Friday, May 22, 2009
BATTLE-TECH NOTES
A couple of items from the sources on military technology I frequent. First, the Air Force tells Congress what it would like to spend money on -- if there were any money to spend: Fielding significant numbers of F-35s as soon as possible, upgrading the existing force, and the "next generation bomber" (the so-called "NGB").
Now that we know that we're going to lose guaranteed air superiority some time in the mid-to-late-2010s because of the decision to end F-22 production at a grossly inadequate number, the only solution to be sure that we can function in the air battle space in that time and beyond is to flood the sky with other planes and take our lumps. The F-35 is slower, less maneuverable and carries a smaller war load than the F-16. Counting on its stealth to make up for that is foolish. Stealth was a magic bullet in the 1980s through the current time, but its value will erode as sensor technology catches up. In a more evenly-matched threat environment, there's going to be no substitute for sheer numbers. Want to stimulate the economy? Pour on the Lightning IIs.
The need to keep the Eagles and Falcons we have flying for another 20 years or so is also right. Again, it's simply a numbers game. I'm reminded of the role the Me-109 played for the Luftwaffe in World War II. By the beginning of what we think of as the war (as opposed to the Spanish or the Chinese, for whom the war began a lot earlier), the 109 was "obsolete" in the sense that the Allies were beginning to field superior planes. But the 109 made up for this through sheer numerical superiority and operational reliability. The F-15 (especially the Strike Eagle) and the F-16 will have to play a similar role in American air power over the next one to two decades. For that, money will have to be spent.
As for the strike capability envisioned with the NGB, I'm not so sure. It's hard to tell much about this program, because there are signs that some of it is developing in the black budget. But a new manned pure "strategic" bomber, with all its attendant expense, seems like a long shot in an environment in which we can't have assured air superiority. By the time such a conception of the NGB could actually come on line (the late 2010s at the earliest), I think a cheaper, unmanned solution to delivering ordinance might make much more sense.
And then, over here, we see continuing talk about the pressing need to develop practical tactical-level directed energy weapons. The sources cited in this article make the point that the need is obvious and the experience we've had with playing "catch-up" with these kinds of systems ought to be a lesson. But it won't be ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:40 AM
Sunday, May 10, 2009
COMEDY GOLD
Good morning. Yes, that's the coffee you smell:Some of Barack Obama's richest supporters fear they have elected a "class warrior" to the White House, who will turn America's freewheeling capitalism into a more regulated European system.Would you like some crow with your coffee?Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.
But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America - and that they were more than just election rhetoric.
A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: "I'm appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it's the real world. I'm surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He's a real class warrior."
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:13 AM
Thursday, May 07, 2009
THE RIGHT FLANK
Here's a piece by Bruce Bawer at LGF that sets out clearly the sad state of the collapse of the "right flank" of the anti-jihad movement. What a sorry bunch of chattering little monkeys we are ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:29 AM
Saturday, April 25, 2009
SINGULAR VISION
Here's a short interview with one of the smartest people I ever have had the pleasure to meet, science fiction author Vernor Vinge. If you're not familiar with the idea of "the Singularity" as originally formulated by Vinge, this brief piece provides a good overview.
Vinge is apparently still pretty optimistic that the kind of uniquely dramatic change he envisions will occur within the next twenty years. Ten years ago or so, when I met Vinge, I certainly would have agreed that 2030 was a good guess for a date by which things would take a massive spike upward.
Not any more. I've become distinctly pessimistic that such developments will happen within two decades -- or even whether they might happen at all. The amount of resources that would have to be devoted to the necessary tasks simply aren't going to be available, I'm afraid. The decade of the 2010s will be one of retrenchment, at best. At worst (and the worst seems distinctly possible now), crucial nodes of social and technological integration necessay for the "great leap forward" of the Singularity will be so disrupted that it will be impossible to realistically foresee achieving the kinds of progress required. In other words, things may get much worse before they get better ... if they ever do.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:49 AM
Friday, April 24, 2009
THE WAR ON TWO FRONTS
On the other side of the world, the fuse is burning shorter. In Pakistan, the ultimate nightmare, an Islamist takeover of Pakistan -- and thus their possession of a ready-made nuclear arsenal, continues to become more likely. They are advancing into territory prepared for them by 1400 years of cultivation: at least hundreds of thousands of people who sympathize with their goals lie on the other side of a shaky barrier being hastily thrown across the line of their march. Every effort to stop the savages will be undermined by their partisans among the defenders of Islamabad.
Will this offensive be the one that breaks through to the ultimate prize of nuclear weapons for the jihadis? Maybe, maybe not. But if it's not, there will be another. And another. And another. The chances that they will succeed during the term of Barack Obama's presidency are very real. The day that happens, all of his rhetoric about "reaching out" and "dialogue" will be as nothing, puffs of scented air blown away in the hot wind of the Punjab.
Meanwhile, here in the civilized world, there is a war of words, as rational people try to shore up the front of common decency against threats from the demons of our own primitives. For years, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has suffered a constant barrage of hate from the left, as he is villified as a "fascist" by the idiots who see Nazis behind every judgment of right and wrong. But what those morons haven't had the moral sense to detect is that he and others like him have been stalwart defenders of liberal values against real fascists who have sought to hijack the anti-jihad movement. Johnson's willingness to be honest about the distinction between his views and those of racist tribalists who want to harvest the fear of the rising threat of Islamism has subjected him to terrible criticism from the far right. The howling is now of equal volume from both sides. Here's a recent piece that offers one of the few notes of support for this man who has been willing to stand against irrationality, from whatever direction it comes.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:25 AM
Thursday, April 23, 2009
MEANWHILE ....
