprised slave soldiers used by the Muslim caliphs and the Ottoman Empire, and who on more than one occasion seized power for themselves.

The first Mamluks worked for Abbasid caliphs in 9th century Baghdad. The Abbasids recruited them from enslaved non-Muslim families captured in areas including modern Turkey, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. Using non-Muslims as soldiers helped partially overcome Islamic prohibitions on Muslims fighting each other. The rulers also desired troops with no link to the established power structure. The local warriors were often more loyal to their tribal sheiks, their families or nobles other than the sultan or caliph. If some commander conspired against the ruler, it was often not possible to deal with him without causing unrest among the nobility. The slave-troops were strangers of the lowest possible status who could not conspire against the ruler and who could easily be punished if they caused trouble.

and from the latest news watching in the WSJ:

There are many ways to interpret the surprise victory of Mahmoud Ahamadinejad, who becomes the sixth president of the Islamic Republic. But one thing is certain: It marks a shift of power within the Khomeinist regime from the mullahs to the military. This is the first time that a mullah, in this case the most prominent of all political mullahs, has been defeated by a virtually unknown nonmullah in a high-profile election.

The defeat of the mullahs is illustrated by other facts as well. All the self-styled grand ayatollahs of Qom endorsed Mr. Rafsanjani, as did both rival wings of the Society of Combatant Clergy. This vast coalition, ranging from Mossadeqists to Tudeh Communists and so-called "religious nationalists" that had helped Khomeini to power in 1979, also campaigned for Mr. Rafsanjani.

Mr. Ahamadinejad exploited the antimullah feeling without any qualms. He spoke of "16 years of decline, despotism and theft." And no one needed reminding that in those 16 years Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been the "Supreme Guide" while two mullahs, Mr. Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, had held the presidency for eight years each.

Mr. Ahamadinejad's victory marks the ascendancy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the half-dozen paramilitary organizations related to it. A regime whose elite has been discredited as a result of years of misrule is forced to bring its military to the fore to meet the political challenges ahead.

What is happening in Iran today has numerous precedents in Islamic history. Many regimes based on religion ended up making a Faustian pact with their military for protection against the people. And in every case the military, once in power, eliminated its masters. Islamic history knows such military rulers as the "mamelukes" -- literally, "the owned ones," individuals who were supposed to serve the caliph but ended up chopping off his head and seizing power for themselves.

There is no doubt that Mr. Ahamadinejad, and beyond him the military elite of the regime, owe their victory to Ayatollah Khamenei, who broke with his fellow mullahs to help the military win the struggle within the regime. Theoretically, Ayatollah Khamenei now controls all the levers of power in the establishment. In reality, however, he is a lone mullah who will be increasingly opposed by the clergy for different reasons. At the same time, because he lacks a popular base of his own, he will in time become a hostage to the new "mamelukes" symbolized by Mr. Ahamadinejad.

The victory of the new mamelukes has not come out of the blue. They have been capturing positions of power at the expense of the mullahs for many years. Right now, 22 of the 30 governors of provinces are new mamelukes. In the Islamic Consultative Majlis, or parliament, the new mamelukes outnumber the mullahs 130 to 63, out of a total of 290 seats. The new mamelukes are also strongly represented in the Islamic Republic's diplomatic service, controlling more than half of Iran's embassies in key capitals such as Kabul, Baghdad and Beijing.

History Lessons

One is a failure to learn,

When Ronald Reagan delivered his 1989 farewell address to the nation, he noted there was "a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells," and he would make no exception. He told his audience that the "one that's been on my mind for some time" was that the country was failing to adequately teach our children the American story and what it represents in the history of the world. "We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important," he said. "If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit."

The other is a failure to remember.

A partial replica of the Berlin Wall at the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing must be torn down, along with 1,065 crosses commemorating people who were killed trying to escape former communist East Germany, a court ruled Friday.The head of a private group that put up the memorial at the former east-west crossing in downtown Berlin said she would appeal.

Spain's Reign

This is the most sad thing i've read in a long while from Spain.

Bono: Eliminate "war" from Spanish constitution
Defense minister Jose Bono yesterday backed the possibility of removing the three references to the word "war" from the Spanish constitution before Parliament's defense committee. The first reference, in article 15, says, "The death penalty is abolished except under military law during wartime." Bono said that this question is already dealt with in the military criminal code. The second reference is in article 63.3; it reads, "The King has power, under previous authorization from the Cortes (both houses of Parliament), to declare war and make peace." Bono's reply was that since Spain belongs to the United Nations, the King cannot declare war and the Cortes cannot authorize it. According to the UN, "resorting to war to resolve conflicts is prohibited." Bono emphasized that "this has more to do with literature than legality." He also mentioned the UN and the San Francisco charter when he referred to article 169, which states, "Constitutional reform cannot be initiated during wartime." Bono supported these modifications by declaring, "What is not useful and besides is against international law, it might be a good idea for us to modify. This is only my opinion, and it might be overruled." This particular proposal is not part of those suggested in the plan to modify the constitution sent by the Council of State to the administration.

