You’ve all heard about the massacre of almost 200 people in the Congo, on Christmas Day, 2008 right? And you know every detail of the Lebanese Army’s assault on the Lebanese army’s assault on Nar el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, correct? Richard Landes had a discussion with an Oxford PhD student about how some deaths are more equal than others.
I recently had an email exchange with a PhD student at Oxford who saw my posting about the study of war casualties in which I pointed out that .06 percent of those killed in wars since 1950 died in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and .3 percent of the Muslims killed in conflicts since then were killed by Israelis. He was struck by how his colleagues could talk of nothing but Israelis killing Gazans, despite the extraordinary violence to be found the world over, much of it really intentional. As he put it in a subsequent email:
The first seminar of the term dealt with a new book, which deals with intentions, double effect and blame. Need I say that the first example (and the main one used to discuss issues of war) was Gaza? … I was furious mainly about the fact that this was the only example discussed (while ignoring other obvious recent cases such as the war between Russia and Georgia or the Christmas massacre in DRC).
Landes got to wondering whether a metric could be developed to give the reader a sense of “weights” when reading a headline, some way of conveying the statistical significance of the headline as opposed to its prominence in the service of a meme.
What if we were to develop a method for determining the carbon footprint of civilian deaths in the media, something along the lines of column-inches, minutes airtime, people per demonstration on the one hand and number of civilian casualties on the other. One could do it across the boards, but just consider Palestinian civilian deaths: killed by Israelis, by Palestinians, by other Arabs. It wouldn’t be hard. After all, how much coverage did the civilian deaths in Hamas’ vicious take-over in 2006 receive from the media? Or after the orgy of coverage during the summer war of 2006 in Lebanon, how much coverage did the Lebanese army’s assault on Nar el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp receive?
As one of the harsher critics at this site commented: “numbers push the reality into everyone’s eyes.” Well, of course they can just as easily mislead — as in his simplistic comparison of Israeli civilian dead with Palestinian civilian dead. But I suspect that a media footprint might indeed reveal the startling imbalances of a media coverage that unquestionably has an enormous impact on public opinion the world over.
However one chooses to regard Israel, it seems that basic objectivity would make it advantageous to understand the frequency of the events that are being reported. “Man bites dog” makes interesting reading. But how often do men bite dogs?
One of the worst effects of meme-driven journalism is that it cheapens Third World deaths that are not linked to some sexy Western issue. Unless a story can be linked to a political hot button item in the West, it goes unnoticed. The Christmas Day massacre in the Congo is a perfect example. Who cares about dead Africans if you can’t connect it to Global Warming or George W. Bush?
This creates a species of “invisible men”; people whose lives and deaths go unnoticed because they aren’t the topic of conversations in the chic places of the world. Maybe that’s the way it should be. Maybe we should be marching in indignation over the death of some Hamas operative and who gives a rat’s ass anyway about a bunch of guys in the jungle? But Richard Landes’ idea of getting the quantitative weights back into the picture are worth thinking about.
If Israel killed only .3 percent of all Muslims who have been died in conflicts, then who killed the other 99.7%? Maybe the reason we don’t want to ask the question is we don’t want to hear the answer.
PJM Home
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
105 Comments
1. NahnCee:If a person or a population fights back before they are killed, do their deaths count for more than a person or a population who sits meekly waiting to be beheaded?
For example, if you have a population who knowingly elected a bunch of terrorists to be their government, and then their elected government proceeds to assault and try to murder the neighbors on a daily basis isn’t that standing by and doing nothing the same thing as waiting meekly to be beheaded? So how much grief is that population due if they become dead as a result of their inaction?
Jan 21, 2009 - 8:01 pm 2. ADE:So if the metric is lines of column-inches, minutes airtime, people per demonstration on the one hand and number of civilian casualties on the other, my guess is that it would be heavily correlated with:
the mascot du jour,
brown people (ie, people who don’t think white, the kind we feel sorry for)
religion (on the basis that being a ‘youth’ is not accepted as a valid religion)
rock star status
TV channel
America
Tilters (see Tim Blair for definition).
Oh, nearly, the extent of coverage would be directly proportional to the extent of the safety net provided by the US/Israel, for example, outside the Gaza border.
ADE
Jan 21, 2009 - 8:45 pm 3. ADE:nearly forget
Jan 21, 2009 - 8:46 pm 4. Lifeofthemind:An artificial nation that exists largely as a product of external agitation designs and manufactures itself to generate the maximum conflict and exists primarily to generate transfer payments to kleptocrats, media, fraudulent charities and bureaucrats. The surprise is that there are any genuine human beings caught up in this show. The Palestinians are the Truman show nation that now gets to interact with Obama, the Truman show President.
The real costs are as always the opportunity costs. Not just in the terms of real humans killed or terrorized but the billions misspent and as Wretchard and Mr Landes make clear in terms of crowding out the visibility and access to scarce resources, of finance, political will and of visibility, that could be devoted to more worthy causes. The victims of Hamas include the dead of Darfur, Tibet, Mexico and many other places.
Jan 21, 2009 - 9:06 pm 5. what is occupation:Thanks for this post, these were the points i made 2 posts ago…
It only is a war crime when Israel or the USA does the “perceived” injustice to the Islamic world…
This can me explained simply…
The House of Islam has not wrapped it’s collective mind around the concept that other’s in this world are in fact EQUAL human beings…
Since 640 ce the mind of Islam says “we have perfected the what the Jews and Christians have distorted”
They do not accept the the fact that the Jew or the Christian can be their equal LET ALONE SUPERIOR….
Thus it’s witchcraft that keeps Israel afloat in a sea of Islamic nations…
Islam (and it’s peoples) are in for a rude awakening…
Modernity are bitting them in the ass…
Jan 21, 2009 - 9:11 pm 6. what is occupation:Corrections of a poor typist…
Thanks for this post, these were the points i made 2 posts ago…
It only is a war crime when Israel or the USA does the “perceived” injustice to the Islamic world…
This can be explained simply…
The House of Islam has not wrapped it’s collective mind around the concept that others in this world are in fact EQUAL human beings…
Since 640 ce the mind of Islam says “we have perfected the what the Jews and Christians have distorted”
They do not accept the the fact that the Jew or the Christian can be their equal LET ALONE SUPERIOR….
Thus it’s witchcraft that keeps Israel afloat in a sea of Islamic nations…
Islam (and it’s peoples) are in for a rude awakening…
Modernity are biting them in the ass…
Jan 21, 2009 - 9:14 pm 7. jaymaster:Some of this can be explained by an honest “man bites dog” bias in the media.
It’s like the cop in Oakland, CA who shot and killed a thug last week. It was all over the news, and led to riots, protests, etc. Yet 300 some thugs were killed by other thugs in the same area over the last year or so, and we never heard a peep.
The media don’t report that “ 2000 houses in the viewing area didn’t burn today!” It just doesn’t sell. And I can’t fault them for that.
Yet I will readily admit that some folks obviously hide behind this profit-driven bias to provide cover for their particular politically driven bias.
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet figured out how to discern between the two.
Jan 21, 2009 - 9:52 pm 8. Leo Linbeck III:Seems like you ought to be able to use Lexis-Nexis or Google/Google News to create such a metric more quickly and easily.