Let's pause and do a reality check. If you have the stomach for it, check out this developing story about a video of gross torture carried out by a member of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates. This is particularly interesting because the story is playing out in the civil litigation community here in Houston that is my professional environment.
If we call what the CIA did to Kalid Sheik Muhammed "torture," what is this? "Super-torture?" Yes, I know that one of my heroes, Christopher Hitchens, had himself waterboarded, after which he very vehemently confirmed that this practice was, indeed, torture. And it probably is. But the story at the above link ought to make one pause for at least a moment to consider the difficult question of making distinctions among examples of such darkness ...
At any rate, this story serves as a chilling and pointed reminder of the devil's bargain our civilization has made with the savages who sit on top of the oil lake in the Arabian desert. Oh that our so-called "leaders" had the will to really address this!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:45 AM
Monday, April 20, 2009
RETURN TO THE PAST
My last post was about how the growing power of the Chinese military sets the stage for a tectonic shift in what might be called 'the state system" or the global balance of power. This detailed Rand presentation on a study of how US and Chinese air power might compare in actual combat in a few years is instructive in that regard.
The more I think about this, the more I see a retrun to the kind of dynamics in the world that pertained from about 1880 or so through the Second World War. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars through about 1880, Britain was the undisputed master of the seas, and therefore of the world. But with the coming of coal-fired, steam-powered battleships, "rising powers" such as Germany and Japan (and the US) began to at least have the potential to challenge that straegic pre-eminence.
In our time, air superiority is the equivalent of the kind of sea power that marked Britain's supremacy and the challenges to it a hundred years ago or so. The ability of China (and others) to field "smart" weapons that can undermine the strategic dominance of US military power will retrun the world to the kind of Great Power pushing and shoving that marked the period from 1880 to 1945 or so.
One key difference, though, between our time and that of the great Dreadnoughts is that the US will certainly not have the kind of political will required to maintain an imperial milieu. So -- how does the new age of Dreadnoughts work itself out when there is no analog of Britannia willing to rule the seas of the air?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:51 AM
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
NEW WORLD ORDER
Here's a good overview of Chinese pursuit and implementation of precision-guided weapons from the strategic to the tactical level. It's been well more than twenty years that US military planners could count on significant advantages in this kind of thing. It seems that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. And with China, the genie has found a home prosperous enough to support it.
For some reason, this feels like a prelude to a return to an earlier era in strategic relations -- the era of more-nearly equivalent Great Powers; the age of the Dreadnoughts. I feel pretty sure the US won't have the stomach to fill the role that the British did in those days -- the primer inter pares willing to shoulder the burden of staying on top in a world where multiple Great Powers are pushing into the first rank. At a first order of analysis, this seems to lead to the necessity of either defining relatively clear spheres of influence for new Great Powers, or ceding global primacy to another Power that is willing to muscle its way to the top and expend the blood and treasure necessary to stay there. A politically stable China seems to fit that description.
Better get to work on figuring out how to define spheres of influence ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:21 AM
Saturday, March 28, 2009
SCHADENFREUDE
How delicious -- The Economist recognizes that there is less to Barack Obama than met the eye:HILLARY CLINTON’S most effective quip, in her long struggle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination last year, was that the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training. It went to the heart of the nagging worry about the silver-tongued young senator from Illinois: that he lacked even the slightest executive experience, and that in his brief career he had never really stood up to powerful interests, whether in his home city of Chicago or in the wider world. Might Mrs Clinton have been right about her foe?There's more, and well worth reading, if for nothing else than to see a sterling example of the thundering realization that being Barack Obama -- and not being George Bush -- isn't sufficient qualification for the presidency. I wonder whether Obama has had that realization yet.
. . .
... at home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:54 AM
Thursday, March 26, 2009
LOSING OUR WAY
When an individual person spends their time articulating nothing but criticism of themselves and obsessively ridicules his own identity, we recognize the pathology of clinical depression. So what to make of a whole civilization that does the same thing?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:23 AM
Thursday, March 19, 2009
NO CLUES HERE
Nope, nothing meaningful at all. Move along ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:52 AM
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
GIVING UP IN AFGHANISTAN
This was inevitable. Obama definitely doesn't have the stomach for it, so we're going to be pulling out of Afghanistan before long. He'll use the meltdown of our economy as an excuse for changing the policy he ran on. I wouldn't want to be a woman in Afghanistan ...