HT to Barcepundit

Media Reports ... take 2

... but does not listen to its own words. From VDH

In a single day last week, in various media — the liberal International Herald Tribune and the Washington Post — the following information appeared.

A Syrian smuggler of jihadists to Iraq, one Abu Ibrahim, was interviewed. He made the following revealing statements:

(1) that the goal of the jihadists is the restoration of the ancient caliphate ("The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world")

(2) that September 11 was "a great day"

(3) that two weeks after the attack, a celebration was held in his rural Syrian community celebrating the mass murder, and thereafter continued twice-weekly

(4) that Syrian officials attended such festivities, funded by Saudi money with public slogans that read, "The People ...Will Now Defeat the Jews and Kill Them All"

(5) that despite denials, Syrian police aided the jihadists in their efforts to hound out Western influence: They were allowed to enforce their strict vision of sharia, or Islamic law, entering houses in the middle of the night to confront people accused of bad behavior. Abu Ibrahim said their authority rivaled that of the Amn Dawla, or state security. "Everyone knew us," he said. "We all had big beards. We became thugs."

(6) that the Syrian government does not hesitate to work with Islamists ("beards and epaulets were in one trench together")

(7) that collateral damage was not always so collateral: "Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants," Abu Ibrahim said. "But actually, they were fighters."

(8) That once Syria felt U.S. pressure, there was some temporary cosmetic change of heart: "The security agents said the smuggling of fighters had to stop. The jihadists' passports were taken. Some were jailed for a few days. Abu Ibrahim's jailers shaved his beard."

(9) that supporters in Saudi Arabia always played a key role: "Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis. The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals. There was celebration amongst his brothers there!"

Media Reports ...

That the media in the US is biased is evidence by as much as what is reported as what is not reported.
Selection bias as noted by Daniel Henninger

Precisely what conclusion is one expected to arrive at from any of this? If George Bush had never invaded Iraq, none of this would be happening? Or, if we removed our troops from Iraq, these bombings would stop? Or perhaps they will still be bombed, but we in the U.S. will not likely experience anything very bad?
If we removed our troops from Iraq, the terror would not stop. But the U.S. news of innocent civilians blown up in Iraq would move to the unread round-up columns. Then, in a way, the phenomenon of terror would indeed shrink--to this:

December 2004: A powerful explosion ripped through a market packed with Christmas shoppers in the southern Philippines yesterday, killing at least 15 people and injuring 58.

According to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (established after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing), there have been about 8,300 terrorist bombings in the world the past 10 years. They have killed more than 10,000 human beings and injured--often appallingly, one assumes--some 43,000 people. (There are separate tallies for arson, kidnapping, hijacking, etc. September 11 is listed as an "unconventional attack.")

May 3, 2002: A bomb attack on a church in western Colombia has left at least 60 civilians dead and about 100 others injured. Officials are blaming FARC guerrillas for the bombing.

Before September 11 happened in the United States, and ever since, factions with grievances have been blowing up unprotected people going about the act of daily life--shopping, praying, taking their children to school, laughing with friends, burying the dead--all over the world. Places where the sudden cloudbursts of blood don't always merit our front pages include Spain, Colombia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Russia, Afghanistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere.

July 7, 2004: At least five people were killed and 11 wounded when a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up inside a police station in the Sri Lankan capital.

Living in the U.S., one could make the cold-blooded calculation that 21,000 dead and 55,000 injured from all terrorist acts over 10 years is a drop in the bucket and that the war in Iraq has mainly increased the rate of death. This may be true. But if as many suicide bombs went off in Manhattan as have gone off in Israel, Manhattanites would have demanded martial law and the summary execution of suspects on street corners. Their greatest goal in life would not be, as it is now, the closing of interrogation rooms on Guantanamo but instead the erasure of terrorists hiding across the East River.

Feb. 9, 2005: A car bomb exploded near Madrid's main convention center, injuring 43 people, hours before Spanish and Mexican leaders were due there and after a warning from the Basque separatist group ETA. It was the worst blast in the Spanish capital since last year's March 11 al Qaeda train bombings.

No matter how fat the diet of stories about Iraq suicide bombings or Gitmo shoved down our throats and no matter how many distraught opinion-poll results come back up, no serious person can allow post-9/11 American security to be reduced to that.