For instance:
Here’s another metric:
Not sure what these all mean, but it can’t be good…
L3
Jan 21, 2009 - 10:16 pm 9. whiskey:Occupation — Islam is a system of polygamy. Which means a few big men have all the women and the rest … have only conquest to get women. Ghengis Khan and his followers, and their descendants, did not conquer half the world because they believed the Sky God commanded them. They did it because it was the best (and only way) to get women.
Take away the polygamy and women-hoarding and Islam becomes no more inherently aggressive than say, Shinto Buddhism. Which is not to say it cannot be dangerous (ask any Filipino about Japan) but the requirement to deal with all those young men without women is gone. Men with stable families are not quick to sign on for danger. They have too much at stake. Men with nothing will always roll the dice.
Much of this moralizing Wretchard does not get. The purpose is to increase status among the Gentry/Aristocracy of the West, with various “important/fashionable” groups playing the role of Paris Hilton’s latest dog. That’s why some care about Hamas and none care about Congo citizens. Even less about Americans killed in 9/11.
Obama has according tot he WaTimes, ordered the immediate closure of the “Black” detention sites in Europe, and the immediate release or transfer to civilian courts (same thing, no Miranda rights reading from the CIA) of the inmates there.
Obama is not stupid. He knows this pretty much guarantees a successful attack on the US. He WANTS it. I mean, he’s the son of a polygamist, Muslim father who was raised a Muslim and born one. He sees ultra-violence committed against the US as the key to allowing him more power to force a surrender, the way deeply feminized Spain surrendered almost immediately to Islamists after the Madrid Bombing.
This is all part of how our elites are structured. Unlike the old elites who had many flaws, but retained a huge interest in having their fundamental society safe and sound and internally consistent, the new elites are driven by fashion, fads, have portable wealth that is not tied to any particularly country, and demand unlimited power as celebrities and pseudo celebrities. Hence the VIP sections of the Inauguration celebrations like a Nightclub (and for the same status reasons).
This is not ever going to change unless/until the elites are all destroyed and removed. You won’t ever change Paris Hilton, at best you can make her irrelevant and poor. Obama and his elite backers DEMAND Terrorist rights over American lives because that’s the fashion of a debased, debauched, Paris Hilton type elite.
Which is ultimately not sustainable and contains it’s own counter-reaction.
Jan 21, 2009 - 10:19 pm 10. Leo Linbeck III:While we’re doing comparative numerology, consider the following:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50K6E320090121
Apparently, Obama’s inauguration got 35 times the press coverage of Bush’s.
Seems like something is out of kilter, though. All of these ratios should equal 42: the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
L3
Jan 21, 2009 - 10:29 pm 11. Dave:@L3: About your metrics. It would seem to me
that what Thomas Sowell called “the annointed”
have decided that Palestinians are among their favorites.
Congolese are sorta favorites but barely so.
Texans of course are not favorites but targets.
Now compare death rates and tell me Texas ain’t plumb lucky.
Jan 21, 2009 - 10:35 pm 12. NahnCee:Texans shoot back. They make lousy targets.
Jan 21, 2009 - 10:48 pm 13. Lifeofthemind:@L3,
Jan 21, 2009 - 11:09 pm 14. twobyfour:Good work, your results are falling into line, same order of magnitude. This should be expanded and made into a general reference. Trying to consider who would host such a project the name Freedom House http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=1 comes to mind. Perhaps you might want to see if they could pick up the idea?
LotM,
I can host and set up a site. A little busy at the moment, but can have the basics up in 3 weeks. Need some conceptual input. t at twobyfour dot info.
Jan 21, 2009 - 11:23 pm 15. Annoy Mouse:I am slow but I am slowly getting it.
Thanks W
Jan 21, 2009 - 11:54 pm 16. PA Cat:Would like to see the metrics for the murder rate in Detroit, as long as we’re messing with Texas.
Jan 21, 2009 - 11:56 pm 17. Starling:L3, who is also a business school professor, and I agree: a citation-weighted index generated through a search of google news or lexis/nexis has the makings of a suitable metric. Plotting this metric with time as the horizontal axis will reveal much.
Jan 22, 2009 - 1:22 am 18. Bob Murphy:L3, that is neat!
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:32 am 19. lc:LoTM #4: right on.
I’m not sure that “each man’s death diminishes me.” I’m just not sure. It is disquieting, though, to put a number on death (although it’s done all the time). But, perspective is important, as is an understanding of the political warping of information we are exposed to or is given to us. These metrics put truth to the lie of the gripe du jour. One must be an active consumer/seeker of accurate information. BC is one excellent source.
Jan 22, 2009 - 3:51 am 20. Nomenklatura:A large majority of blacks murdered in the US every year are murdered by other blacks, but liberals don’t ever want to think about them, because doing so would lead to the conclusion that members of so-called ‘victim groups’ are often morally ambiguous and even responsible for the problems in their own communities.
It’s more comfortable to close your eyes, even if it means, as in the cases you cite, ignoring 97% of the actual violence and abandoning the real victims to their fate. Telling yourself fairy tales like this about how the world works is really a form of thumbsucking.
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:04 am 21. wretchard:It’s more comfortable to close your eyes, even if it means, as in the cases you cite, ignoring 97% of the actual violence and abandoning the real victims to their fate. Telling yourself fairy tales like this about how the world works is really a form of thumbsucking.
That’s what I think this crisis is about: a failure of information. Whether it concerns the financial, economic, environmental or political systems, we’ve lived in fantasy too long. That could be supported for as long as systems were isolated and there was enough of a ‘design margin’ to keep things in conformity with the fairy tales, but now the information is clearing. The raw signal is burning through the filters.
The reason a lot of peple on the Left are going to be disappointed with Obama was that some of them may have actually believed that given a strong enough filter, they didn’t have to see things as they truly are. But not even Obama can change the facts. He’s not the Messiah; he’s the Golden Calf. So what may happen over the next few years is that reality will destroy a lot of conventional wisdoms and replace them with a new set.
Our myths date back to the late 1940s and 50s. They are going to be updated by the experience we will soon go through.
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:16 am 22. kaba:For those of you old enough to remember, consider the endless coverage of My Lai as opposed to the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
Jan 22, 2009 - 5:04 am 23. Leo Linbeck III:Dave,
You’re damn straight we’re lucky! And every day I thank my lucky stars.
Cheers.
L3
Jan 22, 2009 - 5:29 am 24. ADE:W
That’s what I think this crisis is about: a failure of information.
I think, in the end, it is a failure of concept. A failure to understand that to every action there is an opposite reaction. A failure to understand that life is a choice between stark alternatives. A failure to understand just how selfish our genes are. Fairyland. So Hirosima was bad, because (now)the failure to consider the alternative is not allowed. In Catholic speak, original sin is always there; now, it just “needs to be worked on”.
A realistic framework for your model is not too demanding, it just needs a balance sheet, an ‘on the one hand’ juxtaposed against ‘on the other hand’.
Of course, a balance sheet (good V bad) is anathema to the Left, as it instantly eliminates Govt grants, trips to conferences, pograms to eliminate enemies of the propletariate, that sort of thing. So right now we can’t have an ‘on the other hand’ type of analysis. But see it from their side: gay whales deserve a grant and a conference, you bigot!
