Ghost Blog

Rough Magic

2010-07-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

I always said exactly what I liked here, and I have always been anonymous. A combination of luck and caution has protected my real identity. For example, I rent, my landlord provides the IP, and I have never blogged from work or campus without a proxy. I have never given anyone a picture that couldn't be posted on 4chan, and I deleted my embryo facebook page when Mr. Hates-anime broke up with me and turned stalker. I never trusted him enough to show him my blog. There are vanishingly few pictures of me on my blogs, and no close-ups.

Why did I do this, keep my worlds walled off?

Because someday I want to be a real third culture scientist. Like these people. Like these people.

I grew up here, evolved from dumb fuckin' kid conservative to dumb fuckin' kid liberal.

And some people hated me for that, i guess, or because I reverted to Islam.

My blog was falsely reported to blogger for hate speech during the coverage of the Green Wave in Iran, when I blogged a lot about Islam.

Recently in blog comments I have stalkers. People that call up my sex, my reversion, my history, even my parents and my upbringing to attack me.

So...its best that i step on.

I won't leave any trail of breadcrumbs back to the carefree flamewarrior I once was.

Good journey to you all, even people that hated me.

You all helped me learn, even if you only wanted to punish me.

But this rough magic
I here abjure.

I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book.

Soulstoned

2009-11-10T22:48:00.000-08:00

My raid just wiped on teh Stupid Boss.

I'm declining the soulstone for a while.

Good journey.

;)

Zombie Culture

2009-11-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

The Postmodern Conservative is still nattering on about teh "Culture Wars".

Sorry, Poulos, but there is no culture war in America.

There is only an evolution of culture event, like an ice age or the extinction event at the K-T Boundary.

From a First Things commenter on Poulos' post....

I’m with Nietzsche. He was just observing what had become inarguable. Not that God was dead, but that He wasn’t to be found in cultural/civilizational forms out there. Sure the forms exist, but with a few exceptions these forms have as much relevancy to the spirit that once animated them as the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade has to the spirit St. Patrick. They are dead forms animated by the undead energies of nostalgia, jingoism, and other vulgar passions. Conservatives simply don’t want to face up to this truth, and keep fighting this battle for a zombie culture, and in doing so are looking for love in all the wrong places–out there in the mainstream culture. They are fighting for the preservation of cultural forms that were shaped by spiritual cultural energies that simply no longer exist.

A zombie culture defined by slavish adherence to irrelevent undead forms.

21st century American culture is multi-gendered, multi-religioned, multi-colored, multi-ethnic and multi-aged.

WEC zombie culture is old, white and christian.

All the bearers of cultural authority; music, film, science, academe, the MSM,

literature.....indeed, all the arts....have become colonized by liberal memetics.

Let me repeat….there is no culture war…..there is only an evolution of culture event
Conservative efforts to “take back teh culture” are as useful as battling glacial flow with pitchforks and torches.

Party of White Evangelical Christians

2009-11-01T05:24:00.000-08:00

Sorry, been busy.

I have one question for Sunday morning......what is the current percentage of the GOP that is White Evangelical Christian (WEC)?

In 2000 it was 33%(Pew), 2006 it was 47% (GSS), in 2008 it was 50% in the CNN exit polling.
WECs make up 20% of the electorate, and the GOP is at 22-24%.....are ALL the WECs in the GOP?
It is my hypothesis that the decrease in republican party affiliation is caused by non-WECs leaving the party to become independents, resulting in the party becoming increasingly homogenously WEC.
Could percent WEC be as high as 70-75%?
I was going to cowboy up 20 bucks and buy a month of access to Rasmussen crosstabs to find out, but my mac started yelling bluemurder that the Rasmussen site didn't have a valid security certificate, and I would surely be infected with cyber-stds if I went there.

What kind of data provider interweb poll site doesnt have a valid security certificate?

Conservative Ragnarok

2009-10-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

Can it be?

Ace attacks Charles.

Charles attacks Allahpundit.

The Doom of the Conservative Pundits.

How long before Malkin enters the fray?

Conservatives will fight
and kill each other,
Reagan’s children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the blogworld,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the blogworld goes headlong.
No pundit will have
mercy on another.

Brooks Goes Third Culture

2009-10-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

Gradually Third Culture scientists are taking over the debate.

Brooks--

The work demonstrates that we are awash in social signals, and any social science that treats individuals as discrete decision-making creatures is nonsense. But it also suggests that even though most of our reactions are fast and automatic, we still have free will and control.

Unless the conservative movement can reconcile their increasingly WEC base with Science, I think they are doomed to the dustbin of history.

SBH (social brain hypothesis) FTW!!

Throw Down

2009-10-13T06:21:00.000-07:00

I was against raggin' on Obama to repeal DADT (he can do that).

But I have changed my mind.

Let's roll.

update: a bill will be introduced in two weeks to strike down DADT.

Obama knows best I guess.

;)

Why So Serious?

2009-10-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

I am purely mazed by the hoo-rah about Obama receiving the Nobel. The Insanity Saturation Level of Known Blogspace is pegging over 50%. Sully and the Wapo want Neda Agha Sultan and/or Mousavi/Karroubi to have the award, ignoring the fact that those old swedes would have had to have a time machine to nominate any of them. Miss Agha Sultan was a university student and Mousavi and Karroubi were vetted candidates on the Iranian election ticket in February when the nomination deadline occurred.

Douthat warns darkly that Obama's historical legacy will be compromised forevah!

We Are All Chunky Reese Witherspoon Now.

My reaction to all this is why-so-serious. For the youth-culture-challenged this means, why are

you stroking out over a non-issue?

2. why so serious 66 up, 22 down
The phrase the villain “The Joker” played by Heath Ledger uses in the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight” when he asks his victims why they are always so serious and not smiling.
The Joker holds a knife up to Rachel Dawes mouth and tells her the story of how he got his scars. He says that one night when his parents were fighting as a young child and he was watching from the corner, his dad asked him “Why so serious?” and used a knife to cut into his cheeks so it looked like he was always smiling.

I think everyone agrees that the old swede posse can give it to anyone they want. It is a subjective decision they are empowered to make according to the terms of Alfred Nobel's will.

during the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

Why is it a bad thing for Obama n/e ways to get the Nobel? We already had preemptive war....how about a preemptive strike for peace?

It isn't a WTF moment.

It is a FTW moment.....for all of us.

Except for Glenn Beck I guess. ;)

Conversations At A Wake

2009-10-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

Reihan Salam and Sam Tannehaus have a mildly interesting exchange on The Death of Conservatism.

However, they seem completely oblivious to the demographic landscape shifting under their intellectual feet.

This prophecy came true, and I don't see any change reversing current demographic trends in the future.

Technically speaking, even a large Obama victory would not be a realignment. Realignments are moments when there are broad shifts in the electorate, and in 2008 there will be no significant shifts in the partisan voter preference of any demographic group. Important swing groups such as white Catholics, suburban women, Latinos, seculars, Independents and working-class whites are not likely to demonstrate any large, sudden or long-term shifts in allegiance from one party to the other. Instead, an Obama victory would simultaneously be comeuppance to a forty-year-old conservative strategy of scapegoating minorities and the realization of long-term demographic trends that finally allow those minorities collectively to achieve majority status.

Since 1968 American presidential elections have been defined as a competition over fundamentally conservative identity groups. Even though they are not precisely congruous, a direct lineage exists from the Nixon-forged Southern Strategy of the 1960s and '70s, to the Reagan Democrats of the '80s, to Mark Penn's Bubbas of the '90s and on to the Values Voters of this decade. These swing voting groups are overwhelmingly white, not very urban, heavily blue-collar, generally Southern and always socially conservative. Even though the labels have changed, these four criteria have been the genetic code of swing voters for nearly forty years. In every case, the decisive swing voting group has been hostile to impending social change brought on by various civil rights movements and resentful of the cultural predilections of an urban, bicoastal "liberal elite." The quest to capture these voters has created an entire generation of pundits, strategists and party leaders who will do everything possible to appear not-liberal, not-elite and in touch with the values of small-town America, whatever those values happen to be at any given moment. A Southern accent helps, too. A Democratic politician's willingness to distance himself or herself (but usually himself) from--and to use "Sister Souljah" moments frequently to denounce--the left wing of the Democratic Party helps even more.

Andrew praises the call for truth telling, but I don't see any truth here.

the "small but intense and vocal minority," many of them "white evangelical Christians," who today populate the eroding island of movement conservatism.

Huh? White evangelical christians are all that is left in entire GOP base. In the 2008 exit polls evangelical christians pegged at 50% of the GOP, but my hypothesis is that is much higher now. Evangelicals comprise about 20% of the national electorate, and Mormons about 2%. Catholics represent 27% of the electorate and voted for Obama at 67%.

31% of the electorate is not going to win any elections.

Buckley?

Lol....it is to laff.

The conservative intellectual that informs Mormon convert Glenn Beck's 912 Project is Cleon Skousen.

Is it possible that the GOP has become a purely religious party in the 21st century?

Apparently so....and sadly..... the single most influential conservative intellectual is a mormon crank too crazy for even the LDS elders.

Tone Deaf

2009-10-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

English alternative rockers Muse told puffy buffoon Glenn Beck they don't want any endorsements from him, and he'd better not try to play their music in association with his 912 Project.

Remind you of anything?

How 'bout that dimbo with the big hair and mall bangs that ran for veep in 2008 and couldn't even play the tunes of the 80's hair band she named her son(Track Van Palin) after? Rejected! Along with Foo Fighters, Heart, Jackson Brown, Survivor and Jon Bon Jovi.

Ouch, bet that left a mark.

Hehe, conservatives can't dance and got no rythm.

The body of youth culture rejects conservatism like a disease.

Inverse Social Darwinism: Selection for Stupid

2009-10-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

This has to be the funniest thread I have ever read at Secular Right (well...except for HeatherMac on how poofy weddings will make afro-americans avoid marriage).

Visiting HotAir Commenter: Telling people they are stupid won’t change their minds —especially if they are stupid.

David Hume: this is a very good, and depressing point.

Wow.....yah think? The GOP has selected for people-too-stupid-to-understand-ToE for years, and it's a Big Surprise to these guys that the base is homogeneously IQ-challenged?

lulz, gotta love the Right.

Even their smart people are retards.

Oh, come on, Andrew.

The GOP has downselected for reps that don't have the substrate to understand ToE for 40 years.

That is a pretty simple selection gradient.

The reason birtherism persists is because the republican base is "low information"...read low IQ.

There is a big IQ gap between the parties. Low IQ correlates with high levels of religiousity, low levels of education, and low levels of cognitive structure.
Thus the persistance of the birther meme in a “memetic" deme that exhibits all three traits.

Sarah Palin is simply the end-game result of 40 years of "selection for stupid."

Lissen to razib.

“i think there’s a reason that the IQs of fundamentalists in the USA is so much lower than moderate, and especially liberal, religionists. ”

Mega-Malkin

2009-10-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

A lot of people in Known Blogspace have remarked on Charles Johnson's recent progressing conversion to sanity.

So I proposed Wingnut Apocalypse for an entry to the BJLexicon….

defn, n. --it is the intersection of the increasing curve of Charles’ sanity with the decreasing curve of Michelle Malkin’s. The effect will be to rip a hole in the fabric of Wingnut Reality causing the entire conservative movement to be sucked back into the Eighth Dimension with the rest of the red ‘lectroids.

Alternatively Charles and Malkin may eventually have a flame war.
The lizardoid army has been making some trial sorties into HotAir.
It will be like the south park ep– Mega-Streisand vs Mothra-Robert Smith…..Mega-Malkin vs Mothra Charles Johnson.

I like this even better.

21 Guns and the Graveyard of Empires

2009-10-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know if any of my readers watched the VMAs, or if they did if they took anything away except Kanye-is-an-asshole.

But Greenday's 21 Guns won the song of the year.

I think this is pretty significant, that a radical anti-war tune won big.

The Berkeley Repertory theater has made a "juke-box musical" out of the last Greenday album, American Idiot... and its breaking all box office records.

Culture Monster (props, buzzkill)

The GOP is pretty tone deaf to contemporary culture as proven by cluelessly naming their "grassroots" protest movement after a sex act.

But I think this parallels the emergent youth protest against the Viet Nam War in the sixties.

Now, I wasn't around....but wasn't there a lot of anti-war protest music?

I think Obama is going to decline to send more troops to the Graveyard of Empires.

FGM, the Female Orgasm, Economics, and the Arabian Nights

2009-09-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

In Evo Bio 101 one of the most popular topics for discussion was The Female Orgasm. Naturally, we mostly argued about the evolutionary basis for multiple orgasms in the XX. One hypothesis was that FMOs increased pair bonding, another that FMOs kept women wanting more, and so increased loyalty....but what I wondered about was...what if men falling asleep after sex was somehow paired with a sort of female genetic promiscuity that led to outcrossing?