Oh, and BTW, this pretty much guarantees an Indo-Pak war within the next five years. A nuclear war.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:22 AM
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
MASTERS OF BULL
This piece about how Harvard's MBA program has produced the people who have run our economic society into the ground over and over is worth a look. It glances along one of the main vectors of my ruminations about The Collapse that keep influencing the direction of my thinking: That our educational and cultural institutions are deeply broken, producing group after group of young people equipped with a very wrong-headed view of the world and a very inadequate basic knowledge of fundamentals.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:08 AM
Monday, March 09, 2009
PRESENT
To those few loyal friends who have asked after me, I note that I am still present. Yeah, that's the ticket ... I'm voting "present" right now ... that's all.Turning and turning in the widening gyreGB< THHotA
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
posted by Greg 8:32 AM
Friday, February 06, 2009
STILL NOTHING
I'm in trial ... And so is America. A case is being put before the American people -- "the Stimulus." It seems like hollow bluster to me. The "Stimulators" accuse their opponents of adhering to a discredited ideology from the past that has turned out to be based on myths. But they mouth the faith of the Stimulators as if they were facts: "Spending X billion dollars in such and such a way will create Y jobs." They're not facts. They're theories; theories based on models and assumptions piled up upon assumptions.
All the while, the huge, lurking monster in the middle of the room is ignored: American industry has evaporated. Over the last forty years we have come to the point where we buy far more from abroad than we can afford. We do not create nearly enough real value in the United States to pay for this consumption.
If I were the judge in this trial, I would stop it: The Stimulators have put on no real evidence to support their claim, and they ignore the central issue in the case. Directed verdict: plaiintiff takes nothing.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:13 AM
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
VECTORS OF POWER
Here's a nice, bitter pill for your morning:Today, however, our dependency upon foreign investors will approximate more and more the state of international indebtedness we historians associate with the reigns of Philip II of Spain and Louis XIV of France -- attractive propositions at first, then steadily losing glamour.
It is possible that the early sales of Treasurys this year could go well, since panicked investors may prefer to buy bonds that pay nothing to shares of companies that may go bust. But certain sharp-eyed analysts of the Treasurys market already hint that the appetite for Obama-bonds is limited.
Do people really think that China can buy and buy when its investments here have already been hurt, and its government can see the enormous need to invest in its own economy? If a miracle happened, and China bought most of the $1.2 trillion from us, what would our state of dependency be then? We could be looking at as large a shift in the world's financial balances as that which occurred between the British Empire and the United States between 1941 and 1945. Is everybody happy at that? Yet if foreigners show little appetite for U.S. bonds, we will soon have to push interest rates up.
While I disagree with some of the identification of causes in this piece (it is all laid far too readily at the feet of the hated Bush), the basic economic logic of power described here is inescapable.
So ... it's time for me to ante up something positive, some prescription for how to escape this death-spiral. The problem is what I think of as "financialism:" the idea that all the problems and all the solutions are somehow to be found in the manipulation of money in ever-more-sophisticated ways. Both the monetarists and the Keynesians get this wrong. You simply can't make something from nothing, no matter how clever you are.
An extremely gifted financial operator told me a few weeks ago that the only way out of the mess we're in is inflation -- printing money. I don't doubt that the radical first-aid required at this point to keep the patient alive long enough to get to the hospital involves a massive dose of inflation. It's analogous to pumping fluids into a bleeding man going into shock. But in the long run, inflation is just an emergency measure, and one with its own dire consequences if kept up too long.
No, there's only one long-term solution to the problem. We -- the American people -- are going to have to earn our way out of the hole we've dug ourselves into the old fashioned way; by creating something real that other people in the world want to buy. If we don't see that, if we don't take the distorting glasses of "financialism" off and see the world as it really is, we can kiss "the American dream" goodbye.
Barack Obama will either see this, and deliver this news to the American people, or we are well and truly doomed to second-rate status as a nation and a civilization -- at best. Why it has to be Obama who does this is the subject for another post ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:11 AM
Monday, January 12, 2009
CULTURE WAR CONTINUES
This note describes what would once have been unthinkable, David Horowitz appearing at a meeting of what might be considered the headquarters of the post-modernist domination of academia, the Modern Language Association. I have many friends who tell me that my decades-long focus on the pomo infestation in academia is misplaced. They say one or both of two things: (1) It's not as bad as I maintain, or (2) it was bad, but it's fading and no longer important. As I've written here many times, I reject these critiques. The moral relativism and stealth Marxism of post-modernism is still alive and well in academia, and has a deeply pernicious influence on our culture at large.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:11 AM
Friday, January 09, 2009
SUCKERS
The mainstream media, in the tank for Hamas.
They never learn. And they don't care.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:57 AM
Monday, January 05, 2009
HAPPY (?) NEW (?) YEAR (?)
... and a note about fantasy
In earlier times, this blog had an impressively large readership, given its modest scope and narrow personal focus. Months of neglect should have done away with that. For the friend, acquaintance or random web surfer who stumbles into this dusty, neglected corner, I offer the explanation for the unkempt condition here that I have been working on a major project that has taken up all of my free writing time. Whether that project will ever come to anything is a question that won't be answered for some time and, until it does, I shall leave it as a matter that won't be addressed here: To disclose it publicly would be to doom it to certain failure.
In the meantime, the world as we knew it continues to unravel. More than once I have considered beginning the project of recording some thoughts about that here ... but the job of doing so systematically is more than I can undertake now. On the other hand, I may well jot a note or two here from time to time about the nature and extent of the disaster overwhelming the world. In that vein, consider the following:
There were a number of absurd fantasies abroad these last ten years or so upon which much of the now-disappearing world was premised. One of them was that the swift erosion of the American industrial economy was somehow made irrelevant by the rise of "the information economy." The absurdity of this notion can now be seen clearly. You can't eat bits. Nor can you wear them, drive them to the store or live inside of them. And bits are the first thing to go when people are forced to retreat to primal priorities such as the simple survival of the flesh. At a certain level, a great deal of the illusory growth of the American economy over the last twenty years boiled down to a mutual fantasy pact: We all agreed that information was something it wasn't.