In your proposed ‘Death Importance Index’, (DII copyright one ADE), it is important that the model incorporate a Credibility Index (DIICI – yeah, its mine) which measures the extent to which the DII incorporates the upside and the downside.
You’re on to something, W.
ADE
Jan 22, 2009 - 5:37 am 25. Leo Linbeck III:W,
Bravo. But I think the unanswered question is how long, and at what cost, the myths persist. As one of my colleagues loves to point out, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay liquid.”
I had a classmate who started an investment management firm in Palo Alto in 1997. Great guy, one of the smartest finance minds I’ve met. He wanted to be a “value” investor, buying undervalued companies and holding them until the market realized their value. Kinda like Buffett.
Anyway, for two years everything he bought went down and the market pumped more and more money into internet stocks. He lost 5% the first year and about 5% the second year, IIRC. Which was actually pretty good performance for his strategy at that time.
In late 1999, he shut down his fund, returned all of the original investment to his investors (paying for all losses out of his pocket), left his wife and young child, and moved to a kibbutz. (Seriously.)
The dot.coms crashed in 2000. If he’d have stuck with it, he’d have probably made a mint for him and his investors.
Seeing the trend is only part of the solution. Discerning the right timing and maintaining one’s nerve are also critical. These are not as much about information as humility and intestinal fortitude.
Cheers.
L3
Jan 22, 2009 - 5:41 am 26. ADE:Because, L3, he was passive.
You must manipulate the market.
That’s W’s point.
ADE
Jan 22, 2009 - 5:51 am 27. wretchard:There are times when I think things are not only going to get worse than we think, but worse than we can imagine. But in that maelstrom there will be an opportunity for those who can provide relatively uncorrupted tokens of value or veracity. To some extent we are going to have to rebuild the tokens from the ground up. Within the financial system its important to know what it is you have and what the value of what you are being offered in exchange is and how these values shift over time. The Market is the mechanism, but many of the properties of the objects being traded are now doubtful.
The crisis will therefore have two aspects: a reshaping of the perception of what we have based on what we apprehend; and second, a restoration of integrity in the symbology which describes them. The fall in prices will accomplish the former. What is worrisome is that we aren’t really doing anything about the latter. The system can’t recover without reform.
It’s like finding your database corrupt and recovering what records you can. That’s fine insofar as it goes; but until you find and extirpate the processes which have corrupted your database to start with, then your basic problem still remains.
Jan 22, 2009 - 5:53 am 28. Leo Linbeck III:Another way to frame the problem is not to think of it as a corruption process (good becomes bad), but as a development process that gets arrested (bad, on its way to becoming good, gets halted).
One possible way of describing the situation is that GenY is suffering from arrested development. Boomers (77M souls) suffered from this, resulting in a dominant culture that worships youth, sexual license, money, and “cool.” GenY (79M souls) appears to suffer from the same affliction. This is my working hypothesis for the huge advantage that Obama enjoyed in the youth vote. They are immature adolescents who still believe in Santa Claus. They are “stuck on teen.”
But when will they realize that Santa Claus doesn’t exist in the way they think? SC is not about the toys, but rather a metaphor for the much more important, and incomprehensible gift of the Incarnation, God becoming man to save us. Not the gift under the tree, but the Gift that resolved itself on a wooden cross. There’s a big truth inside the myth, but you need to grow up to get it. Fill your life with toys, and you’ll never see this truth.
The implications of this arrested development model (vs. the corruption model) are that we don’t need to “fix” the people, so much as let life unfold and punch them in the nose until they “get it.” It is an argument for liberty rather than endless “solutions” provided by a database administrator or programmer.
Just a thought…
L3
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:12 am 29. Anton:@4. Lifeofthemind: “The Truman show president”, I love it! May I please have permission to use that, it is nearly perfect.
More seriously, a little while back my son and I were talking around the campfire and the media’s relentless refusal to cover the full gamut of carnage in the world came up. He stated that the meme “if it bleeds it leads” was pure hokum. The real matrix involved worked more like this;
If it is Western and “white” (meaning people that subscribe to Western thought and/or capitalism as “white” South Korea= mostly white, Russia=not really) and they are attacking anyone else (or even lawfully defending themselves) then this is a story that will headline. Inevitably with the Westerners cast as the villians.
If it is Western vs anybody else it will lead with screaming headlines obout the awful oppression of the “anybody”.
If it is anybody else vs anybody else nothing will be said about it unless one of the sides is supported by a Western nation, if so them they will be cast as the bad-guy.
This is then raised to the power of the “safety factor”, just how safe is it for a reporter to stand around making stuff up about one of the sides. Example; Israel has a very high safety factor, maybe to the power of three or four, Russia very much the opposite (safety factor .5 or so) Gaza, not a chance.
Therefore when Israel attacks Gaza the reporters all flock to Israel and say slanderous things about the IDF while using footage provided by Gazan stringers. This is a “perfect storm” for them.
When the Lord’s Army decides to chop defenseless women and children to death with machetes there is nary a blip on the radar. Too dangerous, no pre-made “victimized class”, can’t be bothered.
Then there are the cases that are just too confusing for the little darlings in the media; Darfur, Muslims tribesmen killing Black African Animists (Hey Bob, what’s an Animist?). Muslims=good, Blacks=good, killing=bad, can’t find it on a map=bad, no stock footage=bad, they get all confused and have to go get a latte. On the upside there is always the BAD WAR that they can cover from the Green Zone to fill up the 22 minutes of air time anyways.
The media will also put out that the event was too hard to get to for coverage, or that it caught them by surprise. They managed to get forty reporters and camera crews to Wasilla (a town that few , if any, of them had ever heard before that date) the day after Palin was named but they couldn’t get a reporter to Beslan in a week.
This is also impacted by the subtle racism of the elites who feel the some people “just can’t help themselves” and are therefore exempt from blame for their actions.
I just wish that I had paid more attention in college, this seems to be a very complex alogrithim to construct.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:16 am 30. Doug:Reset to Sept 10, 2001:
Obama to Shut Guantánamo Site and C.I.A. Prisons
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:21 am 31. Blindman:President Obama is expected to sign orders that would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects.
It’s rather like finding the data you put into the data base was corrupt. We now must be very careful of what is put into the new databases.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:21 am 32. bob:Unfortunately in time the meaning of the words and data will slowly change. Those who refer to the database will have to have the courage to update the meaning changes in order to persevere its basic truth. That is a challenge that men fail at because they don’t want to see answers. They are more comfortable with the notion that things can change.
What’s the percentage of the islamers in the various countries that are actually in polygamous hell situtions, i.e. marriages?
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:22 am 33. ADE:W
The Market is the mechanism
As you say, it is only a mechanism – ie a place where you can say you want to sell, and then get your dollars in return.
It was a great place when you were selling sardines; way back then it was a place where you could align mechanism and value. Fresh off the boat – high; two days ago – feed the chooks.
The market in shares still provides a mechanism, but only a mechanism, not a value pointer – who can align relative value between a tech stock and an Australian Uranium mining stock? My question would be: how many of the properties of the objects being traded were ever understood?