The death march of homicidal zombies in Iraq is trying to push us toward accepting the idea that acts of unrestrained violence against other human beings is now a normal part of politics. It is not normal. Any civilized person should want to resist the normalization of civilian killing as a political act--whether in Iraq, Spain, Indonesia or Kashmir.

That terrorism in Iraq makes the headline while terrorism elsewhere makes the footnotes. The agenda is that terrorism in Iraq is a direct consequence of our invasion and continued presence, and the implied solution is for withdrawal. Both are foolish and dangerous.
But elsewhere media reports can also do some good as evidenced by this report in the WSJ

For those in the West who watched the horrors of the Balkan wars in real time on TV, it might be hard to believe that it took 10 years to convince the Serbian public of the atrocities committed by some of their countrymen.

But until just a couple of weeks ago, many Serbs, who during the war had been fed a barrage of lies and propaganda, were in a state of denial. War criminals were often seen as patriots and defenders of Serbian civilians rather than as the killers of Bosnian or Croat civilians they were. As recently as May, an opinion poll showed that more than half of the population didn't believe that, in 1995, Serb forces committed in Srebrenica the worst massacre in Europe since the end of World War II, killing 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

But on June 1, the revisionist myth of a heroic and just war received a deadly blow. On this day, Serbian TV channels repeatedly broadcast a video of Serbian forces from the special "Scorpions" unit who answered directly to Belgrade murdering six Bosnian Muslim youths near Srebrenica. The footage was aired unedited, showing how the killers first taunted their victims, staging mock executions only to shoot them later anyway one by one.

The video has changed the terms of debate about the war in Serbia. Particularly heartening was the reaction of the political leaders. President Boris Tadic appeared on national television, visibly shaken, saying Serbia was stunned by "a monstrous crime." He told his countrymen that he was ready "to go to Srebrenica to pay tribute." Even the leader of the ultra-nationalist Serb Radical Party called for stiff punishment of those who "committed horrible crimes and killed in cold blood."

The speaker of the Serbian parliament, Predrag Markovic, announced that he would push for a "resolution on Srebrenica" to condemn the massacre ahead of its 10th anniversary July 11. He had previously rejected such calls. And last weekend an unprecedented conference took place in Belgrade, titled "Srebrenica: Beyond Reasonable Doubt," where relatives of the victims addressed the conference delegates.

I think of the pictures of abuses from Abu Graeb in comparison and the pathetic status of our media makes me sad.

Iran Vote ... or vote

I've never been a fan of election boycott because you relegate your faction into silence and invisibility. Most election process do not care whether enough have voted, just that there is a majority of the votes cast. Besides, when you participate, you are seen and heard, and even in defeat, presents papable opposition.
From EurasiaNet

Many observers in Tehran believe the odds-on favorite to win the election is Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose support, according to recent polling data, stands at just under 30 percent. His closest rival among the seven candidates still in the running is now Moin, a former education minister under outgoing president Mohammad Khatami. Moin’s support has experienced a dramatic rise over the past week, leaping from 10 percent to roughly 16 percent, according to some polls. At the same time, the candidacies of hardliners - including Tehran Mayor Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the former head of national police force – have remained steady.

Political analysts in Tehran say a run-off between the two top vote-getters on June 17 is likely. Iranian election law states that a presidential candidate must receive at least 50 percent of the vote in the first round in order to avoid a run-off. It had long been assumed by most Iranian political observers that Rafsanjani would face a conservative candidate in the second round, provided a run-off was necessary. However, several factors altered conventional wisdom as the campaign drew to a close. First, infighting within the conservative camp prevented the nomination of a single hardliner candidate. Thus, the conservative vote stands to be diluted among three candidates who are all considered the standard-bearers of the old order. Meanwhile, Moin has waged a campaign that has energized reform-minded citizens and has attracted support from ethnic and religious minorities, including Kurds, Arabs and Sunni Muslims.

Some analysts say a Rafsanjani-Qalibaf run-off remains a strong possibility. But Moin’s name is increasingly mentioned as a second-round contender against Rafsanjani. Though the front-runner at present, Rafsanjani might face a stronger challenge from Moin in a possible run-off, some experts believe. In recent elections, including municipal polls in 2003 and the parliamentary vote last year, reform-minded voters stayed away from the polls in large numbers. Voter apathy was generated by the inability of Khatami’s reformist administration to implement its agenda, experts say. Heavy reformist turn-out in the presidential vote could potentially enable Moin to pull off an upset. The reformist daily Etemad characterized the election as "one of the most unpredictable in the history of the Islamic republic."