Consider how seductive this mutual fantasy was for intellectuals: The very stuff they were good at -- ideas -- was the thing we shall build our lives on. The age-old Platonic dream of a world where Idea literally is Real was to ... become Real. Literally saying so would make it so; the ultimate wish-fulfillment of the intellectual.
As they say, NOT.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:43 AM
Saturday, November 22, 2008
ANOTHER EVIL OMEN
AvLeak has just axed all of their senior journalists covering the space beat. Even if government space policy under the new administration is likely to be one long, slow-motion train wreck, and even if the entrepreneurial space scene is likely to be mightily depressed by the collapse of the economy, it would have been nice to keep Aviation Week's experienced team together to chronicle the disaster.
Oh well ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:49 AM
Sunday, November 09, 2008
GOOD FOR A LAUGH
At least we can always count on PJ to eke out a few good laughs from the truth, no matter how terrible the truth is.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:06 PM
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. I must and will suspend the doubts I have about his character, because I respect the office to which he has been lawfully elected. I urge all those who did not support him in the campaign process to also suspend your doubts, and join together to support President Obama. He will be tested, both by crisis from abroad and by pressures from the radical elements of his own party. Leadership of the experiment in secular, republican government upon which the American people embarked 232 years ago has now been entrusted to his hands. To wish President Obama other than success is a disservice to that great enterprise. May he be inspired by the ideals of the Founders, and the strength of the American character to lead us well.
posted by Greg 7:58 AM
Friday, October 10, 2008
SHOUTING INTO THE WIND OF THE PERFECT STORM
Although my personal life is slowly returning to something like it's pre-hurricane shape (but by no means really the same), I'm not inclined to begin blogging again. A much bigger and more disruptive storm is raging across the world, ripping away decades of progress. I have the idea that the eye of the storm will pass over us on election day, when Obama will be elected and, for the great majority of the public voices, it will seem as though calm has come at last and that the terrible calamity has passed.
But it will only be a pause in the disaster. Having smashed up the structure of the world into loose debris, the second part of the storm will then commence, as Obama, with his great mandate, will begin to "fix" things.
It will be many, many years before the notion of economic liberty will be able to reassert itself, and when it does, it will look very different than it did before the storm. When the floodwaters recede, the true magnitude of the devastation will be revealed as we venture out, eyes blinking in shock at the extent of the damage. We will see the temporary walls of sandbags being replaced by high barriers, the construction being carried out by those who will cheerfully explain how foolhardy we were before the storm to have been so blind to the danger of living out in the open. They will have a mandate to radically reshape the contours of our great city in the name of safety, and their hands will be out, demanding payment for the public works.
I have ideas about how those who would not retreat behind the high walls might preserve a little blue sky, but I am not hopeful that they will be heeded, so I am loathe to even speak them. What's the point now that our savior has arrived? With this storm at his back, he will sweep into such power that a quiet voice that speaks of balancing risks against rewards will seem foolhardy. And, even in the best case, the chance to try to strike a better balance won't come again in my lifetime. So it seems best to me to just be quiet and hope that another generation will have the will to stand against the wind.
It is a time of hunkering down.
... LATER:
It suddenly came to me. An image from a movie in my childhood that pretty well sums it up for me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWphqA1Slrw&feature=related
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:43 AM
Friday, October 03, 2008
BILL WHITTLE SPEAKS FOR ME
Here.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:16 PM
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
POST-IKE
We got power back to the house this weekend. Getting things roughly back to pre-Ike-tastrophy mode took a couple of days, and I still have quite a few things to do to completely eradicate the signs that we were in what a friend of mine called "Apollo 13 mode" for two weeks. Meanwhile, I'm in my temporary office space and actually getting back to something like a reasonable rythm at work again. But it will be a while -- probably until this weekend -- before I start posting again with any regularity. meanwhile, the collapse of Western civilization continues apace ....
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:44 AM
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
STILL NO POWER
Our house is still without grid power. I spent a good deal of yesterday working to get things rigged for a longer haul running on the generator for minimal function and survivable air flow in the house, because I think it might be another week before we get electrons flowing from outside again ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 12:41 PM
Saturday, September 20, 2008
VIRTUE, AFTER THE STORM
There's no way I can "catch up" on all I've missed out on since the hurricane. I'm still spending a LOT of time just maintaining the minimal functionality I've got with the generator here at the house (these little machines take quite a bit of monitoring and on-going fiddling to operate consistently), and trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered office at work. But in amongst all that, I'm scanning here and there in my usual haunts online and picking out the most interesting looking bits to read more deeply.
In that process, I came across this essay about the importance of the notion of "virtue" in moral philosophy. (That may seem like a trivial or almost like a tautological statement, BTW, but it's not, as this piece explains.) Although the example given by the author at the end to illustrate what may be a way forward, "back" to a virtue-based ethics, is one that makes me queasy, I do agree with the basic premise of the piece -- that the fundamental ground of liberal moral philosophy is essentially empty at its core; that something more, and more fundamental, is required than the basic liberal prescription of individual autonomy.
