Sunday, March 29, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
The corruption of Muslim women by the Jews
Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Egyptian cleric Ahmad Abd Al-Salam, which aired on Al-Nas TV on January 28, 2009. Translation by MEMRI:
Ahmad Abd Al-Salam: "The Jews 'will not fail to corrupt' the believers. What does this mean? The Jews are never remiss - they invest their utmost efforts, day and night, in conspiring how to corrupt the Islamic nation, the nation led by the Prophet Muhammad...
"We hate the Jews because they spare no effort in stripping Muslim girls of their clothes. It is the Jews who conspire to have Muslim girls, and even married Muslim women, wear clothes that are tight, short, or see-through, or clothes that are open from the front, or the back, from the right or the left.
"The Jews 'will not fail to corrupt you,' and this is why we hate them. The Jews conspire to destroy Muslims. The Jews conspire to bring Muslim youth down to the pit of sexual temptation. The sexual temptations, which are prevalent worldwide, were conspired by the Jews."
Damn, we're good....
Ahmad Abd Al-Salam: "The Jews 'will not fail to corrupt' the believers. What does this mean? The Jews are never remiss - they invest their utmost efforts, day and night, in conspiring how to corrupt the Islamic nation, the nation led by the Prophet Muhammad...
"We hate the Jews because they spare no effort in stripping Muslim girls of their clothes. It is the Jews who conspire to have Muslim girls, and even married Muslim women, wear clothes that are tight, short, or see-through, or clothes that are open from the front, or the back, from the right or the left.
"The Jews 'will not fail to corrupt you,' and this is why we hate them. The Jews conspire to destroy Muslims. The Jews conspire to bring Muslim youth down to the pit of sexual temptation. The sexual temptations, which are prevalent worldwide, were conspired by the Jews."
Damn, we're good....
Friday, February 27, 2009
The difference between hospitality and friendship
Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/02/roger_cohens_very_happy_visit.php makes an excellent point I've also observed on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf: To be inhospitable to a guest is so obscene in Arab Gulf culture as to be unthinkable. I also have never had a bad experience as a guest of anyone in that region, even when they spouted the most hateful comments imaginable about "other," third-party Jews and Christians (or, indeed, just about any other culture.) I have also observed how many Americans, even high officials, unused to the profound and sincere hospitality of that culture, have mistaken hospitality for friendship. They are not the same.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Free Samples
I keep seeing ads in the Washington Metro trying to encourage people to use the new U.S. dollar coins.
This seems like a waste of money to me. When a private business introduces a new product and wants to encourage people to use it, they give out free samples. If the Treasury did the same, I'm sure people would use the new coins.
I don't know why no one listens to me when I have these ideas. Genius is never recognized in its own time....
This seems like a waste of money to me. When a private business introduces a new product and wants to encourage people to use it, they give out free samples. If the Treasury did the same, I'm sure people would use the new coins.
I don't know why no one listens to me when I have these ideas. Genius is never recognized in its own time....
Western imperialist thinking
I recently had occasion to remember a conversation many years ago in which a Saudi diplomat remarked to me that my insistence on the existence of objective facts and what he derisively characterized as "Cartesian logic" was a narrow Western cultural outlook. He believed what he "knew" emotionally to be true, and this was the higher truth.
The way he expressed himself suggested that he picked up this way of describing his thinking during the years he had been sent to an American university. It also reminded me of something I thought about years earlier when I worked on African affairs: That one of the most damaging effects of colonialism was that the Europeans took the best and brightest children of the local elites and educated them in British and French universities, where they were exposed to the economic and social thinking of Marxist professors whose advice would never be taken seriously in a modern, working society. But those young leaders then took these nutty ideas and tried to transplant them at home when they came to power, helping set the continent back another two decades in potential development.
If you really want to find a Western imperialist conspiracy against the Third World, that's it. And it was devastatingly effective.
The way he expressed himself suggested that he picked up this way of describing his thinking during the years he had been sent to an American university. It also reminded me of something I thought about years earlier when I worked on African affairs: That one of the most damaging effects of colonialism was that the Europeans took the best and brightest children of the local elites and educated them in British and French universities, where they were exposed to the economic and social thinking of Marxist professors whose advice would never be taken seriously in a modern, working society. But those young leaders then took these nutty ideas and tried to transplant them at home when they came to power, helping set the continent back another two decades in potential development.
If you really want to find a Western imperialist conspiracy against the Third World, that's it. And it was devastatingly effective.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Durban II: Obama's First Train Wreck?
Sometimes, watching foreign policy being made is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Most presidential administrations have early train wrecks in foreign policy, usually because they haven't mastered the bureaucratic nature of policy-making. Part of the learning curve is figuring out how to rein in different parts of the bureaucracy, getting them to work together for a common goal. Some administrations learn this more quickly than others. If there was a central cause of the train wreck which followed the successful invasion of Iraq in the last administration, it was an unwillingness on Bush's part to give detailed direction to different parts of the bureaucracy, leaving State and various branches of Defense to work at cross-purposes, in which defeating each other's policy preferences became more important than succeeding overall.
President Obama already has this "my people are working on it, I'll get back to you" approach to foreign policy, and it looks like Durban II will be the first public train wreck he has to show for it. An unintended benefit of having Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is that she is bringing into the State Department the experienced, centrist Democratic foreign policy types who first flocked to her campaign when it looked like she was the likely next president. She is trying to squeeze what was a White House-in-waiting into the much smaller State Department. (e.g.: The galaxy of "special envoys," each of whom was a potential Secretary of State in his own right.) The left-wing lunatic academic types who flocked to the Obama campaign wound up being shunted off to the UN and the NSC, where they presumably could do less harm.
