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Saturday, January 11, 2003
January 11: Shabbat Shalom! As many of you know, Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. In that spirit, my weekend posts to this blog will always be "good news". I will share Sufi wisdom, highlight the acts of good and decent people, laugh at humourous events, and point to amazing discoveries that could benefit humanity. Other blogging days may include these things as well, but today I seek to fill my entire day with that. This provides a necessary and important break from current events, which by nature are often both dark and an incomplete view of the world. To see the deeper trends and the way forward, we must also look elsewhere to remind ourselves what we we are creating, what is possible, and what we truly wish to be. Today's Blogs: Sufi Wisdom of the Week: Judgment Day As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, the Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully"). The Wahhabi hate them, of course, which constitutes an endorsement in my books. The great poet Rumi was a Sufi, and so were many other figures of religious and cultural significance. I've come to appreciate the Sufis for their poetry, their humour, and their body of wisdom. Every Shabbos, therefore, I will be sharing some of that via my Blog. This week's gem comes from al-Ghazzali... and its contemporary audiences should be obvious. On the Day of Judgment Allah shall ask the learned men, "What did you do with the knowledge and learning I conferred on you?" They will reply, "We spent it in Your way." Allah shall say "You are liars." And the angels shall also repeat the same charge. Allah shall further say, "You spent it in earning applause, in passing for learned men and seeking praise of the people."Ouch. Not to mention the monetary rewards... al-Ghazzali's historical legacy is somewhat checkered, but in some way it is his very status as a link between Sufiism and orthodox Sunni Islam that makes this quote so interesting in light of today's events. On a deeper level, it's also a good illustration of the Sufi focus on the cultivation of the correct inner life (haqiqah) as something beyond the foundation of the law (shariah) or even the inner practices of the Sufi (tariqah) as one journeys toward direct spiritual knowing (marifah). Attaboy of the Week: No Gas for You! The esteemed Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has been untiring and on the mark in his coverage of the organized culture of hatred infecting the Islamic world. It's vitally important reading for anyone who wants to understand what's really going on. That said, he's also willing to give credit where it's due: "A Muslim gas station attendant in Brooklyn sold a can of gasoline to a young Bosnian Muslim man � then watched in disbelief as the young man marched across the street and began splashing the gas on a synagogue. Before this freak could set the synagogue ablaze, the attendant called police; and today he is being hailed as a hero."I should add that the attendant, Syed Ali, also refused to sell the wacko more gas when he returned. Ali was attacked for that refusal, and when he made it he had no way of being sure the guy wasn't armed as well. All things considered, I'd say that "hero" label has some real merit. Friday, January 10, 2003
New Faces, Old Wisdom First of all, please welcome Trent Telenko to the Winds of Change team. Trent was one of those "uber-commenters" who consistently sent me good stuff, and I thought it was high time he got a soapbox of his own. Mr. Telenko's specialty is defense technology, but as you'll see he's not averse to posting about wider matters occasionally. See: North Korea: Clinton Knew... And 'Kicked the Can' Anyway. Welcome, Trent! Today we're restarting our "48 Ways to Wisdom" series, and the weekend will feature the return of our "Sufi Wisdom" series as well. Next week will begin with an essay about Iran and Al-Qaeda. Today's Blogs: 48 Ways to Wisdom: Way #13 - Think About It This is a regular feature on Winds of Change. Every Friday (for Friday evening begins the Jewish Sabbath), we cover one more way to wisdom from Rabbi Noah Weinberg. These materials come from an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, but are written in such a way that they retain their full value no matter what creed you follow. Think of it as a gentle and modern way of sharing 5,000+ years of accumulated wisdom. Way #13 (the Bar Mitzvah!) is about making decisions in ways that avoid both rashness and dithering, as we consider the challenges life places before us: "The Sages say that whatever you encounter, study it four times. This process is likened to the act of planting - because wisdom is for the soul what food is for the body.Rabbi Weinberg then goes on to offer 6 Tools of Deliberation to help you in your efforts. To grasp them, you'll need to read the whole thing. North Korea: What He Said... Who else but the man who puts the "class" in the "classics," Victor Davis Hanson! "Korea Is Not Quite Iraq" is the best thing I've read yet. It doesn't duck, or dissemble, or dismiss the issue. It acknowledges that U.S. actions are not consistent, and that pretending they are serves no-one. Then it makes a convincing case for what we need to do next. Here's a guy who knows how to think. I have only 2 questions: (a) how the hell can we find/encourage/train more people like Prof. Hanson? and (b) how can we get them a bigger media platform? The man is worth a division all by himself. North Korea: What The Defectors Say... In a Jan. 9th NY TIMES article titled"North Korean Defectors Seek to Pry Open a Closed Land," James Brooke interviews several North Korean defectors for their view on how to end the North Korean Crisis. Their answers were straight forward. 