According to some estimates roughly 30 percent of Iran’s 46.7 million eligible voters are undecided. A large majority of the undecided voters are believed to be reform sympathizers, many of whom would be inclined to cast ballots for Moin. The essential question is: how many undecideds will actually turn out to vote?

According to various media reports, conservative groups, alarmed by the flat support for the hardliner candidates, are taking steps to keep the reform vote low on election day. For example, the country’s conservative-leaning security establishment has stopped jamming opposition broadcasts into Iran from the United States and Europe, according to the web site of Moshen Rezai, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards and a current contender for president. Such foreign broadcasts have encouraged Iranians to boycott the election.

In addition, several published reports have also claimed that members of the hardliner-controlled Basij militia will be posted at selected polling stations across the country, a move that could possibly intimidate many voters. Meanwhile, the conservative-controlled Guardian Council, an unelected religious oversight body that is charged with vetting political candidates, has issued a statement asserting its right to disqualify a contender up to the moment official results are released.

Whatever the outcome, the presidential campaign appears to have changed the course of politics in Iran. Most candidates downplayed the country’s Islamic identity. Instead, the candidates, Rafsanjani and Moin in particular, focused their respective campaigns on addressing the socio-economic and cultural needs of voters. Instead of fighting for the endorsements of clergy members, all presidential candidates also seemed preoccupied with securing the support of Iranian young people. Roughly 70 percent of Iran’s population is under 30 years of age.

Moin and Rafsanjani were the only two who appeared to make inroads among young voters, Tehran experts said. Rafsanjani, for example, scored points for sponsoring a week-long music festival in Tehran, and for hiring young secular-looking women with scant veils as campaign workers.

Iran Vote ... or not.

There is more to a democracy than a vote.

'May God Be Our Guide!'
By AYATOLLAH MEHDI and HAERI KHORSHIDI
June 16, 2005

Muslims must understand that participation in Friday's presidential election in Iran is haram, that is, it is unclean according to religious principles and reasonable logic. Therefore it is forbidden to participate.

Whoever would participate in this process would be a full partner in the destruction of Iran by the current regime, a partner in its criminal behavior in the past, in the present and in the future. I am speaking not only on behalf of myself, but on behalf of the thousands of Muslim clerics who are imprisoned for defying the assertion that the state and religion should be under the control of a single Supreme Leader.

What I am saying is exactly what many other ayatollahs and grand ayatollahs are saying.

May God be our guide!

* * *

The coming election is nothing but a show for cheating the people of Iran, and for making propaganda with other Muslim nations. I am asking the people not to go out of their houses on election day, and to boycott the polls. In the U.S., any candidate is given the chance to go before the people and tell them what he proposes to do in office. But in Iran, such debate does not seem to be necessary, since, long before the election, the government already knows who would win.

The Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Khamanei and the Guardian Council -- composed of 12 of his cronies -- have already rejected most candidates that they don't consider acceptable, and have designated their favorites. If by chance someone not designated a favorite should win, the Guardians can set aside the election of the unfortunate winner.

There are three reasons why this process is contrary to Islamic principles.

The first is this: If the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council declare that the people are not capable of deciding which candidates are good for the country, why should the people be allowed to vote at all? If they are not capable of distinguishing between good and bad, they should not be allowed to put a ballot in the box. Voting itself is not important to the regime, since the result is predetermined, but the presence of large numbers of people in the voting places is important to convince the world that democracy is functioning.

The second reason not to go to the polls is that the regime has no respect for the opinion of the people. What the regime is saying is that the more people in line to vote, the more successful the election will appear to be. They think that the public will interpret a big turnout as support for the regime, without reflecting on the years of intimidation and terror.

Third, the people are being treated like children. In the law of Islam, the actions of a minor, that is, a person under 18, are not recognized as valid until they are authorized by a father or guardian. But persons of voting age are treated the same way. When the public votes, it is true that they cast a ballot; but the results are of no significance unless they are validated by the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council after the election. If they see that someone has been elected who was not approved beforehand then their votes are not counted. Therefore, it is the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council that elects the members of the legislature, not the people.

If people go out and vote, they are ratifying a criminal process carried out by a so-called Islamic Republic, which does not follow the principles of Islam at all. There is nothing in the Quran that allows the clergy to be involved in government. By voting, the people would legitimize the slaughter of our youth, the destruction of our culture and economy, the murders of innocent citizens, and the tragedy of Iran today. This kind of election is a betrayal of Islam -- for Islam has to do with truth and honesty, not deceit. If the people accept the process which this regime has enacted, it is the same as saying that they are going along with a system that smells of the devil rather than of the will of God.

We human beings are made in the image of God, so we do know the difference between right and wrong without being guided by clerics who have usurped power. The right thing is not to become a participant in elections that are an insult to all the principles of the Quran and to all humanity.