Looking for a solid foundation upon which to ground such a "pre-liberal" core of virtue is a hard project for a secular, scientifically-minded person such as myself. And it must be made clear that this project does not entail a rejection of the liberal moral or political program. Rather, it is a recognition that, ultimately, the liberal moral program is only instrumental in nature, albeit hugely important. The liberal moral and political insights of the Enlightenment are wonderfully and crucially important. But they aren't enough.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 3:56 PM
OFF AND ON AND OFF AND ON
We lost power again, three (?) days ago. I now have a generator providing haphazard power to the house, but it's a touch-and-go thing. If I can get that stabilized, I may post more later.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:50 AM
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
BACK
I am finally back online, with power to the house, four and half days after Ike. We had downed trees and fences, but Anthea, all the animals and I came through OK. Thanks to all who stayed in touch via Blackberry (which came back online only a few hours into Day 1), and especially Michael and Chizuko, who fed me news via email through that low-bandwidth link.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 4:26 PM
Friday, September 12, 2008
IKE
8:00 PM: Winds gusting up now. Had some power interruptions. If I haven't responded to your emails, we're OK. But I'm thinking we'll be losing power for the duration soon.
See you on the flip side ....
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:59 PM
Thursday, September 11, 2008
911
Seven years ago today. NEVER FORGET.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:43 PM
STORM WINDS
It looks like hurricane Ike is headed this way, although the models have more spread of projected paths than I've seen lately. Which is a good segue into a link dump of some material about Islam that's collected in my browser as a result of a little online discussion I've been having in a forum I frequent:OK, dark, rich Arabiya coffee break's over -- back on your heads!
- The Language of the Koran: This piece is a personal testament by a Muslim who grew up in Syria from a devout childhood to a loss of faith based on something one doesn't hear much about unless you dig pretty deeply, the linguistic difficulties of the Koran itself. This item is brief and, as I indicate, personal, but it points to two things that are, in my opinion, extraordinarily important. The first is the fact that the actual text (as opposed to the content and substance) of the Koran is itself extremely problematic. The language is not the Arabic spoken by any population today, and an honest approach to that fact opens the door to the second important point: That deep, scholarly understanding of that text outside of the world of believing Muslim scholars who work primarily from the accepted religious authorities on the issues raised by the problematic language is almost completely nonexistent. Over the last 200 years, Christian and Jewish biblical scholarship has been deeply enriched by textual analysis from a whole host of angles, from material created by deeply committed religious scholars, to completely secular researchers and analysts. Everyone but the most ignorant fundamentalists accepts that understanding of the Bible has been enriched by this process. Nothing even remotely like this has taken place in the Muslim world.
- A Culture of Darkness: And this brief item explains why. It reviews the objective evidence that demonstrates how Arab and Muslim culture is almost completely closed off to all learning from outside itself, and even from critical perspectives from within.
- With Predictable Results: Not surprisingly, this darkness, with an obscure hodge-podge of nearly incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo at its heart, leads to the rationalization of some pretty primitive and nasty things, like the systematic victimization of women. This item revisits just how bad things are for women in Iran, and how much worse they're likely to get. And this piece, making its way through the PC filters of The Guardian, casts just a little light on how terrible life is for women in Pakistan. Meanwhile, feminists in the West expend their considerable energies pitching fits of comical outrage about Sarah Palin. Now there's a sense of priorities for you.
- But We Keep paying for It: And while the world sleeps, we continue to pour our wealth into Muslim hands through the high-pressure fire-hose of our oil addiction. If you have any doubt, check out this short little snapshot of the economic life of Abu Dabhi, a nasty little medeival kngdom that produces nothing and whose people could not possible create anything -- except the oil to which we are addicted.
- And, Ultimately, We'll Have to Really Fight: Which finally leads to two book reviews. The first, about a recent book chronicling Israel's epic secret war against Iran that's been going on almost completely silently behind the scenes for 30 years, gives only modest hope that effective step against the genuine enemy of civilization are possible. And the second addresses that darling of the left, Tariq Ramadan, the "moderate scholar" who gets trotted out on a regular basis to exemplify the fruits of peaceful dialogue with Islam, and how superior that approach is to the bloody brutishness advocated by the likes of me. I have a particular personal animus toward Ramadan, because a few years ago, I basically lost a group of life-long friends over my refusal to agree to their assessment that he was a moderate. This was taken as evidence that I had become a neocon zombie. Which I take as evidence that Ramadan has been extraordinarily successful in deploying the Islamists most effective weapon against us -- our own open-mindedness, tolerance and desire to believe the best of other people and cultures.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:06 AM
Monday, September 08, 2008
PALIN HEARTBREAKI have shared in the enthusiasm of the simple-minded right wing of American politics over the last week over John McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Like the majority of Americans, I have also been disgusted by the media's digging into her personal life, but have taken comfort in the clear fact that this partisan personalistic attack on her has ricocheted and hurt the Democrats.But now, I'm afraid a personal detail about Palin has surfaced that I can't ignore, and that will cause me to completely rethink the impact she's had on my enthusiasm for McCain's candidacy.She has a tattoo.The Big Dipper is tattooed on her ankle.See the second-to-last point in the document discussed in this news story:I have to confess that this is a crushing revelation about Palin, something that will likely negate the ten-point lead that the McCain-Palin ticket is now showing among likely voters in the most recent Gallup poll, and rightly so. When compared to the kind of personal details of Barak Obama's open book of a life (actually, two open books, and a third on the way), this tattoo scandal shows the utter irrelevancy of the kind of "dirt" the hate-filled right wing has been "digging up" on Obama.I'm ashamed. Ashamed of myself, and ashamed for my country, that such a person could have, even for a moment, been so close to the highest office in the land.Antroy, I'm sorry.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:11 AM
Sunday, September 07, 2008
THE MASK SLIPS
This little piece in, of all places, The Guardian, sums up pretty well how the Obamatons have blown their lead by letting the mask slip over Palin.