Because outcrossing masks deleterious recessives. In a communal sleeping environment like an EEA (environment of evolutionary advantage) cave or long-house, post-coital males would fall asleep, while post-coital females could take another partner....a sort of anti-polygamy evolutionary strategy, to counter the influence of a single male genome dominating the local genepool.

I am very excited about Social Brain Hypothesis. For me, it is like puzzle pieces dropping into place with a deliciously satisfying snick! Intuitively social brain behavior makes a lot of sense, how we decide, social network theory, and....myths, legends and faerytales.

For example, consider the Arabian Nights (Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla).

The whole framework of Nights is defined on female promiscuity, and not just King Shahriyar's faithless wife, but his brother Shah Zamen, the Sultan of Samarkand, suffers from the same wifely perfidious betrayal and nearly dies from it.

So the heartbroken King Shahriyar begins a practice of marrying maidens for one night and cutting off their heads in the morning so that they can never betray him.

It takes Shaharazade a thousand and one nights to persuade King Shahriyar to not cut her head off....and he falls in love with her along the way.

In SBH we can think of a culture as incorporating a whole unique body of evolved social strategies, mores and taboos. Some taboos cross culture....like murder and father/daughter incest.....and virginity-value and anti-female promiscuity. But cultures evolve unique strategies that are matrixed in the society.

Thus FGM.

It is my hypothesis that FGM arose in MENA as a tribal practice designed to reduce female promiscuity. Possibly intense anti-female promiscuity mores are a side-effect of polygamous societies, the model of a single older husband, multiple wives and a population of unmarried younger men. But FGM persists because it simply increases the market value of the bride in the social matrix.

It is an economic tradition.

The way to discourage the practice is not to forbid it, which only drives it underground and makes it stronger, particularily because the practice has colonized islamic jurisprudence. The way to reduce the practice is to find competitive ways to increase the economic value of women in MENA society.

And that means education and joining the workforce.....and reproductive choice aka birth control.

In watching Amanpur's CNN special Generation Islam I was especially epiphanied by her interview with a young Talib. She asked him why girls couldn't go to school, why the Taliban was against education for women. He answered.......of course they can go to school......they just must be accompanied by a male relative.

Ah, the genetic perfidy of the fair sex.

Green Tide Rising

2009-09-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

Good news out of Iran today.

Rafi brilliantly co-opted Qods day for the Sea of Green.

If either Seyyed Mousavi or Seyyed Karroubi is arrested, they become the next Imam Ali.

The regime is going down.

I say within a year.....any takers?

Whistling in the Dark

2009-09-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

In Kling's post he posits that the current instantiation of the conservative movement is the GOP's last stand, but also the last stand of the "progressive elites".

I come back to my view that this is white, small-town America making its last stand. However, I think, also, that the progressive elite is making a last stand. My guess is that doubts are mounting among many independent voters about whether they want such a highly-charged politics. I am sticking with my bet that the Democrats will hold onto their House and Senate majorities as well as the Presidency through the elections of 2016, but relative to six months ago I feel that I am depending more on Republican incompetence than overall political trends to win that bet.

Two things....it really is all about race, and has been since the South Carolina delegation forced Jefferson to excise a condemnation of slavery from the Declaration before they would join the union, and our country was concieved, designed, and implemented by elites.

The GOP simply has no traction without electable elites in their leadership.....we live in a democratic meritocracy.....so elites are always going to be with us.

So much of conservative intellectual product now seems to be just whistling in the dark.

Here is the Dark.....

Twenty years ago the electorate was 95% white. Last year, in 2008, the electorate was 75% white. At least a third of those whites consistantly vote democratic, Carter to Obama. So currently the white conservative vote is about 50%.

Then how did Obama get elected when the country wasn't really demographically ready for him?

A perfect storm of environmental voter influence is how.

The horrorshow of the Bush presidency, the market fail, and the unappealing alternative of a 72-year-old 4x melanoma survivor running with a replacement of a deeply unready ex-beauty pageant contestant combined to give Obama an advantage of more than 2:1 electoral college votes, 365 to 173.

The anger is real, but only partly anti-black.

It is really anti-everyone but "heartland" whites.

But race is everything now for blacks, Hispanics; and Asians are picking up the cudgel like good, little hustlers gaming the spoils system.

Joe Wilson's outburst was an example of the genuine frustration republicans feel....in his district, there is tension between whites and hispanics over a stressed and diminished labor market.

Republicans know that they need to reach hispanic voters...but they are also keenly aware that their base will rage-log on them at the first sign of hispanic outreach.

In another 20 years the electorate will only be 40% white. If a third of those voters continue to vote democratic, then the GOP will be reduced to less than 30% of the electorate.

So Kling is correct about one thing....this is the GOP's last stand.

It only goes downhill from here.

This is simply the GOP's Alamo.

No one gets out alive.

Primitive

2009-09-16T04:14:00.000-07:00

The evolution of god war rages on.....but I think I figured it out....the reason so many Americans refuse to believe in evolution.

They can't, they are intellectually incapable.

Check out this comment from blaze.....

If one reads the Spanda Karikas or Pratyabhinyahrdyam of Kashmir Shaivism, it is easy to see how “intelligent design” is a functional description. Since all is prana at the essence and prana itself is “intelligent” (or, at least (most) conscious) there is enough room for all that is in or out of our philosophy or religion.
The problem occurs when we assume a Creator God who built this organic mechanism like a computer sim and then left us to our stumbling ways.
Many quantum physicists tell us that the more they learn, the more is does seem like there is an intelligent force behind it. Then they tell us that force seems equivalent to the dance of Shiva.

I highly recommend a reading of Kashmir Shaivism.— blaze · Sep 15, 12:02 PM · #

Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism all incorporate this concept.... wahdat al wujud, the unity of existance, prana, universalism.

So Wright is correct, the christian god has evolved...he just hasn't evolved enough. The christian god is basically mechanistic and ......primitive.

That is why teh fierce opposition to science in general and ToE in particular in this country.

My response.....

blaze, imho the problem is that the xian concept of god is immature…umm…. underdeveloped.
sufism, hinduism and buddhism all incorporate universalism. The concept of universalism is antipathic to evangelical xianity, and antipathic to the concept of man as the center of the universe and the pinnacle of creation.
In sufism the universe surrounds and incorporates us; wahdat al-wujud, the unity of existance and maarifa, the Invisible World.
Stu Hamerhoff and Sir Roger Penrose are quantum physicists that postulate a “platonic substrate” existing on the border of the quantum and classical worlds.
Roger Penrose’s Road to Reality may be THE preeminant text on QM in the world.
The new domain of Social Brain Research is exploring concepts inherent in buddhism and sufism and hinduism……there is no peer-to-peer mapping for these concepts in xianity that I am aware of.— matoko_chan · Sep 15, 02:34 PM · #

The mechanistic god of the christians....a biological tweaker/planner that simply HAS to be mucking around with cell biology tweaking evolution....it is the limit of what christians can understand.

Klingon Klown Kar Krash

2009-09-15T17:59:00.000-07:00

While I agree with some of Arnold Kling's sentiments here...I would just like to point out that this country was CONCIEVED, DESIGNED, and IMPLEMENTED by elites, and that in a meritocracy, we ALWAYS select some stripe of aristoi, either natural like polymath Thomas Jefferson suggested (see Barack Obama) or artificial (see George Bush Presidentsson).

Also, that there are uneducated small town NON-WHITE americans that intelligently run from the GOP like scalded cats, and who were prominently absent from the DC Tea Party.

Does the GOP drive anything but Klown Kars anymore?

Dark Epiphany

2009-09-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

I find this really quite depressing.

The rise of the welfare state in the US was instantiated by the need to provide civil rights and welfare for non-white citizens.

Small government worked in America as long the population was 99% white protestant.
Because local religious welfare providers and locally elected governments were dealing with a homogeneous population. This worked fine as long as the America electorate was 99% white protestant.
The trouble began when women and blacks became citizens….women got some indirect benefits and representation because they were part of white protestant families….blacks didn’t.
So the federal government was forced to intervene to provide civil rights and welfare to non-white citizens.
So Hayek was wrong….the welfare state doesn’t lead to socialism…it leads to the death of the religious local welfare providers…..to Great Britain style secularism......where the churches are dying.

They can't compete.

Government welfare doesn’t require the investment of church attendance or conforming to a belief system about social behavior.
Citizenship makes it free, or at least much cheaper.

The welfare state is simply the public option for religion.

The GOP Vampire House on Spontaneous Combust

2009-09-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

So, this blog was reported as a spam blog and blogger shut it down.

Guess I stepped on someone's last nerve.

I have often likened The House Reagan Built to a house now colonized by vampires.

You know, the vampires can't come in unless you invite them. But once you invite them in, then everyone in the house has to become at least part vampire, and pretty soon the vampires think they own the house.

The only way to stamp out a vampire infestation is to chase down the vampires and stake them through the heart. This isn't working out so well.

So then your only option is burning down the Vampire House.

In case you missed it, Jim Manzi and Jerry Coyne are engaged in a flame war over what appears to be that hoary old chestnut, anti-ToE IDT.

I don't think the GOP can move into the 21st century until someone stakes that particular vampire in the heart.

I'm pretty sad....Manzi was the last lone candle at the once great NRO...but hey, Mistah Buckley, he daid........teh horror.

You can read for yourselves, but all I see here is the same old anti-ToE argument about unsolvable complexity (teh eyeball!) blinged out with genetic algorithms and a factory analogy.

When pressed Jim stages a panicked retreat to the spin on subatomic particles as evidence of the Invisible Designer. Well duh!

The discussion has moved on past old conservative failmemes like anti-ToE IDT into the realms of physics and cosmology.

The pathetic occupants of the Vampire House are still trying to give life support to conservative failmemes.

There is no god in the gap in biological evolution.....DNA is the unification theorem of biology.

However, there is a gap between the quantum world and the classical world....let us go and search there.

Why the GOP Can't Take Back Teh Culture

2009-09-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

Culture 11 was all about teh culture.

Breitbart's Big Hollywood (the populist version of the too cerebral and now defunct Culture 11) is about taking back teh culture. Mission statement:

Big Hollywood is not a "celebrity" gabfest or a gossip outpost - it is a continuous politics and culture posting board for those who think something has gone drastically wrong and that Hollywood should return to its patriotic roots.
Big Hollywood's modest objective: to change the entertainment industry. To make Hollywood something we can believe in - again. In order to give millions of Americans hope.
Until conservatives, libertarians and Republicans - who will be the lion's share of Big Hollywood's contributors - recognize that (pop) culture is the big prize and that politics is secondary, there will be no victory in this important battle.

Ditto the American Scene.

But the GOP's cultural disenfranchisement is a symptom, not a cause, of their current woes.

Conservatives are shut out of contemporary culture because they are nearly completely disenfranchised from youth culture.

Youth culture; science culture, geek culture, academic culture, techno culture, gamer culture, pop music culture.....hollywood culture.

Let's face it, Andrew Breitbart.

There are only two kinds of liberals in hollywood, and yes, liberals pretty much own hollywood. If you are young, rich, beautiful and altruistic, then you become an Angelina Jolie style liberal and you want to adopt the world.
If you are young, rich, beautiful and NOT-altruistic, then you become a Megan Fox style liberal and you want to sic Megatron on the heartland biblethumpers.

Now Michael Steele and the RNC open another front on the war against healthcare reform.

Seniors against everyone else.

Tactically, this could even work for the next couple of elections.

But strategically starting an age-gap battle is a looser in the war for culture.

Consider Murray's Kael graphic that he meant to poke fun at pointy-headed intellectuals.

Where are the university professors and college teachers?

Where are the culture producers....and where are the culture consumers?

culture producers:

Intellectual Upper: Also at the 95th percentile of income and with a graduate degree, but a lawyer, academic, scientist (hard or soft) outside academia, writer, in the news media, or a creator of entertainment programming (film and television).

culture consumers:

EVERYBODY ELSE.

Is Conservatism Obsolete?-- The Cake is a Lie Series

2009-08-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

In the High and Far-Off times, O Best Beloved, conservatives were not as they are known today. But there was one Conservative--a new Conservative--a Conservative's Child--who was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means she asked ever so many questions.

Those sillie humans at the secular right blog are at it again...fiddling while their Rome burns down around them. Razib answers Drehers question, Is religion necessary to Western civilization?

with From Christendom to the West.

Of course Western Civ couldn't have got here without religion. Religion is part of homosapiens sapiens....no civilization can exist without religion.

But while christianity was sufficient, I think it is no longer neccessary in the 21st century.