Ayatollah Haeri is the son of Ayatollah Abdollah Ali Haeri and grandson of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Saleh. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he became a critic of the Khomeini regime. Arrested, beaten and tortured, he was jailed for three years, then sent into internal exile. He escaped to Germany, where he now lives. He is currently visiting the U.S.

WSJ
Readers may have noticed my link in support of "Real Democracy in Iran"

Metrosexual Stateman

From the UK Times comes this gem that left me in grins.

“A SINGLE VERSE by Rimbaud,” writes Dominique de Villepin, the new French Prime Minister, “shines like a powder trail on a day’s horizon. It sets it ablaze all at once, explodes all limits, draws the eyes to other heavens.” Here is a rather different observation, uttered by George Bush Sr in 1998, that might stand as a motto for his dynasty: “I can’t do poetry.”
In that gulf of sensibility lies the cultural faultline of our times. For George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld words are blunt instruments, used to convey meaning, not feeling. Actions speak louder. The President of France, by contrast, rocked by the rejection of the EU constitution, has attempted to shore up his Government by appointing a poet as his Prime Minister, a patrician intellectual in the French romantic mould, a true believer in the transcendental and redemptive power of words.
These are the polar extremes of poetry, Rimbaud in one corner and Rambo in the other: the French patron saint of sensitive, tortured adolescents alongside the monosyllabic American action man.

...

To the Anglo-Saxon mind there is something dodgy, even dangerous, in the man who rules the world by day and writes verses by night. As W.H. Auden wrote: “All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornados, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.” Indeed, the precedents are not happy ones, for there is a peculiar link between frustrated poetic ambition and tyranny: Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin, Castro, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh all wrote poetry. Radovan Karadzic, fugitive former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, once won the Russian Writers’ Union Mikhail Sholokhov Prize for his poems. On the whole, you do not want a poet at the helm.
Yet in France, proof of a refined literary consciousness is a prerequisite of high office, and the virtue that eclipses sin. When François Mitterrand died, French commentators touched only briefly on such aspects of his career as wartime collaboration, cynical political opportunism and obsessive adultery, while devoting acres of print to his love of books and remarkable literary output. Every French politician is expected to produce a trophy bouquin. Before writing the ailing EU constitution, former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing penned sensitive novels.

Memorial Day

A pause for those fallen to preserve the Nation.

Honoring the fallen.

I frequent political discussions on blogs and forums. A frequently asked questions, typically by Europeans, is "what is Patriotism?" My response:

Patriotism is a commitment to the nation-state of which you are a member of, to continue the works others have done to create and improve it. This sometimes means dying to preserve it. This sometime means criticizing it. There is an order of priority: firstly preservation, secondly improvement. As it entails both commitment and work toward a better state, it would be a wasted effort if you do not feel proud of your commitment and work. And as a corollary, be appreciative of the contribution by others toward the same goal.

Fair and Balanced

Roger L Simon of Pajama Media asks

So here I am blogging... in my pajamas, of course... at five-thirty on Friday morning before Memorial Day weekend when any sane person would be dead to the world. But Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, once wrote to take insomnia or sleep loss as opportunity to get more done, so I'm going to take a whack at it.

And since I am in my (now proverbial) pajamas, I am going to open up a can of worms on here... [Careful, bud.-ed.]... about Pajamas Media. A commenter the other day asked if we were going to be "fair and balanced." At first I took umbrage. We've barely announced our existence, haven't officially begun, haven't even had a chance to have a full-fledged meeting of our editorial board that is spread out all the way from Knoxville to Sydney and some bozo's asking if we're "fair and balanced"?!

But in truth it's a great question and we've been wrestling with it ever since we conceived the idea of starting the company. And with nearly 400 blogs already signed up and thousands more (we hope) to come, we ought to have some answers, at least tentative ones. Trouble is - it's not so simple. Many established media companies across the political spectrum have asserted they were "fair and balanced" or something similar only to get pie in the face, figuratively and literally. And is "fair and balanced" even possible from a human endeavor?

Of course, in practice, we have been reaching out in all directions - in terms of ideology and blog subject - with some success. The effort is continuing. And, yes, the advertising and the news side of PJ will have different requirements. Still, the question remains with all its complex ramifications. Fortunately, I am only one of three Pajamas Media founders and an even smaller percentage of the editorial board and therefore not solely responsible for coming up with answers. In fact, the scope of this search goes well beyond our immediate management because Pajamas Media has three other, perhaps more important, constituencies to be considered - the bloggers, the advertisers and you, our readers.

Normally, as new companies evolve, they reach conclusions about matters like this through private discussion or closely-guarded focus groups. But the blogosphere in all its magnificent inter-activity is clearly different and a company that emerges from it should be too.

