Politicians, Priests, and Prophets:
All well-spoken
None should be trusted.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Iraq War Re-visited
The current issue of Time Magazine has a small piece relating that the CIA source used to fabricate -- er, sorry -- used to rationalize the reason for the United States to go to war against Iraq and Sadaam Hussein recently related to the United Kingdom publication Guardian that he lied about the information he provided to the U.S. government via its ally, Germany. "Rafid Ahmed al-Janabi ... confirmed in an interview with the U.K.'s Guardian that he lied about the existence of a secret biological-weapons program in Iraq to instigate regime change."
This kind gentleman, who was a former chemical engineer in Iraq, admitted to the falsehoods provided to intelligence agencies detailing mobile bio-weapons labs and covert factories to facilitate extra-governmental military interaction in his home nation for the purpose of removing Sadaam Hussein from power. "Those falsehoods buttressed the U.S.'s case for invading Iraq the next month."
And here I thought there was only one source of lies that constructed the reason behind the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent eight-plus year occupation. I am amazed (chuckle) to find that the magnificently intelligent leader of the United States at that time could be duped into inciting a war based upon one man's fervent testimony that weapons of mass destruction existed on hidden caravans maneuvering throughout the desert. Shouldn't the camels pulling those labs have glowed, or something?
This kind gentleman, who was a former chemical engineer in Iraq, admitted to the falsehoods provided to intelligence agencies detailing mobile bio-weapons labs and covert factories to facilitate extra-governmental military interaction in his home nation for the purpose of removing Sadaam Hussein from power. "Those falsehoods buttressed the U.S.'s case for invading Iraq the next month."
And here I thought there was only one source of lies that constructed the reason behind the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent eight-plus year occupation. I am amazed (chuckle) to find that the magnificently intelligent leader of the United States at that time could be duped into inciting a war based upon one man's fervent testimony that weapons of mass destruction existed on hidden caravans maneuvering throughout the desert. Shouldn't the camels pulling those labs have glowed, or something?
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Considerations of the Future of Egypt
I have already detailed the various factors engaged in the potential new government of Egypt. I have also noted that it is an essential portion of the Middle East to the U.S. government, and likely to the West as a whole. The Pew Research Center survey of the people within that nation provides some understanding of what direction Egypt might go. As with most polling, there is an opportunity for the pollers to conform their findings to their desires. This particular poll seems to confirm the fact that no one has a chance in hell to assume what will happen in Egypt.
I will write directly from the article in Time Magazine:
"When the Pew Research Center surveyed the Arab world last April, it found that Egyptians have views that would strike the modern Western eye as extreme. "Pew found that 82% of Egyptians support stoning as a punishment for adultery, 84% favor the death penalty for Muslims who leave the religion, and in the struggle between 'modernizers' and 'fundamentalists,' 59% identify with fundamentalists.
"That's enough to make one worry about the rise of an Iranian-style regime. Except that his is not all the Pew surveys show. A 2007 poll found that 90% of Egyptians support freedom of religion, 88% an impartial judiciary and 80% free speech; 75% are opposed to censorship, and, according to the 2010 report, a large majority believes that democracy is preferable to any other kind of government."
How does one make sense of these findings? The primary data indicates that Egypt is as lost in the past as are the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx itself. One must questions the survey itself, in either case, and suppose that it held a different demographic or survey area in each instance. Or, perhaps, one might believe that as the concept of revolt grew, the freedom of expression was unleashed, and the survey reflects that. It sounds asinine when one looks at the years of the data taken, right? Any survey has its faults, so let us not take too much comfort in the idea that those Egyptians from 2007 were more ready for a revolt than in 2011. There were three year plus timeframe between polls, and dependent upon the survey area, there is a chance that the results suggest that surveyors were responding as they desired within a totalitarian atmosphere.
Whatever the case, one must assume that Egypt is a highly-divided society, and that vacuum is created by a society that is an amalgamation of many different cultures that have come, that have sometimes conquered, or otherwise have visited and traded with this ancient area of land. Over 5,000 years, so many different ideas exchanged within the populace, and so many different forms of government have created the true idea of a "cosmopolitan city" of the Ancient World that is is the zeitgeist of such people to to continue to draw upon different ideas from across the nations and governments of the world.
Let us hope that the spirit of those people, the culture that has spanned the original Pharoahs, the Roman Legions, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, the British Empire, and the two World Wars will nourish and lead them. If history teaches anyone, it will teach the Egyptian people. Maybe then, the West can garner some of that edification. That would be the greatest of East-West exchanges.
I will write directly from the article in Time Magazine:
"When the Pew Research Center surveyed the Arab world last April, it found that Egyptians have views that would strike the modern Western eye as extreme. "Pew found that 82% of Egyptians support stoning as a punishment for adultery, 84% favor the death penalty for Muslims who leave the religion, and in the struggle between 'modernizers' and 'fundamentalists,' 59% identify with fundamentalists.
"That's enough to make one worry about the rise of an Iranian-style regime. Except that his is not all the Pew surveys show. A 2007 poll found that 90% of Egyptians support freedom of religion, 88% an impartial judiciary and 80% free speech; 75% are opposed to censorship, and, according to the 2010 report, a large majority believes that democracy is preferable to any other kind of government."