Certainly not the flood and ebb of buy/sell orders would provide an explanation.
But to extend your original post re the relative value of deaths. Is there a ‘market’ in deaths?
Undoubtably yes. Do we know where the restoration of the symbology of deaths will lead? No, but you have posed a great question.
ADE
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:24 am 34. Doug:“Seeing the trend is only part of the solution.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:27 am 35. Richard Moorton:Discerning the right timing and maintaining one’s nerve are also critical. These are not as much about information as humility and intestinal fortitude.”
—
I prefer to describe it as
“things outside my comfort zone.“
Dear Wretchard,
A luminous insight. I have been telling everything who will listen that the financial world will have to be rebuilt from the ground up, with arrangements grounded in reality. It’s not going to be pleasant, and it will change the landscape radically. If the United States is still the resilient, robust country I think it is, we will come through.
As for Obama, I still can’t read him. He could be a force for great good or disaster. Or something of both. In spite of his talk about transparency, he plays his cards very close to the vest. I am much more worried about the motley crew that swept into power with him than Obama himself. Some of those people are so pernicious in their principles and drunk with their own illusions that they could drive us right off a cliff.
One great good has already come from his presidency. Many American blacks now seem to have a sense of restored self respect and reconciliation with a country that has not always treated them well. That is all to the good.
A note to NahnCee on Texans shooting back. As a Texan, I can only say, Indeed. When I was hunting for a job in the Academy years ago, I had lunch with a professor who was from New York, and took public rudeness for granted. He had been working in Houston and, when irritated by a pickup-driving Texan in traffic had, as they say, flipped him the bird. The insulter was horrified when the insultee whipped his pickup around and began a hot pursuit of the professor. Fortunately for all concerned, the chase was fruitless.
The professor thought this proved the barbarity of Texans. He had no sense whatever that he had himself done anything outrageous. He knew I was from Texas, by the way, and obviously told me the tale to let me know what he thought of people like me. No, he had no intention of hiring me.
Best,
Richard
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:28 am 36. ADE:L3
Oh dear, L3, just back to the thread from the above, only to see this:
SC is not about the toys, but rather a metaphor for the much more important, and incomprehensible gift of the Incarnation, God becoming man to save us.
You’ve completely missed the point of SC – it is to alert yor children to the point that that their most fervent beliefs are absolutely make believe, and we were all in on it.
it is a great lesson, one that I have rigorously followed with my children and grandchildren.
What better preparation could a child have to understand that God does not exist, but that believing is essential.
ADE
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:31 am 37. Anton:@20. Nomenklatura Check the FBI’s website under UCR (Unified Crime Reports)Reports, this breaks down crime by a number of factors, suspect/victim/size of city/age.
They are difficult to read at first and you have to dig through a lot of b.s. to get to the info you seek but he effort is worth it. I am sure that a lot of Liberal’s heads would explode if they tried to comprehend the fact that their pet victimized classes are actually self-victimized.
@wretchard 21 I think that civilaztions are a lot like a lazy man’s dryer filter, the stuff keeps building up until it causes the unit to fail. If he is lucky he catches it in time and cleans the filter out getting rid of the junk that has built up, if he isn’t, the dryer catches fire and burns down his house.
At times I am afraid that the fire has started.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:36 am 38. dan:i thought about this same subject when watching schindler’s list this weekend – wondering whether there would ever be a bonanza of soviet atrocity movies. seems like the ur-omission where this topic is concerned.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:37 am 39. Herb:@ 29 Anton:
I dont think its a lack of knowledge that keeps the journos away. There are no decent hotels in Darfur.
ADE @ 36:
Mr. S. Claus prepares the child for comprehension of the transcendental. See:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122963990662019887.html
You’re missing a lot.
Jan 22, 2009 - 7:19 am 40. RWE:Similarly, the U.S. took in a total of 5% of all of the Africans exported as slaves. And the other 5%? We don’t talk about them.
And compare the numbers of people injured by nuclear power plants in the U.S. with those injured by falling off of solar power arrays and wind power systems and you will discover a new definition of “dangerous.” I don’t even have to have the numbers to know what the answer will be. Falls are the no.1 cause of injury in the country.
Anton: You have hit upon the Design Margin concept that we discussed here a while back.
Jan 22, 2009 - 7:23 am 41. bob:When the sunnis hack shia heads, and the shia hack sunni heads, is it all about the women?
Jan 22, 2009 - 7:32 am 42. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA):Whiskey #9 –
The Mongol ‘hordes, while not christianised’ actually tended towards Buddhism and Christianity when they moved west. At the time there were substantial communities of Christians in China, India, Tibet, Persia, Iraq, and all across central Asia.
When the Baghdad Caliphate was destroyed by the Mongols under Hulegu in 1258, the mosques were destroyed but churches were spared. Hulegu’s wife is known to have been a Christian, and it is possible he was as well.
As another example, between 1281 and 1317 the Syrian Patriarchate was held by ‘Yaballaha III,’ who was (in fact) a Uighir Mongol born near what is now Beijing. He had his patriarchal seat in Tabriz (NW Persia) which was capital of the Mongol Ilkhan dynasty. There he ruled about thirty ecclesiastical provinces and hundreds of dioceses, and as well founded a large monastery.
His fellow monk and travelling companion, Bar Sauma, was sent by the khan on a diplomatic mission intended to enlist Christian Europe in a combined assault on Muslim Egypt. For context, there had already been eight crusades in the 13th century, so it was not a far-fetched idea. In the event, King Edward I of England himself received holy communion from Bar Sauma, but Europe was exhausted from failed crusades and the mission came to naught.
The Mongols attacked the Mamluks of Egypt anyway. The Mamluks survived, and infuriated by Christian assistance to the Mongols began phenomenally vicious persecutions wherever they could do.
The profoundly legalistic Muslim fundamentalism of early 14th century served as the intellectual seedbed of Wahhabism and other islamist movements of our own time.
Christianity was reduced to minority status all across the Middle East. The Mongol dynasty collapsed in 1368, to be replaced by the Ming. In subsequent years the tyrant Timur — a monster, even by the standards of his own day — slaughtered Christians by the thousands and forcibly converted the remaining Mongols to Islam.
This forced islamisation of the Mongols, however, occurred more than 150 years *after* their invasions.
Jan 22, 2009 - 7:32 am 43. exhelodrvr:jaymaster,
“Yet I will readily admit that some folks obviously hide behind this profit-driven bias to provide cover for their particular politically driven bias.
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet figured out how to discern between the two.”
It’s actually pretty easy; just compare how similar stories are covered when there is a possibility for a negative perception of the left, versus how it is covered when there is the possibility for a negative perception of the right.
Jan 22, 2009 - 7:54 am 44. exhelodrvr:RWE,
“Similarly, the U.S. took in a total of 5% of all of the Africans exported as slaves. And the other 5%?”
And the black involvement at the point-of-origin of the slave routes is also never covered.
Jan 22, 2009 - 7:55 am 45. Mongoose:L3: Just so (and kudos to W)
Some minor points: I wonder if the term “myth” really describes both our civilization’s response to the crises of the 1940’s and 1950’s, and the current ideologies that so bedevils the world today. It is hard to see them as the same and to capture the sense of it with solely the notion of “myth”. “Assumptions”? Even that does not work.