The rule of law and government welfare have evolved to obviate the services religion once provided.

Razib says.....

To me the critical issue in a robust and vibrant culture which is one worth fighting for has less to do with acceptance of a particular metaphysic rooted in supernatural claims, and more with a shared canon from which one derives mores and allows for common cultural currency.

Ah, yes....good old traditional wisdom.

But the inexorable cultural disenfranchisement of conservative memetics is a symptom, not a cause.

That is why "taking back Hollywood" or "taking back culture" cannot work to save conservative memetics.

If Razib was honest, he would admit the people that fear change are the unintelligent and the uneducated, the "low information" base that has their passions and prejudices and superstitions farmed for votes by "conservative" leaders who are really only interested in preserving the status quo.

The Cake is still a lie.

Nejad Bluffs

2009-08-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

Duh.

Khamenei is a seyyed, Nejad is not.

Putting the Line of the Imam on trial would destroy the legitimacy of Khamenei's own leadership, and the potential leadership of his son Mojtaba.

Another One Bites the Dust

2009-08-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

So my one-time hero Steve Sailer gets a beatdown at the Scene in the comments, from me and others, on his interpretation of District 9.

Now Dr. Murray (he of Bellcurve fame) gives a demonstration on How to Lie with Statistics.

For some reason, he sorts "uppers" into two arbitrary fake groups.

Traditional Upper: Someone at the 95th percentile of income, with a graduate degree, who is a business executive, physician, engineer, etc.

Intellectual Upper: Also at the 95th percentile of income and with a graduate degree, but a lawyer, academic, scientist (hard or soft) outside academia, writer, in the news media, or a creator of entertainment programming (film and television).

Wow....I sure hope Dr. Murray does some revision before he publishes...isn't it kind of glaringly obvious that he has made arbitrary class assignments here?

Because....if we group traditionals and and intellectuals the curve would still trend up.

Because we know that people with post graduate degrees are running from the GOP like scalded cats, and that only 6% of ALL scientists are self-described conservative/republicans.

I can't count how many times I have defended the Bellcurve as an honest compilation of statistics....but perhaps I am wrong.

Murray seems to be manipulating statistics to prove that educated intellectual elites are Kaelian whackjobs, and there are "good"(conservative) and "bad"(liberal) "uppers".

Sadly....I guess this means that perhaps his detractors are correct and Murray manipulated the Bellcurve data to prove some racist thesis.

Oh well.

Another one bites the dust.

Playing With Fire

2009-08-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

The Friday sermon at Tehran University called for arresting the leaders of the Green Wave. The 1979 Islamic Revolution succeeded because al-Islam was on the side of the revolutionaries, or they could at minimum SAY it was. The regime's legitimacy to rule in an ISLAMIC republic derives from al-Islam.

If the regime has lost Qom, they have lost the fight already.

I agree with Bueno de Mesquita.

It is just a matter of time.

The Rise of the Third Culture and the Death of Conservatism

2009-08-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

I have been reading The Third Culture, and the Edge epapers lately. In my readings, I have come to believe that conservatism as a philosophy is simply doomed to extinction. Not because conservatism has become gradually and thoroughly disenfranchised in American culture and politics, but because conservative memetics have simply become terminally obsolete. Conservatism is the attempt to abrogate radical change.

But as a meme the need for that no longer exists. Who needs "traditional wisdom" when we have the internet(s)? With the flattening of information, anyone can be a sage.

As our knowledge increases, so does our knowledge of how to deal with change gracefully, and our knowledge of mechanisms and causes.

To put it bluntly, the scientists of the Third Culture are the intellectuals of the modern world, and if we know how, and if we know why......then we can build accordingly. We don't need to clamp a brake on progress......we can channel it, we can exploit it....we can control it.....and most importantly, we don't need to fear it.....we understand it.

The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.
In the past few years, the playing field of American intellectual life has shifted, and the traditional intellectual has become increasingly marginalized. A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s. Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost.

Comment on comments sums up the vast intellectual wasteland of the conservative blogosphere, for sure.

In 1959 C.P. Snow published a book titled The Two Cultures. On the one hand, there were the literary intellectuals; on the other, the scientists. He noted with incredulity that during the 1930s the literary intellectuals, while no one was looking, took to referring to themselves as "the intellectuals," as though there were no others. This new definition by the "men of letters" excluded scientists such as the astronomer Edwin Hubble, the mathematician John von Neumann, the cyberneticist Norbert Wiener, and the physicists Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg.

This current epiphany crystalized for me on po-mo-con James Poulos' Avatar post.

Poulos openly sneers at the concept of "geek love"......

There is something uncanny, and not in a good way, about a CGI-driven love story about a non-human alien and someone genetically engineered halfway out of their humanity by the government. And the trouble with geeks is that a fair number of them are likely to be so geeked out about the vast possibilities of scientific fantasy that their ability to recognize an uncanny valley when they see one is ruthlessly repressed. The trouble with geeks is that for them, a human love story isn’t cool enough — is simply boring.

Nah, not boring...but for some reason completely unintelligible to Poulos. And it is a great story....it is the theme of separated lovers from Cameron's Titanic.....like the tale of Shams al-Nahar in the Arabian Nights.
A theme that speaks across cultures .....and across species.
Like Osh and Lady X in the White Dwarf, and Romeo and Juliet, and Majnun and Leyylah.

A deeply embedded cross-cultural human mythos, in our blood and in our bones.

Avatar also addresses Crick's Astonishing Hypothesis....what does it mean to be human?

Sheesh.

Poulos is a First Culture intellectual-- a traditional conservative literary intellectual, a postmodern intellectual-----and he will never get it. This is why conservatives are FAIL at "taking culture back"...because they don't "get" the Third Culture a'tall.

Consider this poll.... 6% of scientists are republicans. That means....94% of scientists are not-republican. The Third Culture intellectuals are the near exclusive property of the liberals (55%) and the moderates(39%).

The Third Culture IS geek culture, technocrat culture, youth culture. It is university culture, internet culture, hollywood culture.

And geeks, like scientists, don't vote republican.

As a geek princess I can say this with authority....conservatism is simply becoming.....obsolete.

;)

I offer this HotAir comment thread on Buntings piece on Social Brain research.....the commenters universally percieve science as an attack on their most cherished belief systems.

The rise of the Third Culture simply means death for conservatism.

Yay!

The Crazy Tree and Demonic Possession

2009-08-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

Rick Perlstein has a better analysis of the emergent insanity of the teabag demographic.

The instigation is always the familiar litany: expansion of the commonweal to empower new communities, accommodation to internationalism, the heightened influence of cosmopolitans and the persecution complex of conservatives who can't stand losing an argument.
My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union.
So, crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny.

But this has all happened before.....and actually....I analyzed it! It seems so familiar because it IS familiar....its an unkillable demon from the dawn of time, the spirit of Kylon of Croton.

Kylon, a plutocrat of Croton, upon being refused entry to Pythagoras' School for Rulers, raised a mob of local farmers that chopped up the teachers with scythes and burned down the school.

This isn't anything new....and we sapient humans will deal with it like we always do....by overcoming disenfranchised populist rage with the rule of law and the forms of reason and logic.

Eureka!

I have found it.

Same-old, same-old, the commoners vs the elites.

All men are not created equal.....under the genes.

Wow, I feel so much better.

;)

Gaming the Green Wave

2009-08-17T07:33:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite things, game theory and the Green Wave.

What does 118 mean? It means that Iran won’t make a nuclear bomb. By early 2010, according to the forecast, Iran will be at the brink of developing one, but then it will stop and go no further. If this computer model is right, all the dire portents we’ve seen in recent months — the brutal crackdown on protesters, the dubious confessions, Khamenei’s accusations of American subterfuge — are masking a tectonic shift. The moderates are winning, even if we cannot see that yet.

I agree with the statement that the moderates are winning..... the 1979 Islamic Revolution took a year to accomplish.

I would love to see his analysis....I wonder if shi'ia islam is factored in to the decision trees and/or matrices....

Guess I will have to wait for the book.

Conservative Welfare Epics and Mercy Dates

2009-08-17T05:49:00.000-07:00

In the World [of Warcraft] welfare epics are top tier epic armor sets purchased with area points by "scrubs" that are being "carried" up the arena-team ladder by better players.

In Known Blogspace this is observable behavior at TAS and the Daily Dish, First Things and the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

For example Peter Suderman reviews a sci-fi noir epic that is wholly a bitter judgement on

apartheid without mentioning Gaza a single time, and scolds director Neill Blomkamp for condemning apartheid in a film about condemning apartheid.

There's probably a dose or two of social-commentary too many, and the South African setting makes the film's political parallels too explicit. Blomkamp clearly takes it all very seriously and personally, and at times his outrage veers toward the melodramatic and obvious: Apartheid was a great evil, and so is the continued toll it takes on South African underclass. But no one seriously disputes this, and the film's occasionally weighty tone suggests that the director may be over-impressed with his own boldness.

Moron....Alive in Joberg refers to Johannesberg.

Megan McArdle compares Matt Taibbi to Sarah Palin on economics, and blames the pro-choice for Dr. Tillers death, because they are so darned stubborn about not overturning Roe.

Joe Carter makes silly content-free posts, and is actually semi-famous for being wrong and still gets carried by TAS and the League. First Things, his main blog, is the home of Old (and also with a degree in wrong) Eurabia Frother Spengler/Goldman.

These people are not insightful or intelligent....they are partisan posers.

And the Dish is a cool guy giving mercy dates to ugly chicks.

Thing is....the conservative intellectual bench is getting very thin.

They need those welfare epics badly.

Attack of the Middle-aged Ragers

2009-08-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

Wha?

I know why the Teabag Demographic is so pissed off.....they lost.

And they lost bigtime, 365-173= 192 electoral college votes.

This reminds me of an old Orson Scott Card post where he said that the left owned media, acadame, the arts, contemporary musik, science and technology, hollywood, television, all the organs of culture and education essentially, but that was okfine because the right had the presidency (Bush), congress(pre-2006), and talk-radio. There was a balance.

Now all that remains to the right is talk-radio and FOXnews.

No wonder the teabag demographic is so shrill, so loud, and so rabid...they have been brutally disenfranchised.

Conservatives have no cultural voice for the demographics they need to reach.

And no political power.

So being ragers is all that is left.

Apartheid of Ideas

2009-08-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

Conor asks why aren't there good conservative movies?

He quotes Ruffini.

They controlled all the major institutions: the media, academia, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, large segments of the Republican Party, and consequently, the government…. They dominate Hollywood not by actively branding liberalism in their movies, but by coolly associating liberal policy ideas with sentiments everyone feels, like love (gay marriage) or fairness (the little guy vs. some evil corporate stiff). Though I think Andrew Breitbart is spot on in raising a red flag on the threat we face in Hollywood, I fear that the conservative movement of today would only produce a response as agitprop and sarcastic as the Joe the Plumber phenomenon. In other words, some amusing slapstick comedies but not sweeping cultural epics that will be remembered 50 years from now. When you assume liberals are dominant culturally, you tend toward sarcasm or one-off gimmicks to knock the majority of its game — but never an all encompassing argument for conservative cultural and political relevance — something we have lacked for a long time, since Buckley was in his prime.

This reminds me of an old Orson Scott Card post where he said that the left owned media, acadame, the arts, science and technology, television, all the organs of culture and education essentially, and all the right had was the presidency (Bush), congress(pre-2006), and talk-radio. Now all that remains to the right is talk-radio and FOXnews. No wonder the teabag demographic is so shrill, so loud, and so rabid...they have been brutally disenfranchised into near voicelessness.

And Breitbart's futile attempt to "take back hollywood" is simply ludicrous.....he is trying to halt the implacable inexorable glacier of cultural evolution with a snowfence made out of toothpicks.

Peter Suderman sneers that District 9 is “probably overrated” and urges us all to check out the neocon apologia "The Hurt Locker”. I suppose that is the universal conservative reaction.

Filmed in South Africa, the obvious analogy is SA apartheid, but the ravaged neighborhoods and crushing dehumanizing poverty in the West Bank and Gaza are deeply evocative of the alien ghettos in District 9, as are the intrusive Israeli commando raids, checkpoints and walled slum/reservation situ.

But Suderman doesn't see that at all....lawls...

Did we even see the same movie?

it poses questions similar to those raised by Orson Scott Card in the later books of his Ender series: Could an alien mind ever be truly knowable? Is peaceful interspecies coexistence even possible? Card treated these questions philosophically, as problems of culture and empathy. Blomkamp seems more interested in needling the human tendency toward brutal class segregation.

cough cough bullshit! cough cough

It is like there is an apartheid of ideas, and conservatives can only enjoy conservative films and liberals only enjoy liberal films. The idea that District 9 might really be about apartheid is apparently completely opaque to Suderman. I have to confess, Suderman's mind is far more incomprehensible to me than an alien mind. The aliens just wanted to go home, and to stop being tortured and killed and starved and exploited. Suderman seems to want us to believe that this is about SOMETHING OTHER THAN APARTHEID.