Some polls are showing McCain in the lead now. It will require a concerted effort on the part of Obama's campaign to recapture the position they had a week ago of comfortably sitting on a win that was theirs to lose. "The narrative" Obama's folks have so carefully crafted and scripted out to the mainstream media is now hanging in tatters, with Obama now forced to defend his experience level against the GOP's number 2, the holes in his "stirring biography" now visible, and the chorus of "hope and change" being sung in a different key by a different set of people than those who had experienced him as a blank screen upon which to project whatever made them feel good.
Pretty good work for a single move of political judo. And it never would have had this effect but for the mainstream media's foolishness. That's gotta hurt.
McCain's shown he can take hit after hit politically, fall back, regroup and counterattack. Obama's never faced such a challenge in his life. Let's see how he does.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:57 AM
Saturday, September 06, 2008
LINK-O-RAMA
I'm totally behind on blogging and my browser's going to crash if I don't do a link dump, so bombs away!Coffee break's over -- back on your heads!
- The Million-Dollar Question: What were Barak Obama's grades at Columbia? W's undergrad grades sure mattered.
- Creation Myth: A piece at The New Republic about Obama's days as a "community organizer." But not interesting for the reasons The New Republic thinks ...
- A Legacy for Bush? Maybe.
- India and Islamism: Here's a good piece on the subject in Middle East Times. As Pakistan continues to teeter on the brink, India's position in the Long War will become increasingly important. The kinds of problems described in this article seem to indicate that there's only one direction India can go if it hopes to survive.
- Updating the Clash: An EXCELLENT essay that revisits the background and thesis of Huntington's famous article.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:19 AM
Saturday, August 30, 2008
ALL ATWITTER
Little-known facts.
GB
posted by Greg 9:11 PM
TOO UTTERLY DELICIOUS
Mark Steyn on Sarah Palin:Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.I'm happy.
Contrast Palin's record and biography with this.
I'm happier.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:01 AM
Friday, August 29, 2008
WOW
I hope this is true.
UPDATE: -- Wow. It's true. Amazing. What McCain loses in not being able to hit the "inexperience" notes as hard, he picks up with solid support on his right and, well, the woman thing. Damn. You gotta hand it to the Mav man.
Plus, she's a serious babe.
UPDATE: As of right now, the dems don't even have Palin listed on their Veep attack site. HAH!
UPDATE: Dumbasses -- the dems still haven't updated their veep attack site. They got caught sound asleep.
posted by Greg 8:55 AM
Saturday, August 23, 2008
BLAH, BLAH, BIDEN, BLAH, BLAH
BUZZ! IT'S BIDEN! My reaction? So what? He's not really adding much of anything to the Obama ticket. Big deal.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:18 AM
Friday, August 22, 2008
LINK-O-RAMA
I've been busy with work-work, so the browser's stuffed. Time for a link dump:
AIR POWER: A number of more or less unrelated items have caught my eye over the last couple of weeks. Here's a detailed piece about production techniques and facilities for the F-35 that is getting closer to reality. The flexibility of production techniques described here is very impressive, as are the raw numbers. I suppose I should be happy that, even with all this manufacturing ingenuity being applied to the program, the unit price of an F-35 is still very high. That means we're still the only folks in the world who can afford a program like this, despite all the gloom one hears about what terrible shape the US economy is in. Then there's this item about mounting a laser weapon on a C-130 gunship. I've been reading more and more items about this kind of thing, which indicates to me that there have been some real breakthroughs in implementing practical directed-energy weapons. And this item indicates that missile defense is also swiftly becoming a reality. Twenty five years ago, both of these ideas were considered to be unrealistic fantasies that an evil military-industrial-scientific establishment had sold to a credulous and ignorant Ronald Reagan. I don't suppose we'll be hearing any acknowledgments from the people who said this that they were wrong. Finally, here's an article that talks about the very serious issues that have been coming to the surface in the policy and program management within the Air Force.
SEA POWER: I'm obviously more knowledgeable about air power than sea power, so an article like this, that talks about a recent biting critique of US Navy policy leadership is a good primer. There may be a connection to the preceding link: The entire military endeavor is facing a challenge to its basic assumptions about role and method as fundamental as almost any in history, so it's perhaps not surprising that it's taking a while to figure out what's right and what's not, and what works and what doesn't. The problem, of course, is that with decade-long program lead times (at least), and multi-billion dollar program costs, getting it right is kind of important ...
