Zbigniew Brzezinski's Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony, 2/1/2007
Topic: Current Events
8:37 pm EST, Feb 20, 2007
Testimony from Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor, 1977-1981. Original is a PDF. Also available via Google in HTML.
I've quoted four contiguous paragraphs below. Interesting words from one of the architects of the Mujahideen resistance forces in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. When he says that "most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism," he's probably in a position to know something about the subject.
* * *
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II.
This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran, though gaining in regional influence, is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Deplorably, the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about "a new strategic context" which is based on "clarity" and which prompts "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles's attitude of the early 1950's toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.
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BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | US 'Iran attack plans' revealed
Topic: Current Events
6:40 pm EST, Feb 19, 2007
US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
Some things are so monstrous it forces me question life
Topic: Society
11:13 am EST, Feb 17, 2007
No one has to read they're local city newspaper to know that all of us live in a fucked up era. It surrounds on a daily basis no matter where we go or how hard we try to remember the good things and good people in our lives. Some people have overlooked the malevolence so well that they themselves become part of the habitual life. Others are so overwhelmed by the hate and grief that they are terminally depressed and become one of its victims. The rest of us find structure just outside madness and the rare few creates symphonies within it that builds positives out of the negative and the heinous evil.
YouTube - Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop
Topic: Arts
6:03 am EST, Feb 15, 2007
This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.
Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?
Combine unsupervised teenagers, digital cameras and e-mail, and, given sufficient time, you'll end up with risque photographs on a computer somewhere.
There's a problem with that: Technically, those images constitute child pornography.
Amber and Jeremy were arrested. Each was charged with producing, directing or promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child. Based on the contents of his e-mail account, Jeremy was charged with an extra count of possession of child pornography.
What a complete pile of bullshit. I can see the argument if either party had actually posted the pictures somewhere on the internet or sent it around to friends. I'm still not sure criminal penalties are the best way to prevent that activity, but I'll allow that there would be some wrongdoing in that case.
But that didn't happen, and I'm in full agreement with the dissenting opinion. It was a stupid thing to do, and I think they're naive with respect to any expectation of privacy they may have (especially with regard to each other... having the picture exposed through hacking is about 10000 times less likely than it being released as part of a nasty breakup, as almost all of them are at that age). Still, child pornography? Really? Psh.
FURTHER : You can read the sad story of Genarlow Wilson here and don't forget about Marcus Dewayne Wilson (google it) either, both of which are here in georgia and which beg the question of racial equality, quite aside from the direct question of sexual relations between minors, or a minor and a non-minor within a couple years of the same age.
I'll go on record as being against mandatory minimums categorically, so that aspect of these cases I'm clearly against. I will admit that there is some cloudy area in the middle, but I distrust the "family values" based "People under 18 shouldn't have sex, period, ever," argument as a political construct and note further that the redder the state, the lower the age of consent as a generalization. Perhaps these laws are simply out of date, but it's tough for me to see how the legal apparatus should get involved unless there truly was exploitation or rape.