And unfortunately, like Conor says, nearly all the good films ARE liberal, and all nearly ALL liberal films are good. I think this is cultural evolution in action, and it bodes very ill for both Suderman and Card. Conservative voices are almost unintelligible right now......how long before they become culturally silenced?

As my friends and I walked out of the theater, visibly shaken and moved by the powerful themes of apartheid and cruelty limned in the film, we were shocked to see another group of (all male) students laughing and mocking the aliens.

“MNU should have just sealed up District 9 and let the prawns kill each other off,” said one boy.

George W. Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Palestine policy in one line.

Why Does President Obama Never Say Palin's Name?

2009-08-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

Right-wing blogs are joyfully counting coup for Sarah Palin's facebook page attack on the "death panels".....but....DID Obama do that because of her facebook page?

I think he did it to remove the issue as a tool for the right to demogogue the The Teabag Demographic with. And to avoid mentioning Palin's name.

It would be pretty simple to prove Palin (like with the bridge to nowhere) was for death panels before she was against them.......but would have meant acknowledging she exists.

In a way, Palin has killed the GOP. There are two types of people in the wide-wide world...elites and non-elites, and two basic tribal affiliations, conservative and liberal. Probably there is some genetic component. The american electorate segregates into thirds, basically...conservatives, independents and liberals, with half of the independents tending liberal and half tending conservative.
Traditionally the conservative leadership has posed itself as representing the non-elites, the commoners. This is a good strategy, because there are a lot more non-elites than elites. But America is a democratic meritocracy, so their leadership had to be a stealth elite pretending to be a commoner in order to win national elections.
Now Sarah Palin comes along and she is truly non-elite. What is more, she starts a movement to drive all the elites out of the GOP. But she is simply unelectable in a meritocracy.
So right now 6% of scientists are republicans, and 65% of people with post-grad degrees are democratic.....what this means is academe is painted blue, because teaching research scientists and people with post-grad degrees make up 99% of uni professors. So where do young conservative replacement reps with college degrees come from?
They don't.
Add the pressure of the demographic timer on the non-hispanic cauc majority running out....and we are seeing conservative panic.
So the frenzy on the conservative side is tactical.
Healthcare reform isn't Obama's waterloo.....it is theirs.

Obama has never said Palin's name since the election.

It's almost as if she doesn't exist.

Prove me wrong with a cite if you can.

2oo days and counting.

High School Never Ends in Wasilla

2009-08-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

Like I predicted, Obama pulled Palin's fangs by excising the end-of-life language from the reform bill.

He just used his Awesome Serengetti Magic Powers.....cheating!!!! hahaha

Now Palin can't demagogue the low information base with "death panels".

Srsly....attacking the President with tweets and a facebook page?

So high school.

Look what Palin said in 2008.

My hypothesis is that the low information Teabagger Demographic has so colonized the GOP base that the only way to communicate with them anymore is by demagoguery.

When Facebookers Attack

2009-08-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

I have made the point before that Sarah Palin is quite desperate to make Obama acknowledge her existance....so here is her lastest.....she attacks the President on her facebook page!!!!

lawls.

She wants Obama to acknowledge her.....lookit meee lookit meee.
She reached out to him and offered her help after the election......crickets.
She challenged him to a flat race......crickets.
She attacked him in her dopey Wapo energy op-ed.....crickets.
She attacked Obama with twitter on the "death panels".....crickets.
She attacks him now on Facebook......crickets.

He's just gonna defang her by excising that section from the bill.
Do you know why Obama will NEVAH acknowledge Palin?

Michelle won't let him.....because of this.....

The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

Poor Sarah....McCain gets invited to hang at the WH with the kool kidz....nevah gonna happen for her.
High School Never Ends in Wasilla.

Prediction?

More crickets.

No do-overs for dimbos.

The Teabagger Demographic

2009-08-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

Reihan says:

If Obamacare eventually passes in some form, I'll make you a guarantee: these ferocious protests will keep getting bigger and louder.

Well....duh!
Because the teabaggers aren't protesting healthcare reform...they are protesting Obama. The poor saps actually need healthcare reform but the GOP leadership told them they can break Obama by stopping it.

I have a guarantee for you, Reihan, cher.
Astroturf teabaggers is a very bad strategy for the GOP.
You see....the MSM in its deeply sensationalist nature is hot for extreme coverage of the townhall mobs....so we are getting ginormous tv coverage of the GOP's new core base demographic.....people you could meet at a Klan rally.

So while I am sure their anger [at Obama, not healthcare reform] is deep, wide and authentic, angry fat old white people screaming and having public pyschotic episodes on live tv is not persuasive....it is unattractive and scary.
Reihan, you know culture.....we americans relly like to watch reality shows featuring beautiful people....like spencer and heidi....everyone wants to go to cooltown.

Angry fat old white people are lightyears away from cooltown.....this kind of branding the GOP don't need.
I thought the GOP was trying to attract non-whites and young people?
The teabagger demographic will cause young people and minorities to run from the GOP like scalded cats.
;)

Response to John Whitehead

2009-08-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

I am a huge fan of Thomas Jefferson, and I find it extremely offensive that you take his name in vain.

Thomas Jefferson and I are involved.

You see, we live in a democratic meritocracy.

It is not perfect, but it is the best the Founders could craft.

President Obama was elected under that system.

And I'm sorry, but astroturf mobs running on disinformation don't a rebellion make.

Carrying posters of our elected president as the joker in whiteface with socialism written on the bottom, or posters of him as Hitler....chanting tyranny, tyranny and shouting communist!

This is not a "bipartisan" grassroots movement....you can just look at the crowds.

Uniformly middleaged, white, angry.....and very overweight. Some with little kids in tow...symbolic hostages to the future....boy, are those children going to grow up hating their parents.

This is just a good old southern lynch mob.....the GOP is devolving into a Klan gathering.

Yup, old fat white people with a token young vet.

Thomas Jefferson would have spit on you, John Whitehead.

Obama's Tit-for-Tat Gamespace: Healthcare

2009-08-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

Tit-for-tat is the optimal game theoretic solution for the IPD (Iterated Prisoners Dilemma) in Theory of Evolution of Cooperation.

It is simply unbeatable.

I like this old SDB treatment.

So simple even a birfer could unnerstand.

There's been a lot of analysis of this, and it turns out that honesty isn't the best policy. One guy decided to run a computer tournament; people were permitted to create algorithms in a synthetic language which would have the ability to keep track of previous exchanges and make a decision on each new exchange whether to be honest or to cheat. He challenged them to see who could come up with the one which did the best in a long series of matches against various opponents. It turned out that the best anyone could find, and the best anyone has ever found, was known as "Tit-for-tat".
On the first round, it plays fair. On each successive round, it does to the other guy what he did the last time.
When Tit-for-tat plays against itself, it plays fair for the entire game and maximizes output. When it plays against anyone who tosses in some cheating, it punishes it by cheating back and reduces the other guys unfair winnings.
No-one has ever found a way of defeating it.

Opening move: fair: the traditional Obama Opening Gambit-- Obama offers bipartisan dialog and compromise.

Republican counter: fair: "Just say no" move. Traditional conservative counter move, refuse to play.

Obama move 2: fair: Give the healthcare-reform mission to Congress. Sausage making is unattractive but Obama felt Clintionian pre-specs doomed the last effort to implement healthcare reform.

Republican counter: cheat: Disinformation campaign with paid ads targetting the electorate. This is the first cheat move. Since Obama initiated the Game all his moves will be cheat moves from here on in as long as the conservatives make cheat moves, and he will win. It is very likely the conservatives will continue to make cheat moves, but even if they return to fair moves, they have lost the game, because Obama will counter with whatever type of move they use.

Obama move 3: cheat: Information campaign using both paid ads and tv virtual presence in presidential townhalls. I call this a cheat move because the conservatives don't have a peer move, because they don't have a unifying charismatic spokesperson of Obama's quality.

Republican counter: cheat: Deploy astroturf teabagger mobs to congressional townhalls. This is a force-amplification tactic. The insistance that the teaparties earlier this year were bi-partisan (which they were not) is just a cloak for force-amplification. The GOP consistantly tries to present teaparties and townhall protests as representing not just "Real America", but as representing all America.

Obama move 4: cheat: Reframe the healthcare debate as health-insurance reform and demonize the insurance companies.

Republican counter: cheat: Insist astroturf teabagger mobs are "Real America" and bipartisan. Channel birther-madness into healthcare reform opposition. This why the effort to make healthcare reform into Obamacare, to associate Obama with whatever bill congress comes up with to exploit birther-madness. Obama has made it clear that the bill will be congresses product, not his. But channeling birther-fever will work better if the republican low information base percieves the bill as being indivisible from Obama.

Interestingly, no public attempt to defend the insurance companies. Is it because they are indefensible?

Obama move 4: cheat: Move to discredit and defang astroturf teabagger mobs by enlisting local distributed support to 1) explain healthcare reform and 2) report astroturf activity. Judging by by the outraged reaction by conservatives this is an effective tactic. Conservatives are very much in the minority at 24% identification and badly need the force-amplification of strident teaparties and astroturfed townhalls.

Republican counter: cheat: Lawyer-up and invoke brownshirts and Orwell in an attempt to protect their force-amplification tactics. hehe, they were all for GW doing illegal survelliance on Americans before. Such hypocrisy. We will see some jockeying for position here on the force-amplification tactic, with conservatives manufacturing outrage.....I think adequate prep for townhalls will solve the problem. Require id to prove locals, have bouncers to remove the Loud. Will this be Obama's next move?

;)

UPDATE: Cap'n Ed gets out the abortion gypsyhook. They had better use the heck out of that while they can.... a commenter at secular right projects it will be 2030 before the conservatives "get another bite" at the "apple"....and we will have full-term human ectogenesis by then.

Obama move 5: cheat: Invites Blue Dog Gang o' Six to WH and blasts it out over tv. Compromise immanent. ouch!

Also....labour gets involved in countering astroturf teabaggers. double ouch! Ima call this move astro-proofing. Chris Good on the ground game. Uber-pwnage.

It almost makes me feel sorry for AllahP.......naaaaah.

lawl.

Republican counter: cheat: Escalation to violence. At least you can see "bipartisan" grassroots is a flaming lie. Old, white, heavy, angry crowds in all the videos. Carrying posters of Obama in whiteface. Just a good ol' southrun lynch mob, boys and girls.

Getting ugly.....someone is going to get hurt.

Aww.....someone does get hurt.....the ONLY black conservative in the lily white lynch mobs.[ed. ooops...not a black conservative at all...just a tradesman selling "dont tread on me" flags]

Look for the teabaggers to make a big deal out of this. Obama's next move? Go to telepresence?

Obama move 6: cheat: Force amplification. The war of the astroturfers vs the astroproofers. I got mail. Obama brings out the big guns of his powerful grassroots e-organization.

Republican counter: cheat: Sarah Palin enters the fray, attacking with tweets and facebooking to demagogue deathpanels to the low info base.

Obama move 7: cheat: Pulls Palin's fangs by excising the end-of-life section. He can always put it back. Using Serengetti Magic is definitely a cheat. ;)

The birther movement is a side-effect of the lurch to the right of the GOP, which has made the fringe into the center. It is unclear whether this is more endgame harm or help. I suspect harm since the conservative leadership is making a full court press to kill the meme, and it interferes with the anti-healthcare reform message the conservatives are trying to spread. It is helpful for turnout and whipping up the base, like most GOP gypsyhook memes and traditional dogwhistle race-baiting.....but mebbe help if the leadership is able to successfully channel birfer-madness into force-amplification tactics like teaparties and astroturfing townhalls.

I will update this daily, if I can.

lol, play-by-play.

Gamer Boi

2009-08-04T10:12:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday, Barack Hussein Obama!

I just had it pointed out to meh on this balloon-juice thread that you have been playing tit-for-tat with the GOP all along.

Someone needs to school the conservatives that tit-for-tat is unbeatable.

The Secret Lives of Memes: Orly Taitz Is A MOSSAD Operative

2009-08-03T17:41:00.000-07:00

I find it just heartbreaking how hard conservative pundits are working to kill the birther meme. I mean..look....McCarthy laid down 3700 words to try to convince the birthers that yes, Obama is a lying negro that is going to take their stuff and give it to other negroes, but he was born in the USA. Malkin and Coulter, the angry conservative estrogen posse have already tried to kill the birther meme.

Because the birther meme is very, very bad juju for a party that is trying to attract minorities before they become majorities....and also it might distract from the Travelling Teabaggers out to disrupt townhalls on health INSURANCE reform.

