Category: Politics

Why Zarqawi’s death matters

Why Zarqawi’s death matters. By Christopher Hitchens
That bomb at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, for example, was no improvised explosive device. It was a huge charge of military-grade ordnance. Are we to believe that a newly arrived Bedouin Jordanian thug could so swiftly have scraped acquaintance with senior-level former Baathists? (The charges that destroyed the golden dome of the Shiites in Samarra were likewise rigged and set by professional military demolitionists.)

Zarqawi was all along receiving help from the mullahs in Iran. He certainly seems to have been able to transit their territory (Herat is on the Iranian border with Afghanistan) and to replenish his forces by the same route. If this suggestive connection is proved, as Weaver suggests it will be, then we have the Shiite fundamentalists in Iran directly sponsoring the murderer of their co-religionists in Iraq.

And the Atlantic Magazine Cover Story that this article refers to about:How a video-store clerk and small-time crook reinvented himself as America’s nemesis in Iraq

Ignoring Bejing’s Directives

Economist.com
Local leaders rarely incur heavy political penalties for failing to carry out the central government’s economic directives. Officials in Beijing frequently order clampdowns on the makers of pirated goods. Offending factories are sometimes closed. But local officials who condone such operations as a way of boosting their local economies are seldom punished. Nor are officials who turn a blind eye to polluting industries, unless they cause big accidents or trigger unrest. Transgressions are so widespread that it would be destabilising to launch a crackdown. But just to make sure that career-damaging information does not reach Beijing, local governments often arrest petitioners who travel to the capital to raise complaints.

Central leaders are comforted by the knowledge that direct political challenges to their authority by local governments are extremely rare. Li Fan, an independent consultant in Beijing who advises local governments on election-related issues, says there is strong demand among lower-level officials for political reform. But very few rural townships have pushed experiments with freer elections or more open government beyond the party’s guidelines. And none has tolerated organised opposition or open attacks on the party leadership. China’s local leaders know where to draw the line.

Wind-Power Projects Halted

Wind-Power Projects Halted
More than 130 wind turbines are proposed for the hilltops of central Wisconsin, but that project and at least 11 others have been halted by the Defense Department as it studies whether the projects could interfere with military radar.

Wind farm developers, Midwestern legislators and environmentalists say the farms pose no risk, noting that there are already numerous wind farms operating in military radar areas. They say a renewable, domestic source of energy such as wind is crucial to energy security and independence.

They say their wind turbines are victims of the ongoing dispute between Cape Cod residents and developers of the proposed Cape Wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The Defense Department study was put in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act — inserted, say wind farm developers, by senators who want to block Cape Wind.

Andean Blues

Andean Blues
On Sunday morning, I went to vote in Barranco, my old neighborhood. I voted for Garcia, the lesser of two evils because not voting or casting a blank vote would have helped Humala. Garcia, now a moderate populist who says he does not want to break away from globalization, won with roughly 53 percent of the vote against Humala’s 47 percent.

In the 1960s, American historian Carroll Quigley explained in “The Evolution of Civilizations” that decadence starts when social arrangements that serve social needs turn into institutions that serve their own needs.

That, precisely, is part of Latin America’s plight. The disconnect between official institutions and social needs — the legacy of too many caudillos and the absence of the rule of law — has thrown many people into the hands of leaders who espouse nationalist ideologies. The challenge is to heal the rift, not to widen it as Humala was planning to do.

Nation-Building or Gene-Splicing?

TCS Daily – Nation-Building or Gene-Splicing?
Without Britannia — with it’s free-trade policies and its Common Law legal institutions — Hong Kong might have remained a rather desolate rock. In other words, it took the forceful British territorial annexation of Hong Kong after the First Opium War in the mid-1800s to create a major center of commercial activity by 1900, and one of the world’s most prosperous cities by 1997, when it was returned to the Chinese.

Institutions are like the DNA of a society. Healthy DNA, when expressed, serves as the blueprint for a healthy organism. Likewise, healthy institutions, when in place, allow millions of individual actors to engage in cooperative, mutually beneficial behaviors, the stuff of peace and prosperity. But mutant DNA can create cancer cells. Saddam’s Iraq, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and Stalin’s Russia have (or had) mutant institutions. And pathologies can threaten to spread.

If Iraq is conceived as a pity party that requires more resources, more shiny new schools and more dependency, the effort will fail and its new leaders will be corrupted. But if Iraq focuses on incorporating simple systems like security, titled property, and dispute resolution, among others, then they may yet have the ingredients for success.

The Perils of China Threat Inflation

The Perils of Threat Inflation by William S. Lind
Taiwan is vastly important to China, because the great threat to China throughout its history has been internal division. If one province, Taiwan, can secure its independence, why cannot other provinces do the same? It is the spectre of internal break-up that forces China to prevent Taiwanese independence at any cost, including war with America.

But America has no corresponding interest. A war with China over Taiwan would be, for the U.S., another “war of choice,” not of strategic necessity. We are currently fighting two other “wars of choice,” and neither is going particularly well.

A strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China points to an obvious parallel, the strategic rivalry between England and Germany before World War I. That parallel should give Washington pause. If the rivalry—completely unnecessary in both cases—leads to war, as it then did, the war will have no victor. Germany and Britain destroyed each other. While Britain finally won, the British Empire died in the mud of Flanders.

A war between China and the United States could easily result in a similar fatal weakening of the U.S. (perhaps after a strategic nuclear exchange), while a defeated Chinese state may dissolve, with China becoming a vast region of stateless, Fourth Generation instability. Is Taiwan worth risking such an outcome? Was Belgian neutrality worth the Somme, Bolshevism and Hitler?

In a 21st century where the most important division will be between centers of order and centers or sources of disorder, it is vital to American interests that China remain a center of order. America needs to handle a rising China the way Britain handled a rising America, not a rising Germany.

EU is at a turning point

Los Angeles Times: EU is at a turning point

In Britain and Poland in the last month, nationalistic parties uneasy with integration into the European Union have scored major advances. The EU constitution, rejected last year by France and the Netherlands, is dead in the water. Economic nationalism and protectionism are surging. The French, Italian, Spanish and Polish governments recently have taken steps to protect national industries from foreign takeover.

On a continent that dreamed of eliminating national borders, hostility toward immigrants — especially those from Muslim countries — is causing national boundaries to spring back to life.

In short, political life across Europe is being renationalized, plunging the enterprise of European integration into its most serious crisis since World War II.

Iran’s president redefines power politics at home

Iran’s president redefines power politics at home International Herald Tribune
In Iran’s theocratic system, where appointed religious leaders hold ultimate power, the presidency has been a relatively weak position. In the multiple layers of power that obscure the governance of Iran, no one knows for certain where the ultimate decisions are being made. But many of those watching are in near disbelief at the speed and aggression with which the president is seeking to accumulate power. They assume that he is operating with the full support of Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad, elected in June 2005, is trying to outpace the challenges buffeting Iran, ones that could undermine his presidency and conservative control. The economy is in shambles, unemployment is soaring, and the president has so far failed to deliver on his promise of economic relief for the poor.

Immigration solution — invade Mexico!

Immigration solution — invade Mexico!

While this may seem an amusing “Modest Proposal” some experts see Mexico inevitably becoming the 51st State, if Puerto Rico doesn’t beat them to it.

Here is a modest proposal for solving the illegal immigration issue once and for all: Invade and occupy Mexico and admit it into the Union as the 51st state. That way, we can put an immediate end to all of the political hand-wringing on this pressing and volatile issue. Before you dismiss this idea as reckless, consider that there’s something in this plan for every American, regardless of their political stripe.

9/11 Loose Change, Michael Moore and the Convenience of Conspirancy

The Observer | Review | Chaos and cock-up always trump conspiracy
Alongside Hurricane Katrina, the tragedy of 9/11 is providing fertile ground for conspiracy theorists and the film industry. But this should hardly be surprising, says Mark Kermode. After all, conspiracies are comforting.

A worrying number of people still believe that the Apollo missions were faked.

Most of what the public knows about the Kennedy assassination is based on a string of excitably dramatic movies, from David Miller’s Executive Action (1973) to Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), which viewers have mistaken for verifiable truth. (Debunked here)
In his new Movie on Katrina, Spike Lee will present that the levees were deliberately detonated, by the government.

In the ongoing tradition, the video 9/11 Loose Change helped force the release of another Pentagon tape of the Pentagon crash (Click on picture to view). The film appears especially popular among young people immersed in a Web culture brimming with sites that question the credibility of government. They see 9/11 as the defining moment of their lives.

A quick search of Wikipedia, produces a slew of carefully researched debunkings including a scene-by-scene Word document and whole web-site (9/11 Myths) devoted to different theories. The Loose Change Web-site tries to counter “the Government did it”arguments. The majority of the Muslim world blames the jews for 9/11 . Andyou can still see Fahrenheit 9/11 to add to your paranoid. But few will take the time to read the patient research. Instead we will be passively entertained by videos.

Conservative writer David Horowitz, a former 1960s radical, says conspiratorial thinking can offer a world view that is somehow less scary than reality. “Conspiracy theories are a kind of secular religion,” he says, adding that campus faculties sometimes encourage anti-government feelings. “People feel great anxiety … by the thought that nobody’s in control.”

People believe in conspiracy theories because the truth “is either too simple or too remote,” says sociologist Clifton Bryant of Virginia Tech University, who has made a study of “deviant logic” and behavior.

“We’re always ready to believe something about which we know nothing,” he says.”

Update –majority of young people believe conspiracy theory. Thanks Daily Show & the Internet?

Search for 9/11 on this site for more links, such as:

www.snopes.com
The Urban Legends Reference Pages, containing entries about conspiracy claims such as the put options, the alleged early arrival of FEMA and the Pentagon attack. The forum also contains some intelligent discussion of conspiracy theories.
www.loosechangeguide.com
This is a viewer’s guide to the documentary “Loose Change,” which contains many of the conspiracy claims discussed in this article.
www.911myths.com
A great general source for all manner of conspiracy claims.