Perhaps the “unworkable myths” (or their foundations) are really from the 1960 onward rather than from the earlier period. Perhaps their creation was an attempt by the Boomers to overturn not myths, but the reality of the world of their parents. What they replaced them with truly were “myths”, not what they took to be myths pf their parents, e.g., the world views, assumptions or simplification of strategies and tactics of their parent’s generation. The Boomers just could not tell the difference. The reality of their parents’ world remained and remains even today in one form or another. Sometimes it seems that we are in a time loop. The challenges from the 1930’s onward appear to still be with us but only take new forms. Examples abound: We have elected what appears to be a communist — the challenge of this threat is deeper today than at any time in our history; we are perhaps facing another New Deal; a return to Spheres of Influence geopolitics, and etc. Talk about “arrested development”!
It may be we have to return in some measure to the mindset of those that faced those earlier struggles. Perhaps those were not “myths” at all.
As to the notion of “fixing process”, L3 has a point. It cannot be fixed, only mended. Christianity guides us here. The problem is the nature of man, and as he points, it is a manner of a “arrested redemption” (L3, forgive me if I ut words in your mouth). It will always be with us.
This the Founders well knew. We would be wise to look backward at their solutions to this constant human problem.
However, one imagines that it is a matter of both redemption and corruption. “Fixing the symbolism” really amounts to “fixing the civilization” for the issue is much broader than marketplace “symbols” or “tokens”. These, after all, are just expressions of underlying things. The problem is within us, but also in our institutions. The sort of corruption going on Wall Street entails corrupt collusion between the Politics, Media, and the Finance Industry. Throw in the schools too, for they seem to be consciously churning out students that either cannot or will not glean the truth of the matter and act politically to end it. One could go on — these are not the only institutions that are corrupt.
So the solution must encompass more than “tokens”, though they are part of it.
Jan 22, 2009 - 8:05 am 46. Mongoose:It is really about our civilization: Its redemption and reform. Renaissance and reinvigoration of the West, or its decline and destruction.
Bart: Are you saying that there were any meaningful Christin Mongol conversions?
Buddhist conversions?
Where there any major campaigns/battles where Christians and Mongols fought side by side?
How does the experience of the Kiev Rus (13th Century), and later Mongol depredations against Slavic peoples square with your notions about cooperation between Mongols and Christians or Europeans in general?
Are you implying that presecutions of Christians by Muslims is due to Muslims acting in revenge for their collusion with the Mongols?
You might consider the notion that the limited support of other religious communities was done to poke Islam in the eye, not out of any “affinities” to those other faiths.
This is a rather broad assertion on your part.
Jan 22, 2009 - 8:29 am 47. Lifeofthemind:The new and not improved whitehouse.gov has two Executive Orders up. One torturous document on ethics that in its very complexity could be used as a demonstration of what is wrong with government, human resource systems and the legal profession. The thought that the lawyers who get their jollies from such documents are “reforming” the financial system preemptively convinces me that they are doomed to failure.
The other is a directive on Presidential records and Executive Privilege that should be fairly strait forward. I contains a typographical error that places a reference to the former president in the passage that refers to the current president. With this crowd stumbling at the gate we are going to be in for a long four years.
Jan 22, 2009 - 8:37 am 48. Must reads from the Insomniac | The Anchoress:[...] Richard Fernandez on conventional wisdom and perceptions [...]
Jan 22, 2009 - 8:40 am 49. Richard Aubrey:In studying subSaharan Africa decades ago, I was told that the Arabs took three to five times as many blacks out of Africa as went west.
Jan 22, 2009 - 8:57 am 50. Lifeofthemind:Which brings up the question of what happened to them. Is there any South Asian version of Jamaica, or Haiti, or, for the love of God, Alabama? Someplace on the littoral of the Indian Ocean?
There must have been a monstrous atrocity. Somehow.
Nobody, even my instructors back in the day, were interested in that question.
@Wretchard That’s what I think this crisis is about: a failure of information. Whether it concerns the financial, economic, environmental or political systems, we’ve lived in fantasy too long.
Please allow me to indulge in a biological or information systems model that is well beyond my own qualification. Correct my errors please but this is the type of play that Belmont stimulates.
Perhaps the point of failure is only secondarily at the point of myth generation by adherents to the New or Alternative culture. That is where they flood the system with bad information. The problem is that they are primed to do so because their receptors were already set to screen out non-congruent data. For those more technically inclined than I am the model may be that not so much in hardware, a misdesigned receiver filter, as in firmware. A viral filter has reset the information intake to screen out threatening data and then the acceptable data that reinforces the prejudicial view gets replicated and redistributed.
The problem then becomes one of how to reset the firmware? That can happen after a severe enough shock reboots the system. Given that 9-11 was not able to do that I shudder to contemplate what would. We certainly do not want to passively observe a collection of data points in this experiment. What is needed is a targeted series of challenges designed to visibly get corrective information past the filters. The market should provide incentives to do so. The generation of false information is in fact rejected by the market, the box office of Syriana and the stock value of the NYT show that. However that does not mean that better information will be able to enter the market and get past the filters.
Jan 22, 2009 - 9:00 am 51. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA):Absolutely. I am not saying the Mongols had been ‘christianised’ as a people. Many of them, however, *were* Christians. Many also were Buddhists.
In the 13th Century the Syriac church had a Metropolitan in Khanbalik (now Beijing) and Hsi-an-fu (now Xi’an). Thus they had many dioceses in the area, which is unsurprising since Christianity in China dates to the Tang Dynasty in the early 7th Century.
It was suppressed from the 10th to the early 13th Centuries, however it flourished in Mongol areas, and especially after establishment of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. Kublai Khan was quite favourable to both Christianity and Buddhism.
Marco Polo often reported finding Christian communities.
The Syriac church also had Metropolitans all across central Asia, including India, Tibet, Afghanistan, Samarkhand, and plenty of others. So common were Christians across that entire region that the design of mosques to this day is a strong echo of the Syriac churches covering the region.
On their drive westward the Mongols most certainly trashed many great cities, such as Samarkhand, but the destruction was political and military. Syriac churches were often collateral damage.
In the early years many Mongols became Christians, because prior to the 14th Century that was the majority religion across large chunks of central and western Asia.
For the most part, islamisation of the Mongols came after the collapse of their dynasty back in China, and at the same time thousands of other people were forcibly converted to Islam.
Really militant Islam dates from the 14th Century, not the 7th.
Jan 22, 2009 - 9:05 am 52. Peter Boston:Really militant Islam dates from the 14th Century, not the 7th.
The Franks were beating off the Mohammedans swarming from occupied Spain in the 700s. Was that not “real” militarism?
Jan 22, 2009 - 9:17 am 53. Mongoose:Bart, You appear to be engaging in revisionist history. Islam was a religion of conquest from the get go. That their depredations during the first millennium AD were confined to Maghreb or the ME proper does not make them less “real” (whatever that means).
A refresher on Muslim conquests for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests
O, you ducked the part about the Keiv Rus and the Slavs.
Jan 22, 2009 - 9:45 am 54. Anton:@49. Richard Aubrey:
Chinese Gordon died in Khartoum fighting Islamic fanatics (of a very similar brand to the ones we face today) at the end of the 19th century, 1889, if I recall correctly.