So ima offer a lil' help.

Sir Richard famously said, "...for a meme to dominate the human brain, it must do so at the expense of other memes."

So here is another meme that should be appealing to the low information segment of the conservative base:...... blame teh joos.

You see...Orly Taitz has dual Israeli/US citizenship.

And her bff is.....wait for it.....Alan Keyes!!

Yes, that Alan Keyes, Israel's Super Best Friend and the point of origin of the birther meme in the US.

dun dun dah!

So for some competitive meme seeds, lets go to conspiracy-theory-central....Free Republic.

As part of their effort to destabilize Obama, Israel’s advocates in the so-called “neo-conservative” network have deployed one of their longtime front men, ex-ambassador Alan Keyes, into the field.

The former Harvard roommate of Bilderberg figure William Kristol—the powerful neo-conservative publicist who remains a close Keyes friend—Keyes has been promoting an array of questionable allegations about Obama, some of which—a point little known—actually originated in Israel among supporters of Obama’s 2008 opponent, John McCain. (Although Obama won 75 percent of the Jewish vote, McCain was favored over Obama in polls in Israel, the only foreign nation where McCain was the preferred choice.

And note, too, as related by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his book The Samson Option, that following John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election victory, one of the first things JFK did upon assuming office was to assure State Department officials who were sympathetic to the Arab world that they should not assume that the new president was “in their [the Jews’] pocket.”)

In any case, the questionable stories about Obama being promoted by Keyes have been picked up by independent “patriot” media in the United States and loudly publicized by three widely circulated supermarket tabloids, The National Enquirer, The National Examiner and The Globe, which are all owned by one company, American Media Inc., a subsidiary of Evercore Partners, a shadowy consortium of pro-Israel financial interests under the direction of Wall Street operator Roger Altman.

Although Israeli propagandists have—for years—had a stranglehold on conventional “conservative” think tanks and media, Israel’s disinformation specialists are filtering Keyes’ stories into the “patriot” movement to checkmate the Obama administration’s effort to put the reins on Israel.

Paydirt!

Soooo.... Orly Taitz (you have to know that is a made up spy-name) is secretly a MOSSAD operative planted in the US to stop Obama from pressuring the Israelis into freezing settlements and disclosing their secret nuclear arsenal!!!

So, Birthers of the Conservative Movement, Unite!!!

Throw off the yoke of the Global Jewish Shadow Government and seize your memetic freedom!!!

Fight ~~conspiracy theory~~ fire with ~~conspiracy theory~~ fire!

hehe, it may not be too late to snare some of that black.brown vote.....and....you just know you are never going to get that jew vote.

nevah evah.

;)

The Arbayeen

2009-07-30T05:08:00.000-07:00

UPDATE:

Sully

Montazeri: “They won't let them [people] shed tears for their loved ones. We have become worse than Shah.”

ABC

NYT

Sully is on it.......where is Nico? Has the regime had him assassinated? Or was it Milbanks?

NIAC

The occasion, called arbayeen, is a Shia Muslim event that marks the 40th day after a death. Mousavi and Karroubi had requested a permit for the gathering, but the request was denied by the Interior Ministry.

[T]he authorities are particularly sensitive about these “arbayeen” turning into political demonstrations.
That is exactly what happened during the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago in a cycle that helped lead to the downfall of the Shah, our correspondent says.

Mousavi and Karroubi will attend the mourning for Neda Agha Sultan, and the regime has refused to give a permit. Perhaps I'm wrong and this will be a feint.

The regime continues to push off on Nejad. I still think he is being set up to be scapegoated.

The first show trial of the resistance will be August 1.

Meanwhile back in the States the "conservatives" return to the "Southern Strategy" leveraging the Gates controversy.

Panicking over their loss of power the neocons ramp up.

The GOP reveals its true agenda. Yup, we don't care about peace in MENA as long as we get to keep that judeo-christian boot on the throat of the poor and oppressed.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told Christian Zionists that U.S. policies in the Middle East must be “firmly grounded” in Judeo-Christian principles.”Reaching out to the Muslim world may help in creating an environment for peace in the Middle East, but we must insist as Americans that our policies be firmly grounded in the beliefs of the Judeo-Christian tradition upon which this country was founded,” said Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip and the only Jewish Republican in Congress, in a speech to the Christians United For Israel annual conference in Washington.

Dragon's Teeth

2009-07-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

"Cadmus was the bringer of literacy and civilization, killed the sacred dragon that guarded the spring of Ares. The goddess Athena told him to sow the teeth, from which sprang a group of ferocious warriors called the spartoi. He threw a precious jewel into the midst of the warriors, who turned on each other in an attempt to seize the stone for themselves. The five survivors joined with Cadmus to found the city of Thebes.

Jason obtained the remaining dragon's teeth with the aid of Aeetes of Colchis. He offered the Golden Fleece to Jason if Jason would sow them into the ground. Jason did this and successfully overcame the warriors with the aid of Medea, who gave him the means to resist fire and steel.

The classical legends of Cadmus and Jason have given rise to the phrase "to sow dragon's teeth." This is used as a metaphor to refer to doing something that has the effect of fomenting disputes, rather akin to the law of unintended consequences."

The recent frantic efforts of the GOP pundit class to "kill" the birther meme are deeply fascinating to me. The birther meme reportedly was started by Alan Keyes, and has propagated with virulence in the GOP base. My random samples of HotAir and Free Republic commenters seem to support that approximately half of their commentariats have been colonized by the meme.

I think it is instructive to look back on the Schiavo situation.
Again, here was a case where the weight of empirical evidence (CAT scan, EKG flatline, physician testimony) disproved the conspiracy theory. But there was no value to the GOP leadership in doing anything but pandering to the ……terribots we will call them. So Bill Frist made a diagnosis (on tv no less!) based on 1/10,000th of the video record (the infamous balloon video) ….although as a physician he was surely cognizant of his calumny.
But the GOP never made a full court press to educate their base, because there were terribots on both sides of the aisle. There was no penalty for pandering.
The schiavo meme is extraordinarily persistant.... even after the autopsy, many americans still believe that Ms. Schiavo just needed pudding and speech therapy to emerge from her PVS.
The difference is, that the GOP leadership now realizes thay are in danger of having their agenda coopted by the low information segment of their base, which has become proportionally overrepresented due to party shrinkage, which has also moved the party center farther right.
And the birther meme is not shared between parties, like the schiavo meme was.

So, how do you "kill" a meme?
If you believe Dawkins, you must come up with a meme that is more competitive.
That is why debunking conspiracy theory is so tuff. It can take 10,000 reps to unlearn something.
Trial lawyers rely on this. It is called catalepsis, to be seized. They will introduce something outrageous only to have it stricken from the record. But it doesn’t get stricken from the jurors brains.
Human brains are more sticky for outrageous or “scandalous” memes.

For a meme to command the attention of the human brain, it must do so at the expense of other memes.

--Sir Richard Dawkins

I liken the introduction of deleterious memes to sowing dragon's teeth. A legion of unkillable zombie memes can propagate virally in mere days. Here we can observe Michelle Malkin instantiating a meme that may prove extremely detrimental to the GOP's attempts to integrate the party with minorities, the meme that Obama is a "racial opportunist" (read rascist) who is favoring his "own kind". It may be that the tactic of seeding virulant "fear of the other" memes has outlived its usefullness to the GOP. The Sarah Palin "palling around with terrorists" meme only had traction among the hardcore base, which is increasingly less valuable as an electoral demographic.

I guess we will see how this crop of teeth turns out.

Scapegoat

2009-07-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

NIAC says Nejad's cabinet is illegal.

I think we are seeing an attempt to shape Khamenei's image as benevolent, and Nejad as increasingly rebellious and even subservise against the islamic state. I think 50 signatures is too convenient, being exactly 2/3 of the assembly.

A fake, like Yazdhi's letter claiming majority support.

I think Mousavi asking for a permit for the 30th is genius....Khamenei looks bad and un-islamic if he denies it, and there will be millions protesting if he doesn't.

I think....Nejad is being set up to take the fall for the prisoners, deaths and torture in Evin and the protestors killed in the Green Wave resistance.

And I still think Nejad is going to be the sacrificial goat, and loaded up with Khamenei's and Mojtaba's sins and run out of town.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired his intelligence minister and his culture minister resigned under pressure Sunday as further rifts emerged in his camp with just days to go until his controversial inauguration for a second term.

Although Ahmadinejad has frequently replaced his cabinet members over the past four years, Sunday's firing and resignation were significant because both Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and Culture Minister Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi are especially close to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, analysts say.

"All ministers are close to him," said Amir Mohebbian, a political analyst who shares Ahmadinejad's ideology but has been critical of his actions. "But these two are closer to the leader."

Taken together, the moves suggest deep unhappiness within Ahmadinejad's inner circle at a time when the government is still reeling from the impact of a weeks-long campaign by the opposition to overturn the results of June's disputed election, in which Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in a landslide.

Last Stop On the Line for the Conservative Express

2009-07-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

Masks off! Its On!!!

Dig Cantor, via Andrew.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told Christian Zionists that U.S. policies in the Middle East must be "firmly grounded" in Judeo-Christian principles."Reaching out to the Muslim world may help in creating an environment for peace in the Middle East, but we must insist as Americans that our policies be firmly grounded in the beliefs of the Judeo-Christian tradition upon which this country was founded," said Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip and the only Jewish Republican in Congress, in a speech to the Christians United For Israel annual conference in Washington.

I already explained why you can't get to Cooltown on the Conservative Express.....but it looks like you CAN get to Jesusland!

Last stop The Confederated States of America!!

Everybody out!

I wonder what Richard Morgan would say about Cantor's statement, and the proto-secessionist sentiments the GOP is embracing. I wonder what he would say about the birfers.

Here's what he said about Jesusland.

All these societies in Thirteen have had to make a choice. They've had to decide, "right, we're not going down this warrior path any longer, we're going to accept that society's a complicated thing and we're going to deal in a complicated fashion with it, the issues are complex and so are the solutions." The places that have refused to do that are the ones that then suffer horrifically from the things they impose on themselves.
You get JesusLand, actually.
I have to say that I've had quite a lot of e-mails from people about this. I've had e-mails from people who live there and who said, "oh, man, you're so right." But I've had an awful lot of people get in touch, mostly very polite, but really hurt and defensive. They say, "you've got us all wrong—we're not a bunch of racist, lynching psychopaths."
First of all, I generally say, I know. I have spent time in various parts of the United States, probably including where you live, and the Americans I've met there . . . they're lovely people. They're courteous, they're friendly, they're generous with their time and resources. In fact, they're a lot like Americans in the rest of the country. But that is really not the issue. I've also spent time in various North African and Middle Eastern nations and found the inhabitants there to be courteous, engaging and hospitable to a fault - but if I'd created a theocratic state in North Africa, would you have been angry about that?
Jesusland is not an indictment of all the 200+ million Americans living in its territory, it's a portrayal of certain ruinous socio-dynamic tendencies common to that region running amok, and the catastrophic impact they have had (that I believe, in fact, they are having even now) on America's very great potential as a modern nation.

Dear Orly

2009-07-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Orly Tait,

We commend you on your valiant crusade to force that Kenyan ~~socialist~~ ~~marxist~~ ~~muslim~~ manchurian candidate to vacate Our Beloved WhiteHouse. It is so obvious that he has no right to occupy the oval office, and not just because of his skin color.
We wish to draw your attention to a Great American Patriot, who Loves Freedom, America, and Jesus, and who has recently become unemployed.
Sarah Palin would be an invaluable asset in your patriotic quest for justice in the matter of Barack HUSSEIN Obamas mysterious birth certificate.
Please lose no time in contacting her and securing ALL her upcoming public speaking dates to address your vitally important cause.
We beg you, do not allow the evuul librul gotcha-media to distract This Impereiled Nation from the most vitally important question of the age, Obama’s birth certificate.

sincerely yours,
Moveon.org
space for signatures below—————————————

Bad Maths

2009-07-27T06:56:00.000-07:00

Cap'n Ed links this CBS puff piece on Palin.

I don't think the math adds up.

If 40% of the electorate has a favorable opinion of Palin and 53% has an unfavorable, how can 39% of the electorate be undecided or never have heard of her?

CBS mischief is how.

Sarah Palin would be an epically disastrous and scarily unready president, and she is a pure failcandidate for the GOP, but she sells. She sells an order of magnitude better than boring-mormon-guy, or Mike Huckster, just because she is so polarizing.

There is no altruism in nature.

Paging Nate Silver! Paging Nate Silver!

Stat!

You Can't Kill Your Way Out of the Jihaadi Factory

2009-07-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

McChrystal gets it.

