politics

Following up on my recent post, "Muslim Terrorists are Rare... and Stupid," I just read a good article in the September Smithsonian. The "Struggle Within Islam" explores how most Muslims react to the actions of the minority that commit acts of horrible terror.

“Today, Al Qaeda is as significant to the Islamic world as the Ku Klux Klan is to the Americans—not much at all,” Ghada Shahbender, an Egyptian poet and activist, told me recently. “They’re violent, ugly, operate underground and are unacceptable to the majority of Muslims. They exist, but they’re freaks.

“Do I look at the Ku Klux Klan and draw conclusions about America from their behavior? Of course not,” she went on. “The KKK hasn’t been a story for many years for Americans. Al Qaeda is still a story, but it is headed in the same direction as the Klan.”

I was still a student at Macalester when I met an economics student from Kenya who made a very compelling case for the US to help Africa by rapidly scaling back the "help" it was offering to Africa. The concept is well explained in the aptly-named "Haiti Doesn't Need Your T-Shirt" article.

It kills me when I hear Americans say that the first US government programs that should be cut are foreign aid (the budget for which they almost over estimate by many orders of magnitude). The reality is that the US foreign assistance budget primarily exists to benefit Americans. American banks, farmers, arms manufacturers, etc. We take stuff we cannot use but still want to produce (often because of the strong lobbying arm of a related interest group) and ship it off to other countries, often at the expense of destroying their economies.

Want to be a farmer in Africa or manufacture clothes? Good luck! You'll be competing against shitty free stuff from the U.S. And it is very hard to compete with free.

Fantastic article in Foreign Policy - "Why is it so hard to find a Suicide Bomber These Days?"

I have been making this point in arguments for years. To those who argue that all Muslims support terrorists or want to kill us (due to our freedom, no doubt), I have asked why there are so few terrorist attacks then. With over a billion Muslims, one would think we would see more than the occasional attempt (often blundered).

The reality is that just as most Christians really don't want to lift a finger to do anything Jesus actually encouraged them to do, most Muslims don't believe the scary passages in the Qu'ran that give license to kill the infidels. Everyone reads what they want to read and ignores the inconvenient parts (though for many, the inconvenient parts are the ones encouraging peace, love, and hippy stuff).

At any rate, Kurzman's article is first rate and fun to read. A sample where he offers five answers to the question posed by the title:

The first and most obvious answer is that most Muslims oppose terrorist violence. According to surveys by Gallup and the Pew Global Attitudes Project, support for attacks on civilians is a minority position in almost every Muslim community. (By way of comparison, a 2006 survey found that 24 percent of Americans consider attacks on civilians to be justified.) But even if only 10 percent of the world's billion Muslims supported terrorism, we would still expect to see far more terrorist activity than we do.

The brutality of the police ten seconds into this video is stunning.

This isn't the fault of the police entirely - they were directed to be brutal against a non-violent opponent. The violence is entirely out of proportion to any crime or threat -- the point is undoubtedly to intimidate others who might consider civil disobedience to a fundamentally unjust system where a few wealthy interests effectively control elected officials.

At least one person thinks this could mark a turning point. Perhaps. The question is, as always, will the 99% stand up for themselves?

Once again, I am blown away by Leon Wieseltier on the back page of The New Republic. I hadn't read TNR in awhile because they charge so much for the subscription I had let it lapse - but they brought me back with a short term deal.

Good timing - Rick Perry seems to want to turn the US into some form of supposedly Christian Nation - not in the sense of taking care of our neighbors (one of many positive Christian values rarely embraced by those most loudly proclaiming their Christianity) but in the sense of parading faith and using it to beat on anyone who doesn't share it.

Wieseltier has a stunning repudiation of Rick Perry's public pronouncements but it is buried behind a pay wall. Pity. A couple of powerful snippets:

There is a man half-running for president in the United States who has adopted Joel’s plan. He is Rick Perry, the suave and shallow governor of Texas. He has issued “a call to prayer for a nation in crisis,” which he calls The Response. He proposes to fill a stadium in Houston—Reliant Stadium, it is charmingly called—with contrite Americans, and thereby change the course of our country.

...

"There is hope for America,” Perry preaches. “It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.” He likes the sentence so much that he gives it twice. I dislike it hugely. This country was not built by people on their knees. It was built by people on their feet, with their hands as they were guided by their minds. They acted as if hope for America lay in themselves. There was nothing insolent about this. They were not godless people, except for some in our recent history; but their religion was compatible with, or even inclined them to, the modern concept of historical agency. The United States of America is a monument to that concept. It represents a revolution in human affairs not least because of its faith in the power of human action.

Just saw this after reading that the Federal Reserve has again extended its middle finger to independent businesses and everyday people while giving a reach-around to Wall Street by allowing higher swipe fees from Visa and MasterCard.

The next time someone claims Obama is anti-businesses, make sure they understand that all elected officials are owned by Wall Street - but the Dems sometimes pretend they would prefer not to be.

This is my middle finger to MasterCard:

Rather than trying to deal with economic problems or solving the budget gap... or hell, even figuring out how to get taxpayers to foot the bill for a new Vikings stadium, Minnesota's Republicans have decided to push an amendment for Minnesotans to vote on whether gays should be considered real people or just get 3/5 the rights of couples like Michelle and I.

Awesome. At least some are talking sense in Saint Paul:

When you vote for Republicans, you are voting for a hate-filled party of anti-science bigots.

Some people voting for Republicans may sometimes pretend they are only interested in the economic conservatism (though they have always talked one way and legislated another) rather than social bigotry commonly advanced, but the reality is that they are married. If you want to vote for Republicans, you cannot deny that you are endorsing essentially a 14th century view of how we should structure society.

I was reminded of this after reading a good article in The Atlantic detailing how Republicans bow to some Iowa jerk-off obsessed with how adults act behind closed doors.

This is why Tim Pawlenty gets runner-up [winner is FCC Chairman Genachowski (and Obama appointee)] for jellyfish invertebrate of the year for shamelessly taking the path of least resistance and losing any conviction he might once have had.

Seeing as how I absolutely loved Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, I finally got around to reading Tides of War. Whereas Gates of Fire dealt with the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae (prior to the comic book movie making the 300 iconic among the masses), this book traces the rise and fall of Alcibiades, Athens, and the Pelopennesian War. But really it is about the politics of Athens and it is fascinating.

Tides of War is certainly heavier and a slower read than Gates, but as someone who knows very little of Ancient Athens, I found it fascinating even as I knew I could not understand all of it given my ignorance. But passages like this made me all the more interested... in it Gylippus is a Spartan sent to Syracuse to break the Athenian siege.

To raise revenue, Gylippus employed the following statagem. Fearing the direct levy might turn the aristocratic element against him, he induced the Assembly instead to require each citizen to come forward on a specific day and render a public accounting of his wealth. Now each could behold with his own eyes the extent of treasure his fellows had hoarded. At once the privileged felt shame not to have contributed more, while the humble who had served with honor were esteemed as better than the rich. Contributions flooded in. The cavalry grew flush with mounts, while the vaults overflowed with treasure.