1) An economic blockade by China will bring down the North Korean state. "When China and Russia stop giving aid, North Korea is bound to halt its nuclear weapons program," said Ma Young Ae, 39, a former counterintelligence agent who now runs a restaurant here with her new South Korean husband. "Most of the food in Pyongyang is from China," she said, referring to North Korea's capital. "The best way to stop the nuclear program is to stop the aid." This, BTW, is why Steven Den Beste is wrong about the USA obtaining and using a UN Security Council resolution concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. As was pointed out over on Strategypage.com, a Security Council resolution provides both additional motivation and political cover from domestic political factions in foreign countries when the US exercises its raw power. This has been useful in Iraq. And it will be useful in North Korea later, when we need to pressure China. 2) North Korea is a no-trust bureaucratic state that knows it could be vulnerable to a psychological warfare campaign. So they have taken steps to make sure they never become vulnerable. Ms. Ma urged the Bush administration to flood North Korea with radios equipped with long-lasting batteries that would allow North Koreans to listen to South Korean stations and to Radio Free Asia, which is supported by the United States. "Radios, tape cassettes, magazines — that's what I mean by cultural penetration," she said. In North Korea, "all the tape recorders and radio have to be registered," said Ms. Lee, who was a housewife until she left 18 months ago. "At registration, they cut off and solder the tuning dial to make sure you don't have a `free' radio. If you have a cassette player, sometimes the police come to your apartment to check your cassette library." The problems of no/low trust bureaucratic states facing American information warfare are legion, once there are independent means of contacting the people in those states. Strategypage.com has been speculating here, here, here, and here on how it is affecting our Iraqi campaign strategy and execution. This passage from the third link sticks with me because it is about manipulating the Saudis and the U.N., so we can better arrange the fall of Saddam: ...Recent news stories about Saudi officials' involvement with Al Qaeda terrorists, especially the 9/11 hijackers, should be reconsidered as successful pressure by the U.S. government to achieve its strategic objectives. Qualms about the ability of the Bush Administration in such matters should vanish too, but won't. The Administration's decision concerning UN weapons inspections should be viewed in light of this demonstrated competence - just doing their job tells us where Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) aren't. We're using the UN for our own purposes, which includes deception of Saddam Hussein and psychological warfare against his underlings. An ideal American victory would consist of Saddam's assassination before the invasion followed by a relatively bloodless occupation and creation of a US military government to reconstruct Iraq as we did 57 years ago in Germany and Japan. Saudi access makes this feasible - Saddam's henchmen have no chance whatever now and know it. The fall and "soft landing"** of the Soviet Union were not accidents. They were stage managed in large part by the efforts of the mid-to-senior level national security appointees from the first Bush Administration. Those people now make up Dubya's senior level national security team. If there is a way to arrange a "soft landing" for North Korean, around the "Hermit Kingdom's" controls on information, they are going to take it. Which is a good thing because: 3) The North Koreans are immune to any military threat America makes. The North Koreans have already imagined far worse ones in their own propaganda. Military pressure, the defectors warned, will have little effect on one of the most militarized societies in the world. In the mid-1990's, during a famine, Ms. Lee recalled, "they had this slogan: `Without the candy bowls, you can still live; but without the bullets, you cannot survive.' " 4) The North Korean defectors don't think much of the illusions that South Korean protestors hold about the North. Ms. Park said she had no patience with young South Koreans who muse that a North Korean nuclear bomb is really a "Korean bomb." "That's a 3-year-old kid talking, someone who doesn't know about politics," retorted Ms. Park, whose two sons — a seminarian and a street vendor — are in Seoul. ** “Soft landing” meaning in this case no gas, bugs, or nukes were used by the totalitarians in charge to keep power. Thursday, January 09, 2003
Here, There, and Everywhere The team is coming together nicely, and they should be posting their intros on the site soon so you can get to know them. As you'll see, some of them are folks you already know. Tomorrow I'll restart our "48 Ways to Wisdom" series, and Saturday will feature the return of our "Sufi Wisdom" series as well. Today's Blogs: We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties... Sorry, folks. MAJOR problems with Blogger. A (') instead of a (") made a certain post uneditable, and I can't stop it from destroying the next post down. Safe mode did not give me any ability to fix this, and I had no choice but to delete today's postings manually using FTP/HTML editing. Further publishing will have to wait until it's fixed. I HATE blogger. UPDATE: Postings wiped and restored now. It was fixable, but only when using safe mode on my Mac at home (IE5). No idea why safe mode in IE6 and Netscape 7 for Windows wouldn't activate the edit tag. And so I join my compatiots Mike (Cold Fury), Charles Johnson (LGF), et. al. in praising my Mac! But the move to MT can't come soon enough for me. Maybe He Can Go Back to Peanuts... In the "You Don't Say" category: [German Chancellor] "Schroder's Problems Largely of His Own Making". "Herr Schroder, under fire over vacillating leadership, strains in his coalition, the row with America and new rumours about his private life, appears to have retreated into sullen silence. No wonder senior figures in his Social Democratic Party (SPD) are asking how and when he can be replaced. "Tap... Tap... Nope. Sympathy meter still busted. Women in War On MSNBC.com, Martha Brant writes: "In my family, women have gone to war for generations. So when I signed up to cover what now seems like an inevitable war with Iraq, my decision did not meet with protest or worry, but, rather, stories..."Worth a read. North Korea: Clinton Knew...and 'Kicked the Can' Anyway A recent article in INSIGHT magazine, and an op-ed by Michael Kelly on MSNBC, cast extreme doubt on the "conventional wisdom" Josh Marshall and others are pushing on the North Korea crisis. 