Some people have been saying this for a long time.

You have to burn down the factory, and you can't do that with collateral damage and civilian deaths.

Someone tell the Israelis, stat!

Shahid

2009-07-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

I am participating remotely in the hunger strike in support of the Green Wave.

Via Nico.

2:34 PM ET -- Major hunger strike begins outside the U.N. Readers have been sending me emails about this for days and I feel guilty about not posting about it earlier, it just slipped through the cracks.

In any case, here's one reader's description:

I am not sure whether you are aware of the hunger strike that is going on in front of the UN building right now. It started today and will continue till Friday evening. Many prominent Iranian figures are taking part or supporting the hunger strike (including major political figures, academics, journalists, clerics, etc). In fact, what is very important about this effort is that it has brought together many figures with different beliefs and backgrounds, but who share the desire for true democracy in Iran and the release of political prisoners.

The idea for the strike was initiated by Akbar Ganji, the well-known Iranian journalist who was jailed by the regime and went on a hunger strike in prison that lasted for weeks and almost took his life.

I haven't had anything but water and black coffee since Tuesday night.

I have often fasted before, for Ramadan, I'm observant as much as I can be.

But I have discovered there is a huge difference between waiting for sundown to eat and not eating at all.

Last night my stomach woke me up growling and it was hard to go back to sleep.

I thought about the prisoners in Evin, and wondered how much of the time they were hungry.

I tried to imagine being tortured and beaten and raped to force a confession while being terribly hungry and weak from being starved.

I thought of Akbar Ganji who nearly died from an eighty-day hunger strike when he was imprisoned.

And I thought about people who face this kind of hunger every day.

I feel a little lightheaded....so I decided to stay home from work and class today because I could faint while walking or driving. Others would not have that luxury.

This is my way of witnessing, being a shahid. To share a small portion of what they feel, and to let them know they are not invisible to the world. To help create justice, if only in the smallest of ways.

The hunger pangs are bad, but how much greater is the hunger of the nafs for justice?

Schaivo'd: TNC Invents A Verb

2009-07-23T07:01:00.000-07:00

TNC:

I don't know if the way Barack Obama repeatedly Terri Schiavos the GOP is conscious, or not, but I think it's brilliant. I think if you want an example of what I'm talking about, look at this Liz Cheney rant, where--as James Carville astutely points out--Cheney can not come out and say that she believes Barack Obama was born in America.

Obama does not so much drive right-wingers crazy, as he drives they extreme right wingers crazy. But here's the the thing--so many of the respectable one have fed the "Proud to Ignorant" line to their audience so long, that they can't say, "OK guys, it's time to be serious." Barack Obama takes the nuttiest wing of the GOP and then plasters the entire party with it. Maybe it's more correct to say they plaster themselves with it, I don't know. But if you look at Mike Castle's inability to control that crowd, there's a line from that incident, to the inability to talk honestly about Rush. The upshot is that people like Liz Cheney end up having to defend crazies.

It is brilliant. As the GOP is pulled/driven farther and farther right the extreme right wingers change from "fringe" to overlapping the middle. This changes the gravity well of power, and the GOP congressmen have to show solidarity with the whackjobs. It makes for delicious tv, where the congressman can be forced to publically admit that the base is looneytunes, but that he has to pander to them anyways.

I'm reminded of the origination of shiavo'd, seeing the dismal line of congresscritters being forced by their belligerent insane constituents to vote for the stupid [and useless] Terri's Law even when they knew the-lady-was-a-carrot.

All hail TNC!

Obama Should Sign on to Wyden's Plan

2009-07-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

I totally agree with Nate.

Ultimately, though, this presents an opportunity to find a bipartisan solution that doesn't have to be a compromise solution -- a lot of smart, progressive folks think Wyden's bill is better on its face than the "traditional" versions that have been drafted by the House and the Senate, much less what those versions will look like after they've been through the meat-grinder of the Senate floor. The White House doesn't need to take more time on health care: it may simply need more votes. Especially after this letter today, it ought to at least be actively considering whether Wyden's bill is the way to get them.

That is what a machaivellian pragmatist would do.

Steal the oppositions best stuff, and make it your own.

Half-props

2009-07-17T03:27:00.000-07:00

Score meh.

Rafsanjani via Nico.

Muslim unity, and the climbdown face-saving "qompromise" to be offered behind the scenes.

I missed the emphasis on Islamic law and the legacy of the Revolution.

You all know me, i do not and never do take sides. But my opinion is that we must find a path of unity. My solution: the assembly of experts has been consulted and we conclude that the trust of the people must be restored. This must be our priority. Everyone is within the framework of the law. We must proceed within the framework of the law. We should follow the legal paths. Restoring the peoples trust will not happen over night. Everyone should be able to say their words. IRIB and radio should give everyone a chance.'

I missed the emphasis on giving the people a voice on media.

I think the solution Rafsanjani is offering is the Council (of three or more) and the veiled threat is that has enough votes on the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts to remove Khamenei if he doesn't go along.

14:15 We are all members of the same family. We must remain friends and allies. Why have we gone so far as to pain some of our marajeh [top religious leaders]?

Translation....I have secured my support in Qom.

Half-props?

Now we will see what happens. If the regime rejects Rafsanjani's compromise, then July 30 becomes a huge event.

Adab and the Green Wave

2009-07-16T05:33:00.000-07:00

ADAB, the demanding memory that comes upon you of itself.

-- Frank Herbert, Dune

I learned to read about age four, sneaking delicious reads from my older brothers' collections of comix and sci-fi. I don't remember when I first read Dune, but it is layered very deep in my memory stacks. Given how much arabic language, bedouin culture, and islamic references Herbert built into the Dune cycle, my eventual embrace of Sufism could be regarded as inevitable. Like being seeded for reversion (new muslims are not converts, but reverts, because humans are all born muslim) by a stealthy Missionaria Protectiva.

In al-Islam, adab is a complex concept, with shaded layers of meaning. It is more than manners or etiquette or civility, which is often how it is translated.....it is the teaching that results in the nurture of virtue.

When virtue becomes an indelible part of what Muslim philosophers and ethicists call one's inner disposition, or habitus (malaka) of the soul/self, only then can one claim to have acquired adab, or ethical norms. Not only is that learning acquired for the sake of right living, but it is a knowledge that goes beyond knowing. Muslim ethicists describe adab firstly as a disposition toward knowledge. It is then, primarily the attitude and disposition that enables one to experience the effects of knowledge and be transformed by its animation in the self. Ghazali described the goal of adab as the disciplining of the spirit (nafs) so that the spirit may direct the body to perform deeds of merit almost instinctively.
-- Ebrahaim Moosa, Ghazali: Poetics of the Imagination

As I peer through cracks in the information blockade of Iran, I sense the vast leviathan of al-Islam stirring under the surface of the Sea of Green. The swells and currents are invisible to most Americans, who wistfully imagine the Green Wave as a mob of westernized student radicals revolting against the "mad mullahs".

But in truth the Green Wave is islamic adab opposing a heretic tyrannical regime.

Khamenei has lost his adab.

He has broken the particular islamic law of the Islamic Republic in participating in election fraud, and more importantly, acting against the laws of all Islam, by participating in the killing of other muslims. That is why the portrayal of those killed and imprisoned by the regime as westernized agitators is so critical.

However, even Khamenei cannot order a seyyed (descendant of the line of the Imam) to be killed or jailed in Evin. Mousavi means Musa-ite, of the line of the ninth imam.

Khamenei has become the very tyrant that the Islamic Republic was designed to protect against. At night the rooftime chants of Allahu Akbar and "Death to the Dictator!" must recall the 1979 revolution. The Islamic revolution organized around martyrdom mournings for the revolutionaries killed by the Shah's regime. Look for the exploitation of the mourning cycle for Neda Agha Sultan's martyrdom... the 40th day is July 30th.

In the flash mob protest at Beheshti's mosque, the protestors chanted "Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein." This translates as "help us, Husayn, Mir Hossein", a reference to both Mousavi's first name and the Prophet's martyred grandson.

Husayn ibn ‘Alī is revered as a martyr who fought tyranny, as he refused to pledge allegiance to Yazīd I^[7], the Umayyad caliph. He rose up to create a regime that would reinstate a “true” Islāmic polity as opposed to what he considered the unjust rule of the Umayyads.^[7] As a consequence, Husayn was killed and beheaded in the Battle of Karbalā in 680 (61AH) by Shimr Ibn Thil-Jawshan.^[8] The anniversary of his Shahid ("martydom") is called ‘Āshūrā ("tenth" day ofMuharram) and is a day of mourning for Shia Muslims. Revenge for Husayn's death was turned into a rallying cry that helped undermine the Umayyad caliphate, and gave impetus to the rise of a powerful Shī‘ah movement.^[7]

Imam Husayn famously said he would die to oppose injustice. Husayn was a shahid, a witness and a martyr that gave his life trying to create justice, a concept I discuss in my dihliz post.

Meanwhile in Qom Rafsanjani moves quietly behind the scenes creating a critical mass of clerics to move against the tyrant Khamenei, even soliciting the input of Sayeed Ali al Sistani, the titular head of all shi'ia islam. Critical mass is vitally important in a consenus religion like Islam. The velayat-e faqih was designed by Sayeed Ruhollah Khomeini to protect the fledgling Islamic Republic, by creating a single top-down authority for the Iranian Shi'ia...like the Pope is for catholics. But it was never designed to allow the Supreme Ayatollah to become a dictator that broke islamic law.

Rafsanjani's mosque service tomorrow is important....I think we will see an appeal to the regime to climbdown gracefully from its position.

And if Khamenei does not compromise?

Then I believe July 30 will be a day when the submerged leviathan rises into a tsunami of Green...and the eventual outcome is certain, however long it may take.

Khamenei has forgotten his adab, and therefore he is illegitimate as the Supreme Ayatollah.

Here is a link to City of Brass where Aziz presciently covers this material.

Who will be the kwisatch haderach?

Aziz or meh?

;)

Part II of Thom Jefferson an' Meh: Genetic Busing

2009-07-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

It is indisputable that America is a meritocracy.

For experience proves that the moral and physical qualities of man, whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain degree from father to son. But I suspectthat the equal rights of men will rise up against this privileged Solomon, and oblige us to continue acquiescence under the {'Amayrosis geneos aston} ["the degeneration of the race of men"] which Theognis complains of, and to content ourselves with the accidental aristoi produced by the fortuitous concourse of breeders. For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.

May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?

In a mail to me, the Highlander poses de Toqueville vs Jefferson, the democracy vs. meritocracy argument.

Democratic liberty is far from accomplishing all its projects with the skill of an adroit despotism. It frequently abandons them before they have borne their fruits, or risks them when the consequences may be dangerous; but in the end it produces more than any absolute government; if it does fewer things well, it does a greater number of things. Under its sway the grandeur is not in what the public administration does, but in what is done without it or outside of it. Democracy does not give the people the most skillful government, but it produces what the ablest governments are frequently unable to create: namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it and which may, however unfavorable circumstances may be, produce wonders. These are the true advantages of democracy.

De Toqueville seems to be arguing that democratic randomization of the system will produce better results than natural selection.

I really doubt it.

Pace this argument, I suppose one might consider Sarah Palin's candidacy an act of affirmative action, an attempt to install a non-elite non-meritocratic candidate as the leader of the free world, in an attempt to give the non-elite, the commoners, 'slines and Noble Yeoman Farmers, peer democratic representation in a meritocracy.

Palin's supporters want her to be bused to the right side of the meritocracy tracks in the name of democracy.

A sort of genetic busing.

Haha! and the short bus at that.

Then why not choose our leaders by some criteria other than merit?

Perhaps a lottery, or a draft.

;)

Letter to Dan

2009-07-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

Dear Dan....you write...Nearly all my professors are democrats, isn't that a problem?

I would say, yes.

And here are some other problems for you to analyze.

Intellectuals are fleeing the GOP like scalded cats.

6% of scientists are republicans, 94% of scientists are NOT-republican.

Now, since most university professors have postgraduate degrees, and/or are actual scientists that also do research, I suspect there is not some huge conspiracy to exclude conservative professors from academe.....but there are simply vanishingly few conservative professors and/or scientists available to hire.

So perhaps, you might want to look at first causes.

Not, why are all MY professors democrats, but why are there so very few consevatives that choose academe and science?

Is "conservative" simply incompatible with science and academe?

Perhaps it is...accepting "traditional wisdom" is simply not conducive to inquiry and intellectual curiosity.

lol.

Lack of Substrate

2009-07-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

I find this pretty amazing.

Politics may play some role in the positive way the scientists surveyed judge the times. More than half of the scientists surveyed (55%) say they are Democrats, compared with 35% of the public. Fully 52% of the scientists call themselves liberals; among the public, just 20% describe themselves as liberals. Many of the scientists surveyed mentioned in their open-ended comments that they were optimistic about the Obama administration’s likely impact on science.