Toward that end I would like to start a conversation on the subject on here spread over several days. And I thank those in advance who would be kind enough to participate. Let's start with the "Big Kahuna"... What does "fair and balanced" mean anyway?

My response is:
Fair: Only truths should be published. But not all truths are of value. And value is what can make the original better than before. It is not about criticism but constructive criticism.
Balanced: A diversity of constructive criticism. And valid constructive criticism must contain the deconstruction of true contributing antecedent factors and likely possible consequences. What should be kept in mind is the goal to be better than before.
Keep in mind that the enemy of good is perfect.

Bang Bang

Coming to theatres this fall: XM8

The XM8 Future Combat Rifle is intended to replace existing M4 Carbines and select 5.56mm x45 weapons in the US Army arsenal beginning as early as the fourth quarter of FY05.

In October 2002 ATK (Alliant Techsystems) was awarded a $5 million contract modification from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC), Picatinny, N.J., to develop the new XM8 Lightweight Assault Rifle. ATK Integrated Defense, Plymouth, Minn., and teammate Heckler and Koch, Oberndorf, Germany, will support the rapid development program, which will investigate the potential of the XM8 as the lightweight assault rifle for the Army's Objective Force.

The XM8 will be based on the kinetic energy weapon that is part of the XM29 next-generation infantry weapon system (formerly the Objective Individual Combat Weapon) currently under development by ATK Integrated Defense. The kinetic energy weapon, which fires 5.56mm ammunition, will provide maximum commonality in components and logistics with the XM29 system.

...

The XM8 is part of the Army's effort to perfect an over-and-under style weapon, known as the XM29, developed by Alliant Techsystems and H&K. It fires special air-bursting projectiles and standard 5.56mm ammunition. But the XM29 still is too heavy and unwieldy for Army requirements. Instead of scrapping the XM29, the Army decided to perfect each of XM29's components separately, so soldiers can take advantage of new technology sooner. The parts would be brought back together when lighter materials become available. The XM8 is one of those components.

Then there is this on the horizon the XM25

Advanced Airburst Weapon System is an entirely new class of weapon that takes the concept of a grenade launcher and adds some smarts, thereby increasing the probability of hit-to-kill performance by up to 500 percent over existing weapons. The advanced design allows the soldier to program the air bursting 25mm round so that it flies to the target and detonates at a precise point in the air. It does not require impact to detonate and is hence capable of defeating an enemy behind a wall, inside a building or in a foxhole.

What seems ideally suited for the urban battlefield is the Corner Shot

is a new weapon system designed for urban combat which enables the user to observe and engage a target from behind a corner without exposing any body parts. The highly technological system was officially unveiled in late December 2003 in Israel and is already being used by some of the world's elite Special Forces. Corner Shot attaches to most handguns currently used by Special Forces, for example the GLOCK, SIG SAUER, CZ or BERETTA. It includes a small, high-resolution camera and monitor, which can observe and view a target from various vantage points.

Nothing political but i thought these interesting, despite being a non-gun owner even.

Europa

Spain's economy slows:

Is the spanish miracle at an end? After 11 years of buoyant growth, Spain's standard of living has soared, unemployment has plunged, and the country's biggest companies, from BBVA to Telefónica, are playing an increasingly active role on the international stage. But cracks in the economy are showing. Although growth is expected to be around 3% this year, foreign direct investment is diving, the current account deficit is ballooning, inflation is on the rise, and productivity growth lags behind the rest of the core 15 members of the European Union. And from 2007 on, the billions of dollars in net aid Spain receives every year from the EU -- equivalent to 1% of annual gross domestic product -- will begin to dry up. That money will go instead to the new, poorer EU members from Eastern Europe. By 2013, Spain is expected to be a net contributor to EU aid funds. The country will then have to find other ways to finance investments in schools and infrastructure -- such as issuing debt or raising taxes -- or reduce spending.

Germany stops:

Looking back at the 1960s and 1970s, when I grew up in Germany, one of the most striking things was that everyone talked about work and money. The country was infuriatingly materialistic. The old West Germany felt more like an economy than a country. It used to have a proper currency, the Deutschmark, but it lacked a proper political capital. At a time when the British believed in incomes policies, capital controls and state ownership, Germany was as laissez-faire an economy as you could find anywhere in Europe. The Germans were the Americans of Europe, as a friend remarked at the time. Everyone was brimming with confidence and the superiority that comes with the belief that you are running the world’s most superior economy. The 1970s were the heyday of Germany’s social market economy, the economic equivalent of having your cake and eating it.