He had previous contacts with that culture trying to stem the flow of black slaves out of the Nile basin and into the Islamic Arab world. The British fought several battles with the Arab slavers around the Horn of Africa over the span of the 19th century.
The reason that there are no significant black populations in Arabia is that they were worked to death in hazardous tasks. They were cheaper to replace as adult units than to keep a (I hate to say it, but it’s true) “breeding stock”. The total number of slaves drawn up the Nile over the period of Islamic rule is nearly incalculable, it has to be in the millions.
The end of the slave trade caused slave-owners in the Western world to keep enough alive to ensure a next generation. Arabs did not face this problem until the conquest of the Sudan by the British in the early 1900s when the supply was suddenly cut off.
And it is true that the local blacks were complicit in the rounding up and sale of their neighbors. Try to start that discussion in an African History class on a campus today (you better be willing to write those credits off your GPA before you start).
Jan 22, 2009 - 9:52 am 55. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA):What I mean by “really militant” is far more than mere conquest — in particular the combination of fundamentalism, legalism, and a readiness to torture and slaughter those unwilling to convert.
Earlier conquests generally lacked those elements. Large communities of Jews and Christians remained as productive and “tax” paying residents of muslim-controlled areas.
Even in late-13th Century Mamluk Egypt, which then saw itself as the last bastion of Islam, the first major attempted persecution of Christians and Jews fell apart when the Mamluks realised the people they were about to slaughter not only controlled the country’s finances but also constituted the majority of scribes on which the administration depended.
In the 14th Century each pulse of violence and persecution was better organised, more intense, and more widespread. By then the area had been “conquered” for about 700 years.
These harsher laws and intensifying persecutions grew from the militant Quranic interpretation and puritanical fundamentalism of scholars like Ibn Taymiyyah, the intellectual godfather of Wahhabism.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:14 am 56. Roderick Reilly:Those of you criticising Bart are going a bit overboard. The only thing you should be taking issue with his his final sentence about when Islam became a “religion of conquest.”
He makes valid points about the widespread influence of Christianity in the ancient and medieval world that you, as his critics, should be applauding.
Modern pseudo-intellectual poseurs treat Christianity as a recent white man’s religion interloping on other cultures, and are even so crassly stupid as to think of the Crusades as as unprovoked assault on a culture and religion that they seem to think sprang up out of the ground at the Creation.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:22 am 57. Roderick Reilly:I see Bart has responded more than adequately while I was busy composing my post.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:24 am 58. Mongoose:Bart, your notion fo “really militant” is just goal post moving.
It is a distinction without a real difference, and it really soft pedals the fate on other faith under Islam. You are also confusing concurrence with causality.
I am not at all persuaded by your assertion.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:27 am 59. Andrew:Any possibility that the overinflated casualty numbers are intended to influence not only the West but the Pali sponsors as well?
Israel might “benefit” by showing Iran to be weak in the face of high Pali casualties, similarly the Palis may be using the overinflated casualty figures to try to leverage help from the Iranians.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:32 am 60. joe buzz:To further Anton’s input, you guys are forgetting about the FGI(feel good index) on which the leftist media and mind thrives. Bad mouthing the perceived oppressor while lifting up the perceived oppressed causes them to feel good about themselves and what they do. So you see, the root of the problem is a perception/world veiw issue. This FGI affects their coverage of all issues or events be they inaugurations or Congolese atrocities.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:50 am 61. pendejo grande:I’ve nothiing to add other than, Dang you guys are interesting people. I’d like to hang out in person some evening with this crew and solve the world’s problems. And maybe drink some whiskey.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:55 am 62. jim in virginia:Richard Aubrey: “Arabs took three to five times as many blacks out of Africa as went west….what happened to them?”
It’s a good point. On brief reflection,(with no study), I question the statistic. There was a huge merket for human chattel in the West Indies and the American South. Most Amerindianas had died from disease. The European colonists could make enormous money from sugar (and later cotton) but needed labor. AFAIK there was no other similar imbalance in labor demand and supply.
The Arabs probably sold African captives at various places in the Mideast- household slaves, oarsmen for the galleys. (The Ottomans kept European captives as slaves; why not Africans too?) Without a large demand, the Arabs would not have transported many slaves out of Africa to the north and east. If there was no market, why would they bother?
I don’t mean to reduce the horrible crime of human slavery to merely supply and demand. I’m trying to understand how a slave trade in North Africa in 1600 or so migh think. That’s probably impossible.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:59 am 63. jim in virginia:Anton, you have a good point. I wish I had read it before posting.
Jan 22, 2009 - 11:01 am 64. Peter Boston:The Mohammedans also took about 1,000,000 (by some accounts) Europeans as slaves in constant coastal raids along the Mediterranean and Aegean and from piracy that lasted up until the time that Jefferson put a big dent in the white slave trade by sending the Marines to the shores of Tripoli.
Try that one in a history class.
Black slavery (the real deal) is still going in many parts of Mohammedville.
Jan 22, 2009 - 11:14 am 65. RWE:Exhelo: Yep, that is true. They would have us believe that the black Africans were all existing in an state of absolute Eden before the mean old White American Southerners waded into the place with their guns and hauled them all off to Hell. The fact that it was Africans from other tribes that did the capturing and selling and it was mainly Spanish and French and Arab and a few White American Northerners that did the hauling off is overlooked as well. As is the fact that one Western justification for allowing slavery was that there were so many Africans being killed in tribal battles that some argued that we had to do something to save them.
By the way, I saw a couple of the new Army non-combat utility UH choppers today. Nice looking birds, roomy and sleek. They have clamshell doors in the back like those BO-105 medical airlift helos.
Jan 22, 2009 - 11:17 am 66. RWE:Anton and Jim: I think the Arab use of Africans is the basis for the Black claim that they “built the Pyramids” and that Ancient Egyptian civilization was black in nature. And it was, in a way, the same way that Wal-Mart was created by the Chinese.
Jan 22, 2009 - 11:24 am 67. Richard Aubrey:Jim in VA.
Jan 22, 2009 - 11:42 am 68. Orphaned Son of Liberty:They started earlier. By about five hundred years.
Peter Boston offers:
The Franks were beating off the Mohammedans swarming from occupied Spain in the 700s
That’s not a visual I needed, PB!
Jan 22, 2009 - 12:04 pm 69. davod:“I think the Arab use of Africans is the basis for the Black claim that they “built the Pyramids” and that Ancient Egyptian civilization was black in nature. And it was, in a way, the same way that Wal-Mart was created by the Chinese.”
No. The Blacks claim that the Egyptions were Black.
Jan 22, 2009 - 12:21 pm 70. Eggplant:davod:
“The Blacks claim that the Egyptions were Black.”
Take a look at Nefertiti:
http://www.info.univ-tours.fr/~antoine/images/Nefertiti1.jpg
Do you think she’s black african?
What about Khafre (builder of the second largest pyramid in Giza)?
http://allaboutegypt.org/wp-content/khafre-cairo-museum.jpg
To my eyes, these people are closer in appearance to Berbers, Arabs and Sephardic Jews.