For its part, the public does not perceive scientists as a particularly liberal group. When asked whether they think of scientists as liberal, conservative or neither in particular, nearly two-thirds (64%) choose the latter option. Just 20% say they think of scientists as politically liberal. However, a majority of scientists (56%) do see members of their profession as liberal.

That means 6% of all scientists are republican, and 94% of all scientists are NOT republican.

Wow....

Dihliz

2009-07-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

An important thing that Obama's Cairo speech seemed to accomplish was the creation of a dihliz, a threshold space.

dihliz. threshold position, intermediate space, portal, passage.

The definition is from Moosa's excellent book on Ghazali, another personal shayyk. Ghazali used the concept of the dihliz to reconcile and bridge competing intellectual versions of pre and post Pax Islamica theology.

But Obama is using his dihliz to create a neutral space for discussion between dar al-Islam and dar al harb.

There was the Obama factor. Countless Iranians watched his June 4 Cairo speech, and its transcript was parsed word by word. By offering to respect Iran rather than locating it in the "axis of evil," Obama appealed to secular nationalists, activists seeking greater individual freedom and businessmen hungering for an end to the sanctions strangling Iran's economy. Nearly everyone I spoke with during the ten days I was in Iran brought up Obama, whether I asked or not. At a frenzied Moussavi rally in the city of Karaj, west of the capital, I met a campaign organizer, Hojatolislam Akbar Hamidi, 48, a distinguished cleric who's known Moussavi for more than twenty years. "I listened to Obama's speech, and it made me very happy," he told me. "But we're afraid that some Iranian authorities do not understand the positive message of Obama." In interviews at polling places on election day, dozens of voters praised Obama's opening to Iran. At a Tehran mosque where hundreds of people were lined up to vote, several dozen crowded around as I asked an older woman why she supported Moussavi. When I suggested, "Perhaps Moussavi and Obama might meet someday soon?" the crowd, translating for one another, erupted in cheers, laughter and thumbs-up signs. Dreyfuss.

In Obama's pressers on Iran, there is a coded message for the Sea of Green.

Justice is the beating heart of al-Islam. The Prophet said a nation can exist without god, but a nation cannot exist without justice. salihat, just duty, is part of the 5 pillars and the 8 practices of Islam. So today Obama said justice six times. He did not say democracy even once…because sadly democracy has come to mean something else to the people of MENA. It means western meddling, attempts at democratization by force of arms, the war on al-Islam, and triumphalist colonialism. In his last speech before this Obama said justice three times.
The Shi’ia have a strong tradition of non-violent religious protest. It is how they survived the Umayydd Caliphate after the martyrdom of Imam Ali. It is how the Shi’ia overthrew the tyrant Shah. Even now non-violent marches and the chanting of Allahu Akbar and Death to the Dictator is exactly what happened 30 years ago. Obama today, and also the last time he spoke on this, referenced MLK. Obama himself is a visible and powerful symbol of triumph over injustice, and the success of a non-violent religious civil rights movement in America. The Sea of Green are muslim, and MLK and his followers were Christians, but the parallel is strong, and that is why Obama references it each time he speaks.

The word shahid in al-Islam means both martyr and witness. The concept of being a witness is a complex one. It means both suffering the injustice through empathy and the moral obligation to help fellow muslims, and accepting an obligation to see justice served. A Sufi friend says...

A shahid, a real shahid, is someone who creates justice.-- Buzzkill

Is Obama deliberately invoking the concept here?

“But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society.
And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.
This is not about the United States or the West; this is about The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That’s precisely what’s happened in the last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice. Despite the Iranian government’s efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cellphones and computers, and so we’ve watched what the Iranian people are doing.
This is what we’ve witnessed. We’ve seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We’ve seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard. Above all, we’ve seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we’ve experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

Hard to say. But I can say that Obama and his writers do seem to have a serious and sensitive knowledge, and a.....respect for the power of true Islam.

I think Obama is crafting a dilhiz for the Palestinians, and, as un-imagineable as it seems...a dihliz for the Taliban. Thabet says this is how the war will end.

I agree.

Moosa's book is titled The Poetics of Imagination.

Obama's dihliz is part of Ars Poetica.

Pure poetry.

Ya Haqq!

Fatwa

2009-07-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

Gaining critical mass.

Jigsaw

2009-07-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

Now that I don't have to be terrified of Sarah Palin getting access to the nuke lauch codes, I find her interesting in a puzzle sort of way.

I watched her resignation speech and her body language said madmadmad! and resentful!

I think...the GOP brass told her to be quiet and go read some books, and she got angry.

So she quit, and she's taking her ball(that would be the republican base) and going home.

But not really....I think she is taking the third party option, like Wapo and Tammy Bruce say.

For two reasons....

1. She is going to show those snooty conservo overlords and wide-boyz...she is going to do it all by her bigself.

2. She wants to force Barack Obama to acknowledge her. In her first post-election re-roll, Palin reached out to Obama and offered to help him. Crickets. In her recent runner's world puff piece she challenged him to a flat race. Crickets. This is not Obama's style....he invited McCain to the WH and embraced Lierberman. I think......that Michelle Obama won't allow any Palin interface....because of this.

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks. Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

And of course...what would Palin's new party be called? I like the Freedom Party or the Confederated Republicans.

But what should Palin's supporters be called? Not Freepers or Republicans....both taken.

Palinistas!

lol.

Take it away, Clash.

~~Sandinista!~~ Palinista!

What have we got? Yeh-o, magnificence!!

Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi
Went to the park to check on the game
But they was murdered by the other team
Who went on to win 50-nil
You can be true, you can be false
You be given the same reward Socrates and Milhous Nixon
Both went the same way - through the kitchen
Plato the Greek or Sarah Palin
Who's more famous to the billion millions?
News Flash: Vacuum Cleaner Sucks Up Budgie
Oooohh...bub-bye Magnificence!!
FUCKING LONG, INNIT?

Factcheck NRO

2009-07-11T12:24:00.001-07:00

Umm.....Dr. Collins is a catholic, not an "evangelical christian".

Collins is an evangelical Christian and a scientist

How stupid do those people think we are?

On Becoming Intimate With Thomas Jefferson

2009-07-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

One of the ubercool things about being Sufi is that you can have shayyks (teachers, instructors, guides) that are dead, or that are alive.

Some of my shayyks are Ibn Arabi, Rabi'a al-Awadiyya and........Thomas Jefferson.

This is my very favorite Jefferson quote.....

"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."- Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson and I are becoming intimate.

I admit freely to being an ignoramus in history.....I only ever loved math and science in school and work.

But in order to know Thomas Jefferson I am reading him.

In the raw.

I will let you know how it comes out.

Jesus Take the Wheel

2009-07-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

Why do sane sapients reguard Sarah Palin with horrified incredulous loathing?
Well its fear, pure and simple.

Like the Dark Sith Lord of TAS says--

There was a slight chance that she would be vice president. The apoplexy was terror-based. It’s like if someone seriously proposes letting a chimpanzee land the passenger jet your traveling in. Your offended that someone would be so reckless with your safety and terrified that your fellow passengers might somehow be persuaded.

And a lot of them are persuaded.

Palin is pretty much revealed as spectacularily inept, intellectually impoverished, a pathological liar, poorly educated, inexperienced, venal, vain and petty.

Still she can do no wrong according to the fundie base.

A comment from Ace pretty much lays

down the 411--

It's this insane idea that if you want something to happen, you will also of course agree that it WILL happen, and if you don't agree it will happen, obviously you don't wnat it to happen.

In other words, if you're cheering for one side, you must of course believe that side will win, and if you suggest our side won't win, well, gee, you must be cheering AGAINST us.

It's insane. I wanted thte Giants to win against the Eagles in the playoffs, but I predicted they'd lose, because the Eagles had their number and they were coming apart at the seems. They did lose, for the reasons I guessed (I think). That did not mean I wasn't "on their side," I've been on the Giants' side all my life.

But there is a mentality in the nutroots that if you dare to post a poll showing republicans down and say "we're in trouble, we need a game-changer," well, that means you're secretly rooting against our side.

And if you say that Fred Thompson isn't catching on as hoped, well, you hate Fred Thomson.

And if you do not believe that Sarah Palin has some double-secret probation plan for the presidency, you must hate her too, and you're rooting against her, and cheering for the other side.

This is fucking insane and it must stop. I will not be bullied by this ludicrous magical thinking brigade who insists that only Nice and Positive Words must be uttered or else one is contributing one's Evil Energy to the Wrong Side.

It's insane.

I disagree with you. I have tried to do so pleasantly but I am tired of the imputation of bad motive simply because I am more realistic and less prone to flights of hopeful fancy than you.

If you think I'm wrong, say so (like eman). I do not mind being called wrong. I do, however, greatly mind being called a traitor, of harboring a secret agenda I hide from you in order to advance the MSM's interests, etc., and all the rest of this insane bullshit.

Someone can be wrong HONESTLY, without the need of claiming he's wrong dishonestly, wrong because he's actively intending to subvert the cause (so he can of course get invited to these famous DC dinner parties, etc.)

Stop jumping to claim some one is not just wrong but actively malicious.

It's insane. It's fruit fucking loops. and it's tiresome.

And I do think I am taking off the week. You guys only seem to want to talk about sarah palin and furthermore you only want to hear the same thing -- she's running, this is a great move, she's now perfectly poised for the race, etc.

It's nonsense. And I hardly need to blog about it, because you all seem to know the words to the song. So you don't need me as part of the chorus. You can sing the same words well enough without me.

I am really tired of this relentless nonsense and occasional nastiness whenever someone is believed to have departed from the conservativey correct line.

Well...yeah. If you crit Palin, you're not a conservative. Palin is taking up space in the political landscape that the conservatives simply can't afford. The conservative movement cannot front a viable candidate until the jokey horrorshow that is Palin gets booted off center stage.

Because she simply can't win the presidency.

In her rambling incoherant resignation "speech", she said this....

"I prayed. "
Notably missing from the official transcript.
Thing is......Jesus Take the Wheel is pretty much anathema in modern politics.
After all, Jesus is a very bad driver.
He just drove us into the ditch on Eye-rack.
So having Palin in charge of the nuke-launch codes is an even worse idea than cw's plane-landing chimpanzee.......what if Jesus tells Sarah to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran to save Israel?
I mean.....she LOVES Israel, right?

Spiralling Down

2009-07-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

I think the Sarah Palin play is a tragi-comedy....which is now over.

She had a lot of charisma and some talent.....but she and I were from different tribes.

We could never even speak the same language.

This song says it best.

I'm waiting
For my moment to come
I'm waiting
For the movie to begin
I'm waiting
For a revelation
I'm waiting for someone
To count me in

Cos now
I only see my dreams
In everything I touch
Feel their cold hands on
Everything that I love
Cold like some
Magnificant skyline
Out of my reach
But always
In my eyeline now

We're tumbling down
We're spiralling
Tied up to the ground
We're spiralling

I fashioned you
From jewels and stone
I made you
In the image of myself
I gave you
Everything you wanted
So you would never know
Anything else

But everytime
I reach for you
You slip
Through my fingers
Into cold sunlight
Laughing at the things
That I had planned
The map of my world gets
Smaller as I sit here
Pulling at the loose
Threads now

We're tumbling down
We're spiralling
Tied up to the ground
We're spiralling
When we fall in love
We're just falling
In love with ourselves
We're spiralling

Did you wanna be a winner?
Did you wanna be an icon?
Did you wanna be famous?
Did you wanna be the president?
Did you wanna start a war?
Did you wanna have a family?
Did you wanna be in love?
Did you wanna be in love?

I never saw the light
I never saw the light
I waited up all night
But I never saw the light

When we fall in love
We're just falling
In love with ourselves
We're spiralling
We're tumbling down
We're spiralling
Tied up to the ground
We're spiralling

Hey AllahP, Quit Yo Frontin'

2009-07-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

This gave meh the giggles.

"Not only is this old news, but it’s old news I’ve written about multiple times. Why cover it again?"

Lol, AllahP. That ain't the news. The news is that when Instadolt and the rest of his twodigit homies were begging for internet arabic translators for the Operation Iraqi Freedom docs, Hoekstra and Bush and EVERYONE with a clearance already knew that Uncle Saddam had no WMDs, and he was jus' pretending to spoof the Iranians.

Congressman Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described the rationale for the public disclosure of the documents as follows:"We're hoping to unleash the power of the Internet, unleash the power of the blogosphere, to get through these documents and give us a better understanding of what was going on in Iraq before the war"
John Negroponte at first tried to delay the release of the documents, but softened his opposition to releasing after conversations with Rep. Hoekstra. President Bush directed Negroponte to release the documents and they were slowly being made available until they were taken offline in November 2006 due to security concerns

Oopsie! I guess someone will have to change the wiki!