Unification was supposed to make Germany even stronger. The opposite happened. The country’s political leadership mismanaged unification through forcing monetary union too early, at the wrong exchange rate, and on the basis of West Germany’s high social costs and bureaucratic rules. When I returned to Germany in the 1990s, what surprised me most was not the poor performance of the economy — this I expected. I was most shocked by the extraordinary loss of self-confidence among the political and business elites, combined with a poisonous cocktail of the three big As: anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism.

EU awaits US bailout:

A hastily assembled special negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol begins this week in Bonn, Germany, to try and define a future for a climate-change treaty that runs for five years (2008?2012) but already appears dead. This comes on the heels of European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas coming to Washington with the message that Europe is leading on climate change and America could cheaply comply. The public deserves some candor about Kyoto's, and Europe's, actual failure and the radical changes necessary if Europe sincerely believes that American involvement is "critical" in any next steps. What we are witnessing instead is a growing European Union effort for a U.S. bailout from the political corner into which its leaders have painted themselves.

Tradition of Politics

It should be obvious that the Senate compromise to avert filibuster was not about politics, not about bipartisanship, but about the preservation of the way the Senate does business. By this maneuver these "moderates" have proposed that the filibuster is a legitimate Senate tool, but should be preserved for "special" circumstances. The real significance has little to do with the filibuster itself but that a group of senators acting not on political ideology have made a successful power brokerage. I'd much rather see politicians acting political to advance their political ideology rather than to leverage power without ideology, or worse, to preserve "business as usual".

Elections Tracking

We should not forget that the War on Terror isn't just about Democracy or the Middle East, it is also about the political will of the participants for the fight. Thus far there has been 4 major elections, with three victories and one defeat. The first was the defeat in Spain of Aznar. Then there were three successes with Australia's Howard, US' Bush, and UK's Blair. Are we about to witness another victory in Europe to balance the lost of Spain? Germany to hold early election.

Three years ago, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cynically used opposition to liberating Iraq to play an anti-American card just before elections in which he trailed his Christian Democratic opponents. He barely won a second term. Yesterday, facing a likely loss in elections in Germany's largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, his Social Democratic Party's union backers played another anti-American card, this time depicting U.S. investors as blood-sucking parasites. Social Democratic chairman Franz Muntefering compared hedge funds to "swarms of locusts." This time, the tactic failed. Mr. Schoeder's party went down to a stunning defeat, losing the largely working-class state, home to one out of five Germans, for the first time in nearly 40 years. Last night Mr. Schroeder announced he would hold national elections this fall, a year ahead of schedule.

North Rhine-Westphalia, centered on the industrial Ruhr region of northern Germany, is home to 18 million people and would be the sixth largest economy in the European Union if it were a separate nation. It is beset by many of the same problems that plague Germany as a whole. Since 1995, the German economy has been growing at a slower pace than any other European country except Moldova. Germany is increasingly losing jobs and investment to countries that do not have its crushingly high wages and social welfare overhead.

Many commentators will explain away the Social Democrats' overwhelming 45% to 37% defeat by claiming it represents discontent with Mr. Schroeder's tentative moves to curb welfare benefits and reform labor laws. But if that were the real issue, the government's left-wing partners, the Greens, would have gained votes. Instead they lost support, finishing with only 6%. The Christian Democrats' free-market partners, the Free Democrats, received the same proportion of the vote. Indeed, if yesterday's vote had primarily been a left-wing protest vote, a new party, the Election Alternative Work and Social Justice, formed by dissident members of Mr. Schroeder's party, would have won seats. Instead, they failed miserably.

In the wing is France? Beyond perhaps even India?

Minority Vote

I feel for the minority party of any political system. And i also believe they should have a say in the crafting of policies because the greatest danger of a free democracy is the oppression of the minority by the majority. But the democratic party in the US has misused the filibuster as a voice of dissent. Thus i am supportive of a simple vote to end filibuster for judicial nomination, which may become the case tomorrow when the Senate ends debate on Judge Owen's nomination from 4 years ago.
From Powerline is Frist's speech today.

Mr. President, over the last three days, for more than 25 hours, the Senate has debated a simple principle – whether qualified judicial nominees with the support of a majority of Senators deserve an up or down vote on the Senate floor. A thorough debate is an important step in the judicial nominations process. But debate should not be the final step. Debate should culminate with a decision. And the decision should be expressed through a fair up or down vote. The Constitution grants the Senate the power to confirm or reject the President’s judicial nominees. In exercising this duty, the Senate traditionally has followed a careful and deliberate process with three key components: 1) We investigate, 2) We debate, 3) We decide. We investigate by examining nominees in committee hearings and studying their background and qualifications. We debate by publicly discussing the nominees in committee and on the floor. And we decide through an up-or-down vote. Investigate, debate, decide. That is how the Senate and the judicial nominations process operated for 214 years.