How does one make sense of these findings? The primary data indicates that Egypt is as lost in the past as are the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx itself. One must questions the survey itself, in either case, and suppose that it held a different demographic or survey area in each instance. Or, perhaps, one might believe that as the concept of revolt grew, the freedom of expression was unleashed, and the survey reflects that. It sounds asinine when one looks at the years of the data taken, right? Any survey has its faults, so let us not take too much comfort in the idea that those Egyptians from 2007 were more ready for a revolt than in 2011. There were three year plus timeframe between polls, and dependent upon the survey area, there is a chance that the results suggest that surveyors were responding as they desired within a totalitarian atmosphere.
Whatever the case, one must assume that Egypt is a highly-divided society, and that vacuum is created by a society that is an amalgamation of many different cultures that have come, that have sometimes conquered, or otherwise have visited and traded with this ancient area of land. Over 5,000 years, so many different ideas exchanged within the populace, and so many different forms of government have created the true idea of a "cosmopolitan city" of the Ancient World that is is the zeitgeist of such people to to continue to draw upon different ideas from across the nations and governments of the world.
Let us hope that the spirit of those people, the culture that has spanned the original Pharoahs, the Roman Legions, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, the British Empire, and the two World Wars will nourish and lead them. If history teaches anyone, it will teach the Egyptian people. Maybe then, the West can garner some of that edification. That would be the greatest of East-West exchanges.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Virgin Post
I have spent much of the time the last few weeks discussing various aspects of the Arab revolutions taking place in the Middle East. I have not had a grand platform like this before. I lament that it took this long to find this venue, but I will now use it to share a few thoughts.
What began as a "bread riot" in Algeria spread quickly to Tunisia, where the downtrodden eventually managed to organize through social media, leading to the ouster of a man in power for decades. The idea quickly spread to Egypt, and it took only one man who was slapped by a police officer (a female, at that! An Arab female allowed to be a police official!) to self-immolate as a means of protest when his frustration was not provided an audience to be discussed. Taking a cue from the success in Tunisia, Egyptians immediately began to organize through Facebook and Twitter and take to Tahrir Square (aka Liberation Square) to voice their pent up frustration with the thirty-year Mubarak regime.
It was not as easy as it was in Tunisia, and there was certainly a good amount of "will he stay or will he go" intrigue. A day after announcing that he would see his nation through to the next election cycle "as a father would do for his children," Mubarak announced that he would step down. After all of the pause, one must question whether this was not a fait accompli and he purposely delayed the timing so as to secure his financial interests and organize a sub-Mubarak regime for the future, or if he truly believed that the protests would grow tiresome and end.
At any length, it has become official that Mubarak is stepping down. Hurrah for the tendrils of true democracy taking shape in perhaps the most important Arab nation. But wait. Isn't it the Military that is taking the reins and holding the interim government together until free and fair elections take place? Wasn't it the military, under General Hosni Mubarak, that did the same with the Egyptian government thirty years prior, which led to his ascension and stranglehold on the nation? Does a scratched record skip just like this? Of course.
Optimism should be sequestered in this instance for quite some time. I do not recall an instance in history in which a military took control of a nation in such turmoil, then later relinquished that control to a civilian government constructed under a new constitution. There have been many voices equating the actions in Egypt with the American Revolution, and it causes me to laugh.
Hope for the best, but be ready to grab your ankles and take the pain. I do not see this as the equivalent of the Iranian Revolution, but there will certainly be a great backlash from this put upon the Western interests, and no Chevy Volt is really going to help when the Suez Canal is used as a complete economic tool against the current existence of the Western nations.
What began as a "bread riot" in Algeria spread quickly to Tunisia, where the downtrodden eventually managed to organize through social media, leading to the ouster of a man in power for decades. The idea quickly spread to Egypt, and it took only one man who was slapped by a police officer (a female, at that! An Arab female allowed to be a police official!) to self-immolate as a means of protest when his frustration was not provided an audience to be discussed. Taking a cue from the success in Tunisia, Egyptians immediately began to organize through Facebook and Twitter and take to Tahrir Square (aka Liberation Square) to voice their pent up frustration with the thirty-year Mubarak regime.
It was not as easy as it was in Tunisia, and there was certainly a good amount of "will he stay or will he go" intrigue. A day after announcing that he would see his nation through to the next election cycle "as a father would do for his children," Mubarak announced that he would step down. After all of the pause, one must question whether this was not a fait accompli and he purposely delayed the timing so as to secure his financial interests and organize a sub-Mubarak regime for the future, or if he truly believed that the protests would grow tiresome and end.
At any length, it has become official that Mubarak is stepping down. Hurrah for the tendrils of true democracy taking shape in perhaps the most important Arab nation. But wait. Isn't it the Military that is taking the reins and holding the interim government together until free and fair elections take place? Wasn't it the military, under General Hosni Mubarak, that did the same with the Egyptian government thirty years prior, which led to his ascension and stranglehold on the nation? Does a scratched record skip just like this? Of course.
Optimism should be sequestered in this instance for quite some time. I do not recall an instance in history in which a military took control of a nation in such turmoil, then later relinquished that control to a civilian government constructed under a new constitution. There have been many voices equating the actions in Egypt with the American Revolution, and it causes me to laugh.
Hope for the best, but be ready to grab your ankles and take the pain. I do not see this as the equivalent of the Iranian Revolution, but there will certainly be a great backlash from this put upon the Western interests, and no Chevy Volt is really going to help when the Suez Canal is used as a complete economic tool against the current existence of the Western nations.
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