Jan 22, 2009 - 12:56 pm 71. Herb:@ 61. pendejo grande:
I speculated on the cocktail party a while back. Consensus was t’would end in a gunfight
Jan 22, 2009 - 1:08 pm 72. Doug:Taste This:
“We had to invade it to save it.”
Black Pharaohs
In the year 730 B.C., a man by the name of Piye decided the only way to save Egypt from itself was to invade it. Things would get bloody before the salvation came.
“Harness the best steeds of your stable,” he ordered his commanders. The magnificent civilization that had built the great pyramids had lost its way, torn apart by petty warlords.
For two decades Piye had ruled over his own kingdom in Nubia, a swath of Africa located mostly in present-day Sudan.
But he considered himself the true ruler of Egypt as well, the rightful heir to the spiritual traditions practiced by pharaohs such as Ramses II and Thutmose III. Since Piye had probably never actually visited Lower Egypt, some did not take his boast seriously. Now Piye would witness the subjugation of decadent Egypt firsthand—“I shall let Lower Egypt taste the taste of my fingers,” he would later write.
Jan 22, 2009 - 1:49 pm 73. Anton:@68. Orphaned Son of Liberty:
Great, I just blew cofee out through my nose when I read your post!
Jan 22, 2009 - 1:56 pm 74. Doug:WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES
Jan 22, 2009 - 1:58 pm 75. Peter Boston:The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.
Oops.
beat back?
Jan 22, 2009 - 1:59 pm 76. Doug:Muslim Black slavery – Islam slave history of Black Africa
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:00 pm 77. Doug:The Global Slave Trade Today and Faith-Based Action to End It
The Return of the Global Slave Trade – and How We Can Fight It
David Batstone exposes the fact that the global slave trade has returned in our time – with a vengeance. His conservative estimate: 27 million people are held as slaves in the contemporary world!
He discusses the commercial interests that profit from it, and describes the capture of slaves for forced labor, and for sex and prostitution. Most are women and children. Escape is almost impossible because they are usually trafficked to another country, their passports are taken away, and their families are sometimes threatened.
This contemporary slavery is found in the United States and Canada, as well as the rest of the world.
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:01 pm 78. Doug:Batstone then lays out many faith-based efforts to end slavery in the world today, including efforts to get houses of worship to declare themselves “abolitionist,” and to offer sanctuary to those who have been trafficked.
A complete list of organizations can be found at: http://www.notforsalecampaign.org.
Even before Britain’s politicians and churchmen had finished saying sorry for slavery last Sunday, 15 Britons found themselves temporarily enslaved by the Iranian government.
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:07 pm 79. Richard Aubrey:When will our masters ever learn that, in international relations, nice guys finish last?
Doug.
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:12 pm 80. Doug:Permit me to one-up you:
Nice guys don’t even finish.
Atta had nothing on the Black Pharaohs:
“Believing there was a proper way to wage holy wars, Piye instructed his soldiers to purify themselves before combat by bathing in the Nile, dressing themselves in fine linen, and sprinkling their bodies with water from the temple at Karnak, a site holy to the ram-headed sun god Amun, whom Piye identified as his own personal deity. Piye himself feasted and offered sacrifices to Amun. “
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:17 pm 81. Doug:We are about to find out the
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:19 pm 82. Doug:Fate of Faux Nice Guys
and their acolytes.
That would be us.
Without a Prompter, the Acting President Asks his Lawyer What he is doing
(this youtube only captures part of this terrifying performance, as he rattles off a bunch of meaningless gibberish)
What would have been the reaction to Bush asking his lawyer about what he was signinng?
The executive order says everyone in custody should be questioned under the Army Field Manual, which is intended for honorable combatants, meaning POWs in a military conflict. The rule would prevent trained interrogators at the CIA from using lawful interrogation techniques against terrorists who have been trained to withstand Army Field Manual techniques.
“The message that we are sending the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism and we are going to do so vigilantly and we are going to do so effectively and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals,” the president said.
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:45 pm 83. Doug:—
Obama has said he wants to end the military commissions process but does not have anything to replace it. So, sources say, the administration will seek recommendations within the next six or seven months on how to try them.
Barry Obviously was never a Boy Scout:
“Be Prepared” not spoken here.
Jan 22, 2009 - 2:47 pm 84. Doug:Here is the complete performance of our new Commander in Chief
Jan 22, 2009 - 3:58 pm 85. Mongoose:Jeeze
Herb @71: Nah, it would end in book signings.
Jan 22, 2009 - 3:58 pm 86. Pseudo-Polymath » Blog Archive » Late Afternoon Highlights:[...] invisible dead. The global variant of the black on black violence of which nobody can [...]
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:02 pm 87. Doug:Seven Minutes and 50 Seconds in, Obama asks his lawyer what he is doing.
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:02 pm 88. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e51v4:(Lawyer is the one that sent Elian Gonzales back to Cuba under Clinton)
[...] invisible dead. The global variant of the black on black violence of which nobody can [...]
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:04 pm 89. Mongoose:The Hobo looks like he is already freaking out. That is like a a Junior year, high school president pretending to be an adult. All the suave charm is gone already.
He is looking toward the reporters in the room for approval like he is out on a first date.
So absolutely clueless about Gitmo and the WOT.
I have a funny feeling that this business is going to come back and hit the Democrats big time.
This Gitmo obsession is even more bizarre that the Katerina delusions.
Anything for the enemies of America.
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:19 pm 90. ricpic:It fits the Left’s template perfectly. The Israelis represent the rich white western world mercilessly assaulting the Palestinians, who represent the poor brown third world. It’s so orgasmically perfect from their perspective. Throw in a soupcon of ever present but never to be admitted anti-semitism and of course Palestinian deaths are more equal than the tens of thousands of black on black deaths in sub-Saharan Africa
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:39 pm 91. Mongoose:OT (sorta)
I canot seem to post the direct link so I will go through Malkin
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/22/video-no-stimulus-money-for-white-males/
Jan 22, 2009 - 4:47 pm 92. Doug:That’s a classic, Mongoose.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:03 pm 93. twobyfour:The problem is how to arrive at the perfect AlGorithm to exclude workers with the needed skillsets.
@ 91. Mongoose
Someone should put the ACLU bastids to a good use for once. Or it will be specifically white males that would be paying for reparations on top of that.
0 wants to set racial relations 30 years back. MLK must be just a blur.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:05 pm 94. Skookumchuk:A good look at white slavery in the Mediterranean is “Breaking the Chains; the Royal Navy’s War on White Slavery” by Tom Pocock.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:15 pm 95. twobyfour:@ 92. Doug
Well, not only that. It may actually be a mugged-by-reality factor for white male donks. At least for those not fully pussified yet.
I think this is, also, a recipe for a parallel economy.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:15 pm 96. Doug:Some of his Commie Backers are downright blissful, however.
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:15 pm 97. Doug:bobal said…
Jan 22, 2009 - 6:19 pm 98. Mongoose:Compelling Testimony For Obama Economic Plans Given Before Joint Tax Committee
Dramatic no-holds barred video.
2×4: I think it is inevitable now, race relations will go back 30 years or more. I think we will see “white activism”. Wait until he grants amnesty to the illegals.