If the Democrats are smart, they would hold back the filibuster until they really need it rather than risk losing it tomorrow.

UNreal Numbers

All I have to say is wow! The UN has some balls! I mean Oil for food is still under investigation and they are still pushing forward with a 1.2 billion dollars renovation project. Here's Donald Trump's take as quoted on the Senate Floor on April 6, 2005.

Let me share this story with you, which is pretty shocking to me. The $1.2 billion loan the United Nations wants is to renovate a building. Some member of the United Nations, a delegate, apparently, from Europe, had read in the newspaper in New York that Mr. Donald Trump, the premier real estate developer in New York, the largest in New York by far, who has his own television show now--had just completed the Trump World Tower--not a 30-story building like the United Nations, but a 90-story building, for a mere $350 million, less than one-third of that cost. So the European United Nations delegate was curious about the $1.2 billion they were spending on the United Nations. He knew he didn't know what the real estate costs are in New York. So, he called Mr. Trump and they discussed it. Mr. Trump told him that building he built for $350 million was the top of the line. It has the highest quality of anything you would need in it. They discussed the matter, and an arrangement was made for Mr. Trump to meet Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, to discuss the concerns. The European delegate was somewhat taken back at Trump's reaction because he just didn't know how much it would cost. He had originally thought Mr. Trump's figures that were printed in the paper were in error. So according to Mr. Trump, who I talked to personally this morning, they go meet with Mr. Annan, who had asked some staff member to be there, and Mr. Trump is very outraged about this staffer. When the European asked how these numbers could happen, Mr. Trump said the only way would be because of incompetence, or fraud. That is how strongly he felt about this price tag because he pointed out to me that renovation costs much less than building an entirely new building. So he has a meeting with Mr. Annan, and they have some discussion. And Mr. Trump says these figures can't be acceptable. He told me in my conversation this morning, he said: You can quote me. You can say what I am saying. It has already been reported in the newspapers. He said they don't know. The person who had been working on this project for 4 years couldn't answer basic questions about what was involved in renovating a major building. He was not capable nor competent to do the job. He was further concerned. He went and worked on it, and talked about it, and eventually made an offer. He said he would manage the refurbishment, the renovation, of the United Nations Building, and he would not charge personally for his fee in managing it. He would bring it in at $500 billion, less than half of what they were expecting to spend, and it would be better. He told me: I know something about refurbishment and renovations. I do a lot of that, also. I know how to do that. Yet he never received a response from the United Nations, which raised very serious concerns in his mind about what was going on there

HT Powerline

the Numbers

My thoughs on the numbers.
The federal debt is divided into two part, that held by the government and that held by the public. Government debt is an internal matter, as when the government takes money from unspent social security taxes to use for non social security functions. This debt only affect the future when it has to be paid. If social security intake exceeds that of intake, this repayment can be put off. As far as i know this debt to social security is not being repaid at the moment. The second part of the federal debt is referred to as public debt. This exists in the form of treasury bills primarily, in essence an IOU by the government to the holder of the bills.
As of 2004 the total deficit is 7.379 trillions, 3.072 of which is held by the government and 4.307 of which is held by the public. The feds have had a deficit since 1835.
Lets look at the concern regarding federal debt own by (not owed by) the public. By public it also includes banks, corporations, state and local governments, and the average citizen investors. The concern here is that instead of spending money on ways to stimulate the economy, the money is "locked" into the deficit. However, lets consider that many, individuals as well as financial investment companies, treat this as the preferred investment; the guaranteed of future return is thus very safe and reassuring. This money would not have gone into the general economy as it was not heading that way anyway. In addition about 20-25% of the "public" debt is held by foreign entities and they do so also because of reliability of a future return. Would they have invested in US companies instead? Why didn't they do so to begin with?

Certainly it would be better to opperate without a deficit. But as to its actual impact on the economy is still theoretical for the following reasons.
1. 180 years of deficit and we are still growing. As far as i know there has been little direct correlation between a high deficit and poor economic growth. Most periods of high deficits were during wars, the civil war, ww1, the depression, ww2, vietnam, WoT.
2. Would the public actually put money into the economy instead, rather than say precious metals or beneath the mattress? Theoretical at best.

It is interesting that by "privatizing" social security, even a portion of it, more money is directed to the economy and less is available for the government to "borrow/steal" from.

Pacifism

Pacifism is a lovely dream that whithers at dawn's first light.


A list of notable quotes on war from Fort Liberty.
my favorite is:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill

Neo-Neocon has a great post on this topic today.