THE RETURN OF HISTORY: Here's a good article about how recent events in Georgia point out a general reality: Fukuyama couldn't have been more wrong.
RED MEAT: Finally, if you're a Christian who doesn't have a strong stomach for criticism of some of your basic beliefs, don't go to this website, a blog maintained by a former evangelical minister who has ... changed sides. He still has the fiery rhetoric of his previous vocation, and is armed with detailed knowledge of the Bible and Christian theology.
OK -- coffee break's over; back on your heads!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:43 AM
Thursday, August 21, 2008
NPR ... AS USUAL
A comment I sent to Morning Edition this morning:Your piece this morning about Russia and Georgia and the role that NATO expansion played in the conflict between the former was incredibly pro-Russian.GB, THHotA
Old habits die hard.
posted by Greg 7:07 AM
Thursday, August 14, 2008
SPACE POLITICS
Here's a note I've been expecting to see: Russia's military action against Georgia is almost sure to have an impact on access to the International Space Station, as a minimum effect on that program.
The context and implications of this bit of news are really too depressing for me to explore.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:23 AM
ACCIDENT RECONSTRUCTION
Here's a little item about a recent public presentation by a SpaceX person about the failure of the third Falcon 1 launch. It looks like the 1st-stage residual thrust after separation is being accepted as the immediate cause of the failure. One interesting note is the mention of how telemetry contact with the second stage and payload bus was maintained after the Bad Things started happening -- a bright point in the otherwise dark picture, because it indicates that the systems involved had to have been very robust to continue functioning in the, errrh, off-nominal conditions experienced after the "rear ender."
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:18 AM
HMMMMMM .....
Sounds like the opening scenes of an action-thriller ... More likely just another nutcase inspired by his imaginary friend, though.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:13 AM
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
RUSSIA AND THE OIL WEAPON
This item pretty well sums up my thoughts on the sad situation in Georgia. Russia has become a thug-ocracy, and this has only been made possible by the oil and gas wealth that Putin and his gang have pulled together into their hands.
When will the civilized world wake up and realize that it's all about energy?
We can do it. We can become energy independent and starve the religious fanatics and thugs. But only after we wake up and realize that it has to be our number one priority as a civilization, and that nuclear power is the ONLY realistic solution to the problem. Every second between now and the time we come to this realization is wasted. Every day that goes by that we don't wake up and do what's necessary is a gift to the enemies of civilization.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:14 AM
MISSSION ACCOMPLISHED
As this item makes clear, it is really possible now to say that “the war in Iraq” is all but over, and that we won. Five years after the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner, that mission – the mission of deposing an insanely cruel and dangerous tyrant and replacing him with something stable and better – has been accomplished; at least for now.
While the politicians “debate” how quickly we should draw down our military forces in Iraq, I look back and ask, could it have been done more quickly and at a lower cost in American blood and treasure? Until fairly recently, I was all but certain that the answer had to be “yes”. Now, I’m not so sure.
That certain “yes” was premised on the assumption that the initial invasion was carried out with too small a force, and that the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Saddam regime was mishandled in many ways, not least of which in disbanding the Iraqi army, total de-Baathification, and a general failure to impose security throughout the country. Clearly, so this thinking goes, the surge in troop numbers and implementation of General Petraeus’ anti-insurgency tactics that have proved so successful in the last year could have and should have been implemented much sooner.
But is this right? I can at least make the case that the changes in general approach and specific tactics adopted in the last year would not have been nearly as successful before then. Perhaps Iraq had to “bottom out” into the bloody chaos and civil war of 2005 to 2007 before the native ethnic groups and traditional tribal and religious centers of power would have been willing to make the sacrifices and compromises that have been the foundation of the success of the last few months.
Perhaps the various Shiite gang leaders never would have given up their dreams of seizing complete control of the country if they hadn’t had to face the reality of just how violent and self-destructive such a power grab would be. Perhaps the Sunni tribal leaders never would have given up their hopes of regaining power if they hadn’t had to see the practical results of the kinds of devil’s bargains they would have to make with the likes of al Qaida and the Tikriti mob to achieve a return to minority control of the country. And it seems certain that al Qaida and Iran would have both maintained their hopes of infiltrating and dominating Iraq by playing a waiting game if we’d been more effective in containing sectarian and ethnic violence in the country before now. We certainly wouldn’t have had the opportunity to inflict such massive damage to a major al Qaida initiative as we’ve had these last two years or so, if we’d put a tighter lid on the country at the very beginning. Instead, we might well be facing now the prospect of having to go back in to do the same job we’ve now largely accomplished in that regard.
I don’t claim that these thoughts are original to me. I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ve seen them expressed elsewhere. And I’m all but certain that this point was not an intentional part of the over-all plan for the liberation of Iraq from Saddam – much more likely is the possibility that it is an accidental result of what would have been perceived even by the central figures of the Bush Administration as a “mistake” if they could have known in the first quarter of 2003 what 2006 would be like.