Democrats seem hell bent on recreating the 1930’s. It as if they want to eradicate 60 years of progress. Eventually it will get deadly — it may even break the country apart eventually.
I never thought that they were thiscrazy and arrogant.
The way he is going, I am beginning to think he will be isolated by late summer. I have never seen a new administration that was so tone deaf. It is a terrible start. He is essentially waging war on half of the population.
The administration may turn out to be one of the most tragic moments in our history.
Jan 22, 2009 - 9:06 pm 99. Mongoose:The Left may be surprised with the dénouement.
Doug: the stimulus package is shaping up to be just another welfare program, and not just for the “poor”.
It is that, and kickback time to the NGO’s and the unions.
What really needs to be articulated is that there is not an “infrastructure crisis”. There. is. no. problem. I keep trying to get an honest answer of Democrat functionaries on this, and all I ever get is the same thing that we get out of trolls here: “A bridge collapsed in Minneapolis”. There. is. no. infrastructure. issue. This is just another giveme to the unions and connected contruction firms. It is another bubble in the making.
So is the “green tech industry”, that is just a replay of the tech bubble of the nineties, only this time it will not be driven by markets and private monies, but public monies and government diktat. It will be a complete fraud.
The “entrepreneurs” and “VC’s”, involved this will almost all be highly politically connected Democrats or their children. You can take that to the bank.
I sat in a largish presentation by a major Silicon Valley VC firm (just about everyone here would know the name immediately) and it was chuck full of Democrats. I do not mean Democrat voters, I mean high level Democrat Party insiders. I could find only one non-liberal in the bunch.
And the way these so called “venture capitalists” were talking about public fund were just scary. They were just salivating at the thought of that gravy train. Oh, and these “tech geniuses” all were true believers in AGW.
It was like going to a well heeled chiropractor’s convention or something — all that earnest and loony pseudo-intellectualism and pseudo-science coming out of self acclaimed professional.
Of course, none of the this will work. Not the infrastructure gambit, not the “green tech industry”, none of it. It is just a rip off of the nation; and the misapplication of capital at this time will be devastating.
It is pure gangsterism. There is no difference here between them than the PRC Communist Party members.
What is wrong with the GOP? People will understand this stuff; they need to get it out there.
Jan 22, 2009 - 9:45 pm 100. Dave:@Bart Hall: You make a point. H Sapiens has been conquering H Sapiens since Day One.
In “normal conquests” the conquering party secures the material wealth on the conquered for itself and goes on from there. Life for the conquered is not *too* much different than pre-conquest.
In the XXth Century though we saw the rise of the totalitarian states. When they conquered some place or the other, life then became living hell for the conquered and then for the conquerors themselves.
If, as you say, there is a sharp difference in the aftermath of Muslim conquests beginning around 700AD, then the question of “why” arises and may be of some importance.
In WWII, Wahabis/Baathists/thugs were bosom buddies with the Nazis, although not with the generality of the Afrika Corps and Luftwaffe.
The common bond seems to have been a mutual enthrallment with the occult.
Do you know of anything similar in that 700AD time frame? And BTW, when was Timur Il Lang
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:19 pm 101. comatus:running loose? His “Way of the Tree of Life”
would seem to fit right in with all this.
During the campaign, some media hay was made of McCain’s slave-owning relatives. No one dared to mention what businesses the Obama forebears in Africa must have engaged in.
Obama is not descended from slaves, unless there’s what used used to be called “a touch of the tarbrush” in his Kansan side. He is very likely descended from slave-traders.
Now, every culture has had its version of slavery. Among other things, I’m part Iroquois and part Huron–half my ancestors ate the other half. No one should be huffy about lineage that way. Around the end of his first term, Obama will get a lesson in that.
Jan 22, 2009 - 10:26 pm 102. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA):I would generally include all the early muslim conquests in the “ordinary conquest” category; certainly by the standards of the era.
Things turned vastly more militant, extreme, and vicious in the 14th Century, and — here’s the key thing — not just in the case of the muslims. Look at *Europe’s* history in the 14th Century.
Hundred Years’ War, pre-occupation with witchcraft, scapegoating of Jews, plague, death, starvation, and destruction. All tremendously violent.
I think the common factor is revealed in the freezing over of the Baltic in the early 14th Century and the widespread crop failures (cold summer) in the 1310s. See also the collapse of Viking colonies in *Green*land.
The climate turned sharply colder, food became scarce. The Ming expelled all foreigners and eliminated Christians. Even in India, things were difficult, the language Urdu (~Hindi) reflecting the Turkic word for ‘horde.’
It is reasonable to postulate that the extreme militancy of Islam arising in the 14th century was one reflection of a worldwide phenomenon. In the preceding warm centuries populations flourished, and became unsustainable with the return of cooler times.
The real difference is that such extreme militancy became enshrined amongst the arab practitioners of islam … and persists to this day. Most other cultures grew out of it.
Jan 23, 2009 - 8:32 am 103. Dave:Thank you Bart.
As an aside, your narrative confirms what Jerry Pournelle and some others have been saying. Sudden cooling of the Earth is much more hazardous than “global warming”.
It also seems to happen very rapidly. Actual glaciation is not an impossibility. And if H Sapiens is actually capable of heating the planet, he is also capable of cooling it and doing so way too much. Think that will slow down some big mouths? Perish the thought!
Back on topic. So the critical era seems to be between 1300 and 1400 AD. Not 700 AD. My goof. A widespread reaction/overreation almost everywhere, abating in most areas, continuing in one.
And then we have that one area’s behavior being conciously emulated in the XXth Century
for irrational reasons. (Nazis were called “the easterners” for their rejection
of western civilization.)
And the “White” or “Great” Russians seemingly did the same. I would classify the Japanese as having replicated such behavior without
any Arab/Muslim input.
As these latter nuisances have been abated,
we are now looking at the heart of the problem along with some auxillaries in our own midst.
So the big “why” is why such a large segment of the human race clings to folkways that cause them as much continuing pain as they can cause their enemies?
One little “why” comes into sharper focus. And that is hatred of Jews. Jews, historically the next-door neighbors of Arabs, do NOT inflict continuous suffering upon themselves. Drunks hate AA not in spite of its promoting sobriety but because
it so promotes. Same difference with Arabs and Jews. Pathological envy.
Now nobody ever gets a practicing alcoholic sober except the alcoholic himself. HOWEVER, forcible detoxification is mandated from time to time just to get things started. General Petraeus seems to have done that with several assorted groups.
So there we may have it: A mini ice age ignited a widespread state of frenzy in the quest for survival. Frenzy, as often happens, continued for a while after the need for it had vanished. Then it abated everywhere except one area.
And that is where we are today.
Thanks for the input, Bart. Any comments on your part? Feel free to sharpshoot me if you think I am being goofy. Other BCers also welcome.
Jan 23, 2009 - 3:30 pm 104. JFSanders:That video didn’t sound right to me. I think it would have made more sense if it was in Russian…
Jim
Jan 23, 2009 - 7:00 pm 105. Bob Smith:Were the perpetrators of the massacre Muslim? The article doesn’t say, but both the timing and the failure to identify the perps (other than as “rebels”) suggests they were.
Jan 23, 2009 - 9:21 pm