Not entirely, however. U.S. participation in the Durban II preparatory conference is an early bid by the crazies to push their own ideological agendas and bid for foreign policy relevance. They apparently want to show that their preference to making nice with Third World maniacs will garner results, and they don't entirely disagree with some of those maniacs' broadsides against the West in general and Israel in particular. The result is that they are undercutting American allies who were preparing to get out of this circus before it was too late, while not succeeding at all in changing the tone of the upcoming conference (which, by the way, taking place in Geneva will get a whole lot more publicity in the world press than Durban I, in much more out-of-the-way Durban.) But now that they are involved in the conference, they will resist pulling out even when the upcoming disaster becomes obvious.
President Obama's unwillingness at this point to get involved, particularly where it would wind up humiliating some of his early supporters in the bureaucracy, will keep this going far too long. As I said at the beginning, like watching a train wreck in slow motion....
Update (March 2): I've now seen press reports to the effect that, in quiet statements to various people behind the scenes, the U.S. government has indicated that we will not participate further in Durban II. Apparently the whole thing became too embarrassing to be covered up. But note how quietly we are pulling out: To make a big deal of it would "ruin the chances for more diplomatic engagement" in the future (i.e.: our new UN crowd will try things like this again when/where they think they can get away from it), not to mention highlighting the fact that this should have been a no-brainer from the beginning. It also minimizes the possibility that our pull-out will lead a boycott by others. I guess, in this instance, the U.S. is not "ready to lead again."
President Obama already has this "my people are working on it, I'll get back to you" approach to foreign policy, and it looks like Durban II will be the first public train wreck he has to show for it. An unintended benefit of having Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is that she is bringing into the State Department the experienced, centrist Democratic foreign policy types who first flocked to her campaign when it looked like she was the likely next president. She is trying to squeeze what was a White House-in-waiting into the much smaller State Department. (e.g.: The galaxy of "special envoys," each of whom was a potential Secretary of State in his own right.) The left-wing lunatic academic types who flocked to the Obama campaign wound up being shunted off to the UN and the NSC, where they presumably could do less harm.
Not entirely, however. U.S. participation in the Durban II preparatory conference is an early bid by the crazies to push their own ideological agendas and bid for foreign policy relevance. They apparently want to show that their preference to making nice with Third World maniacs will garner results, and they don't entirely disagree with some of those maniacs' broadsides against the West in general and Israel in particular. The result is that they are undercutting American allies who were preparing to get out of this circus before it was too late, while not succeeding at all in changing the tone of the upcoming conference (which, by the way, taking place in Geneva will get a whole lot more publicity in the world press than Durban I, in much more out-of-the-way Durban.) But now that they are involved in the conference, they will resist pulling out even when the upcoming disaster becomes obvious.
President Obama's unwillingness at this point to get involved, particularly where it would wind up humiliating some of his early supporters in the bureaucracy, will keep this going far too long. As I said at the beginning, like watching a train wreck in slow motion....
Update (March 2): I've now seen press reports to the effect that, in quiet statements to various people behind the scenes, the U.S. government has indicated that we will not participate further in Durban II. Apparently the whole thing became too embarrassing to be covered up. But note how quietly we are pulling out: To make a big deal of it would "ruin the chances for more diplomatic engagement" in the future (i.e.: our new UN crowd will try things like this again when/where they think they can get away from it), not to mention highlighting the fact that this should have been a no-brainer from the beginning. It also minimizes the possibility that our pull-out will lead a boycott by others. I guess, in this instance, the U.S. is not "ready to lead again."
Obama's Do-over
Saw the speech to Congress last night. Initial gut reaction: Not bad as far as it went. It seemed like that was his do-over for the supremely forgetable inaugural address, which seemed to leave the vast throng looking at each other and going, "Huh?" This time, he outlined domestic goals for the next four years (interestingly, referred to in quasi-Freudian manner as "my first term") clearly and at the top of his form. ("Top of his form," for President Obama, means well-articulated but vague. Kind of like the proverbial cuisine which tastes really good at the time but leaves you hungry an hour later when you realize there really wasn't all that much substance there.) The criticism that there wasn't a lot of detail is just carping; the occasion didn't call for detail, but for reassurance and broad outlines.
Also, clearly, the occasion didn't call for much on foreign policy (the one aspect in which this wasn't entirely an inaugural speech do-over.) There were a few sentences thrown in as an obvious after-thought essentially saying "we'll handle it" for major foreign policy challenges, including Iraq, terrorism, and the Middle East. In effect, 'I've got people working on it, and we'll get back to you.' OK for now but, as with the ambitious domestic goals (including the cure for cancer, which I remember at least both Nixon and Carter pledging in speeches they made to Congress), details to come later.
Also, clearly, the occasion didn't call for much on foreign policy (the one aspect in which this wasn't entirely an inaugural speech do-over.) There were a few sentences thrown in as an obvious after-thought essentially saying "we'll handle it" for major foreign policy challenges, including Iraq, terrorism, and the Middle East. In effect, 'I've got people working on it, and we'll get back to you.' OK for now but, as with the ambitious domestic goals (including the cure for cancer, which I remember at least both Nixon and Carter pledging in speeches they made to Congress), details to come later.
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