But maybe not. I’m reading Doug Feith’s book War and Decision. Depending on how you look at it, Feith was the number three person in the Pentagon at the time of the invasion and has been demonized by the anti-war left as one of the chief “neocon warmongers” and by Bob Woodward (and apparently Tommy Franks) as a bumbler. Naturally, this book will have no impact on the mainstream discussion of the decision to go to war in Iraq and how post-invasion activities were handled. What Feith has to say – for instance, that hunting for existing stockpiles of WMD was not one of the primary aims of the war – simply doesn’t “fit the narrative,” so it will be ignored.
I’m thinking here, though, of one of the main themes of the book: That Rumsfeld and his crew consistently opposed taking a “strong-arm” approach to the US post-invasion role in Iraq, because, they argued, to do so would only create animosity toward the US as an occupying, imperial power and, perhaps more importantly, because it would create long-term dependency on US forces to provide security. This isn’t speculation or after-the-fact rationalization. Feith documents that this was a consistent policy position of the Pentagon in pre-invasion discussions with other agencies and within the highest counsels of the Bush Administration. Again, this evidence will have no influence on popular perceptions, because it’s inconsistent with the view of the neocons as imperialists out to dominate the world. Of course, this doesn’t make sense in terms of logic, since under-manning the post-invasion occupation is inconsistent with the idea of dominating the country on behalf of Halliburton and Exxon. But never mind the lack of logic and the evidence to the contrary – we KNOW what the truth is, right?
For now, I offer these thoughts merely as something to put into the category of historical speculation. In one sense, of course, we’ll never know the answer to the question of whether adopting the “salvation and surge” strategy would have worked had it been adopted earlier – history is what it is, and we have to live with the fact that alternatives always exist in the netherworld of alternative “if-history.” But perhaps, someday, when the horror of MoveOn.org and “General Betray-Us” are dim memories, perhaps, there will be a chance for a sober second look that perceives the pain of 2005 and 2006 as the necessary precondition for what was the real goal of the 2003 invasion – breaking the terrible negative balance of terror and hopelessness in the Middle East.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:36 AM
Sunday, August 10, 2008
SMARMINESS
There's so much to say about John Edwards' much-deserved public melt-down, it's hard to know where to begin or end. I'll only make one point -- Edwards is and always has been a smarmy, oily, obvious fake. The question is, how does someone like that do what he's done?
Of course, in terms of politics, Edwards really hasn't done much. He was an undistinguished one-term senator (hmmm), who ended up not even being able to carry his home state as John Kerry's running mate. But Edwards made a large fortune as a personal injury plaintiff's lawyer, and had a loyal following in politics. How does such a nasty, shallow, preening huckster do this?
This isn't the first time I've asked this question. Edwards is of a well-known type in the world of trial lawyers. In any jurisdiction, you can find near-perfect clones of him: Typically young, good-looking, well-dressed, typically personal injury plaintiff's lawyers, who use an unctuous, TV-preacher rhetorical style in the courtroom. You see them and think, "There's no way this kind of crap can win!" But it does -- over and over again. These guys use an exaggerated "gosh darn it, we little people need to stick it to those rich corporations" kind of style, while making the most childish kind of emotional appeals for their clients -- and wearing two thousand dollar suits and glossy Italian loafers. Anyone who's spent any time in a courtroom in America immediately recognized John Edwards as one of these fake, over-the-top showmen.
So what is it about these kind of men that leads to success? Is it just the outward trappings of alpha-male-dom that triggers basic monkey-troop submission among the betas? Do they plug into some pre-programmed groove already plowed by the equally smarmy and ridiculous mega-church televangelists? I honestly don't know, but there it is: In the right circumstances, the outrageously smarmy guy can succeed.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:18 AM
Saturday, August 09, 2008
WHOA!
This story about the murder of an American in Beijing for the Olympics is bizarre in the extreme. To begin with, Beijing is an extremely safe city for its size under normal circumstances. Added to that is that foreigners are usually treated very well by almost everyone. beyond that, though, is the context of the Olympics: EVERYONE in China has gotten the message that this is all about putting on a good face for the world. The murder must have been one seriously deranged person ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:19 PM
LINK-O-RAMA
Last week, I was working toward a milestone at work on a case I've been dealing with for eight years. As tempting as it is to write about what happened, I'll keep to my rule of not writing here about my professional work as a lawyer -- suffice it to say that things turned out very well. At any rate, one result of having been so busy and keeping the kind of unusual hours that come with a litigator's life is the buildup of links in my browser, which means ...
Space Cadets: The Air Force will be launching its unmanned orbital spaceplane demonstrator, the X-37. Something like the X-37 should have been the direction we went after Apollo, instead of the expensive and unwieldy political pig trough that the Shuttle system turned out to be. Good luck to the USAF! With success in the X-37 program, somebody could be very close to the dream of a truly reusable, practical spaceplane for human access to space.
Our War: As opposed to "their war," is going very well, indeed. Here's an item about Francis Fukuyama having to pay up on bets that Iraq wouldn't get better. Very satisfying indeed because, having written one great book, Fukuyama has since pretty much proved himself to be a very shallow thinker, in my book.
posted by Greg 6:05 AM
Monday, August 04, 2008
THE MORNING AFTER THE MORNING AFTER
A round-up of commentary on the SpaceX launch failure. Ugh ...
GB, THHotA
UPDATE: That link doesn't seem to be a real "permalink" ... just look down a little or the listing of items about the launch.
posted by Greg 6:33 AM