1) that the Bush Administration blundered on North Korea, and The Clinton Administration knew at the time (1994) from NK defectors that the North Koreans had no intention of honoring the 1994 Nuclear Agreement, according to Insight Magazine. Two key passages from the INSIGHT article: Publicly, experts disagree about the state of the North Korean nuclear-weapons program. Some estimates indicate that the Kim Jong-il regime could have a nuclear bomb within one year; others say it already has two. However, the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare (TFTUW) issued a report in August 1994 that said of the Agreed Framework, Washington is buying time while maintaining the charade that the DPRK [North Korea] does not have nuclear weapons. Consequently, the United States and its allies have settled into the 'do-nothing-for-now' mode, merely postponing the hour of reckoning." " and The TFTUW report quotes "high-level North Korean defectors," saying that the current leadership in North Korea will not give up nuclear weapons no matter how many agreements it enters into with the United States. One defector, Kang Myong-To, was quoted in the report as saying, "North Korea's nuclear development is not intended as a bargaining chip as seen by the Western world. ... [Pyongyang] sees nuclear development as the only means to maintain Kim Jong-il's regime." Bodansky tells Insight, "Nuclear weapons are the ultimate insurance policy of the ruling elite" in North Korea. Read the full article for the above passages in context and for how the Clinton Administration made sure those dissenting from the agreement in DoD and State were suppressed. An op-ed by Micheal Kelly over on MSNBC goes farther in taking down "conventional wisdom." Kelly states that: CONVENTIONAL WISDOM tends by its nature to get things wrong, but seldom this wrong and seldom this dangerously wrong. This is wrong to the point of divorce from reality. and A 1990 KGB report to the Soviet Central Committee asserted, based on “available data,” that North Korea had “completed” its “first nuclear device” and in 1994, prior to the agreement, the director of the CIA said that the agency believed North Korea had already produced one to two bombs. Current U.S. intelligence assessments are that North Korea has probably produced at least one nuclear weapon. and In October 2002, after years of mounting evidence of North Korean violations, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly confronted North Korea with evidence that it was conducting a clandestine bomb-building program based on a process of enriching uranium. North Korea had begun this program only months after the signing of the 1994 Agreed Framework — and, note, seven years before George Bush called anybody evil. North Korea first denied the truth, then admitted it — and then unilaterally “nullified” the 1994 deal. If memory serves, Clinton's CIA director at the time was James Woolsey. And please carefully note that the Clinton Administration's opposition to missile defense collapsed after the 1998 NK missile test over Japan. Many at the time attributed it to the accurate predictions of the Rumsfeld Commission on North Korean ballistic missile capabilities. Perhaps there was other knowledge involved, as Insight implied? It will be interesting how the former Clinton Administration officials Josh Marshall's "always invaluable Nelson Report" mention will answer a line of "What Did you Know And When Did You Know It" questions from Republican Congressmen. Perhaps questions on the subjects of 1994 North Korean Defector reports on the NK nuclear program, the CIA's 1994 and 1998 North Korean nuclear capability and intentions estimates, and what role all three may have had in the Clinton Administration abandoning opposition to a National Ballistic Missile Defense. Seeing former Clinton Administration officials in open Congressional session answering to those questions under oath will make for great television. Which why I don't expect it to happen. Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Two Towers Thoughts Just saw The Two Towers this past weekend. It was a pretty good movie, even though some of the script changes affected the story's moral core in important (and negative) ways. On the bright side, the action/effects were tremendous. Gollum was spectacularly done, a watershed in movie-making as the first digital character to convincingly convey emotion. The methods by which the Ents dealt with Isengard was an outstanding improvisation, deeply true to Tolkien the author despite their status as an embellishment. I confess that I also liked the way they handled Arwen, creating a romantic sub-plot that added depth to the movie without getting in the way. Two thoughts still stick in my mind: #1: Given how crappy human generals seem to be, it's no wonder the elves hadn't showed up to fight with them for several centuries. #2: Granted, his questionable tactical commands got most of the elven contingent killed... but if you were Aragorn, wouldn't you have thrown Theoden over the battlement walls after the 3rd time or so he sent you to charge the enemy, then hung you out to dry? "Kill the Dark Lord and become King." Hold off the orc army while we close the gate behind you." Sheesh. Some guys'll do anything to keep ya from bonking their daughters. Sunday, January 05, 2003
New Beginnings... You may have noticed a change in this blog's description. This is not an accident. Winds of Change.NET is returning very shortly, with the same focus but an expanded team (and soon a new infrastructure too, thanks to Sekimori). You'll definitely recognize some of the people on the new team. For instance, Muslimpundit is moving in right here after a long blogging hiatus. Others you'll get to know and appreciate for their expertise in their respective fields. I'll talk about them all once the initial roster is finalized, so I can do a proper introductory post. The bottom line: I look forward to having them all here. I hope you will, too. |