Not this part though......

According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, the release of the documents "looks like an effort to discover a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq."

AllahP...can you dig it? Hoekstra, Bush and company already knew.

Saddams interviews are all dated 2004.

Hahahaha!

Sukkahs.

Give Meh Props

2009-07-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

I was right when I said Hussein was faking having WMDs to scare Iran, and that there were no WMDs that were moved to the Bekkah valley.

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Look at the timeline of when the Harmony database documents were removed from the Blogverse for freelance translations. Saddam was hanged in December 2006.

Operation Iraqi Freedom documents are some 48,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that were discovered by the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The documents date from the 1980s through the post-Saddam period. The U.S. government, at the urging of members of Congress, made them available online at its Foreign Military Studies Office website, requesting Arabic translators around the world to help in the translation.
In early November 2006, the entire set of documents was removed. Media reports stated that the website was taken offline because of security concerns regarding the posting of sophisticated diagrams and other information regarding nuclear weapon design prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Congressman Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described the rationale for the public disclosure of the documents as follows:

"We're hoping to unleash the power of the Internet, unleash the power of the blogosphere, to get through these documents and give us a better understanding of what was going on in Iraq before the war"^[5]

John Negroponte at first tried to delay the release of the documents, but softened his opposition to releasing after conversations with Rep. Hoekstra. President Bush directed Negroponte to release the documents and they were slowly being made available until they were taken offline in November 2006 due to security concerns (see below).^[6]

The website issued a warning that:

the US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available.

While the government has made an effort to keep known forgeries out of the set of documents posted to the web, a senior intelligence official observed that "the database included 'a fair amount of forgeries,' sold by Iraqi hustlers or concocted by Iraqis opposed to Mr. Hussein."^[7] A congressional inquiry covered many of the accuracy concerns on April 6, 2006^[8]and while the multiple reviews aimed at keeping forgeries out do not rise to the level of a guarantee of authenticity, a good faith effort has apparently been made to clean out forgeries.
According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, the release of the documents "looks like an effort to discover a retrospective justification for the war in Iraq."^[9]The Pentagon cautioned that the government "has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." The Los Angeles Times notes that "the documents do not appear to offer any new evidence of illicit activity by Hussein, or hint at preparations for the insurgency that followed the invasion."^[9]

Well, well, well.....I think there was another reason for taking Operation Iraqi Freedom documents offline.

Look at the interview dates.

Hoekstra ALREADY KNEW when they put the docs out on the web.

Bush KNEW. Cheney KNEW.

Take that AllahP.

;)

The Instapundit got sukkered.

I wonder if Uncle Saddam's confession about not having any relations with al-Q matches up with some torture timelines?

And....I will be right about the Green Wave.

My prediction....on the 40th day after Neda Agha Sultan's martyrdom Rafsanjani will have completed his campaign in Qom. The Sea of Green and Qom together will rise to sweep away the illegitimate regime of Khamenei and Nejad.

Just watch.

Green Leviathan

2009-07-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

More pressure from Qom.

I predict Qom will distance itself more and more from Khameni.

Karroubi:

My re-emergence into politics was to rekindle the memories and love of the Ayatollah [Khomeini]. It was to reminisce the days of sacrifice and selflessness, not for selfishness and certainly not for degrading others. I came back to elevate the social and political climax, to fix our ailing social and political system. I came to talk about independence and bravery, to protect our youth and [students].
They have attacked people with boots and batons and sent thousands to the hospitals. They have attacked student dorms and pierced the hearts of an innocent girl with a bullet. They have fired on innocent people from the roofs of mosques and have arrested hundreds from the streets and their residence. They have beaten and jailed people and dragged confessions of velvet revolutions from them.
What kind of velvet revolution is this; that two of its leaders (Mousavi and Karroubi) were the most experienced friends of the Ayatollah [Khomeini] and were recognized by the office of the Leader and the Guardian Council as legitimate candidates and had 15 millions supporters.

I am no longer confident that Khameni will be offered a seat on the Council of Three as a compromise.

I mean, I think he was offered that and rejected it, and instead turned to more crackdowns, arrests, and even executions.

To the west...al-Islam is a great dark leviathan submerged in the Sea of Green, invisible except for currents and swells.

I think we are about to see the real power of shi'ia islam.

11:51 am: Conservative cleric turns on Khamenei – Haddi Ghaffari, a former minister under Ayatollah Khomeni, gave a speech Monday directly addressing the Supreme Leader and criticizing him for his behavior since the election and for his support of Ahmadinejad. Ghaffari played a major role in the creation of Hezbollah — he is no reformist by any stretch of the imagination — and his frontal assault on Khamenei would have been extremely taboo prior to the election.

“Khamenei, your recent actions and behavior has brought shame to us clerics. Our image in the streets and bazaars has been tarnished as everyone is placing us in the same category as Ahmadinejad.”

“Khamenei, you are wrong, your actions are wrong. I believe in the velayat e fagih more than you.”

“I’m not preaching these messages so that I could be associated with the West. I loathe the West and will fight to the last drop of my blood before I or my land succumbs to the West. On the contrary, I’m preaching these messages on the count that the respect for our profession is gone.”

“Young people are not praying anymore, whose fault is that? It is your fault Mr. Khamenei, it’s your fault for placing us in the same line as that lunatic Ahmadinejad.”

“Ahmadinejad is nobody, you should congregate with us instead of him.”

Seyyed Mousavi

2009-07-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

News continues to trickle out of Iran.

And I am continuing to think the final outcome might be Rafsanjani's Council of Three.

The regime is cracking down hard, but they will lose Qom if this continues. Right now we can consider Rafsanjani the financial pole of power, Khameni has been co-opted by Nejad and the Guard, and Qom represents the third pole, the authority of Islam in an Islamic state.

In 1989 Rafsanjani first proposed the idea of a Council of Three. You know how the Iranian constitution had to be changed for Khameni to ascend? He was not an an Ayatollah. Rafsanjani has not the other part, he is not descended from the line of the Imam, not a seyyed. So while Rafsanjani could not be Supreme Ayatollah, he could be and was President. Possibly the Council of three could restore a balance....Khameni, Rafsanjani, and say Montazeri, representing the three poles of power.
So yes, Khameni's weakness as a spiritual power has caused this.
Yet Khameni was appointed by direct diktat from Khomeini. I just finished reading American Lion, and some similiarities between Jacksonian America and the 80s version of the Islamic republic of Iran strike me. The Union was Jackson's greatest good, he hated seccessionists worse than british soldiers or red indians. The old monarchies circled the fragile young nation like sharks hoping to pick off stragglers.

The young islamic republic of Iran was also surrounded by enemies.....arab dictaorships and monarchies, the unsympathetic Israelis, and western meddlers like the US and Britain.
Khomeini's choice was the man best suited to help the republic survive at the time.
One of my shayyks is a shi'ia scholar, and he says that in shi'ia islam, al-Islam is a process. Khameni didn't have the necessary spirituality to allow Islam to assume the shape it needs in the 21st century.
So he became co-opted by Nejad and the IRGC.

Right now the regime is cracking down as hard as they can without drawing Qom down on them. But that cannot last.

From the J-post article--

Underlining the climate of fear among direct and even indirect supporters of Mousavi's campaign for the election to be annulled, the sources also reported that a prominent cleric gave a speech to opposition protesters in Teheran earlier this week in which he publicly acknowledged that the very act of speaking at the gathering would likely cost him his life."Ayatollah Hadi Gafouri said that the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] never wanted [current supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei to succeed him. He even went to say that the Islamic republic died the day the Imam did," one source said.

I think it is historically verified that Khomeini handpicked Khameni to succeed him....why would this cleric say that? Answer-- to de-legitimize Khameni. I predict more statements from Qom designed to sever Khameni from Khomeini's legacy.

Other criticisms from senior clerics over the regime's handling of the elections and subsequent protests included a report from a Persian news agency, which on Tuesday quoted a senior cleric from the city of Esfahan, Ayatollah Seyyed Jalaleddin Taheri-Esfahani, defending Mousavi against the regime's criticisms.The ayatollah was quoted as saying: "Is it a case of justice to see that an honorable and modest Seyyed [a descendant of the household of the prophet Muhammad], who until the last moments of Khomeini's life was a dear and close companion of that grand leader, is now considered to be a rioter and an agent of arrogance who must be punished?"

In Shi'ia Islam, the two qualities that are most revered are lineage and scholarship. I think it would be difficult for Khameni to order the arrest or execution of a seyyed like Mousavi without drawing the ire of Qom. I think we will see increasing incidents of Qom asserting its influence.

Tehran Bureau on the fractures in Qom.

“The basis for everything is the law,” declared Grand Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli — uncle of Ali Larijani, the Majles Speaker — in a speech during the Friday prayers in Qom on June 26. “But, the person who is supposed to execute the law declares that, ‘what I do is exactly according to the law,’ and it is him who decides what is lawful. This is problematic,” he said, hence seemingly referring to Ayatollah Khamenei and/or Ahmadinejad. He continued his thinly disguised criticism of the hard-liners by saying, “We must preserve religion, the howzah [the seminaries], and the maja’eeyat [the concept of emulation]. If any difference arises, these must be protected,” he said, warning that the hard-liners risk destroying the entire basis of Iran’s government by cracking down on protesters.

Little Shop of Horrors

2009-06-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

I said, last summer, that Sarah Palin would split the republican party right along the intellectual faultline. Even before she made her convention speech, my friends and I called her Stepford Barbie and joked that her prairie bun 'do concealed a controller so Team McCain could manipulate her. We thought her heartland pageant speak was super-hilarious. From our college-educated youth demographic perspective she was simply ridiculous. We didn't think she was hawt......she looked like our mothers.

But Palin wasn't even a good bot, apparently.

One longtime McCain friend and frequent companion on the trail was heard to refer to Palin as “Little Shop of Horrors.” Election Night brought what McCain aides saw as the final indignity. Palin decided she would make her own speech at the ticket’s farewell to the faithful, at the Arizona Biltmore, in Phoenix. When aides went to load McCain’s concession speech into the teleprompter, they found a concession speech for Palin—written by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who had also been the principal drafter of her convention speech—already on the system. Schmidt and Salter told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she wouldn’t be giving one. Palin was insistent. “Are those John’s wishes?” she asked. They were, she was told. But Palin took the issue to McCain himself, raising it on the walk from his suite to the outdoor rally. Again the answer was no.

I think Sarah Palin has killed the Republican party. I don't think the rift between the base and the leadership will ever be healed. The problem is, the GOP has long relied on the gypsyhook strategy to haul the rubes into the tent; abortion, SSM, taxes, "small" government-- all bait and switch operations. They are practiced political crack dealers preying off the left side of the bellcurve. But the problem with Palin is that they started dipping into the merchandise.

The main problem is that Palin is the "realdeal". Traditionally, the GOP has been led by stealthy elites successfully pretending to be noble yeoman farmers. But in Palin, Team McCain discovered a potential leader absolutely devoid of elite substrate. So the intelligentsia of the right further split into two camps....those that acknowledged what Palin actually is (ie, Colin Powell), and those that pretended she could become what they wanted her to be (ie Ross Douthat).

The thing is...we all love the cinderella story....Elle Woods, Alex Owens, Susan Boyle. If Palin could have been Elle Woods, the whole country would have adored her.

But sadly, she turned out to be Veruka Salt.

So now, Palin is running. Never doubt it.

She will be mum until her book comes out to leverage sales.

I think the base will secure her the nomination....but she will fail.

The reason she has to run in 2012, is that she will still be pre-menopausal.....in 2016, not so much.

After all, Survival of the Prettiest always worked before.

Update: Flamewar alert!

Like I said, Palin has exposed the Great Lie at the heart of the GOP.
Not all men (or women) are created equal.
A viable political party needs elites.
Palin just rubbed everybody's nose in it.

Bear Witness

2009-06-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

This is what they require from us....to bear witness.

“But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society.
And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.
This is not about the United States or the West; this is about The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That’s precisely what’s happened in the last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice. Despite the Iranian government’s efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cellphones and computers, and so we’ve watched what the Iranian people are doing.
This is what we’ve witnessed. We’ve seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We’ve seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard. Above all, we’ve seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we’ve experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

johnpi--

Please ignore fellow Westerners - Muslim or otherwise - who accuse you of exploitation, appropriation, practicing ‘Western gaze’ (”a voyeuristic glimpse into the post-revolutionary real”) or any other diversions and stay focused on the events unfolding there, and the people caught up in them, some of whom are taking great risks “to present an unaverted gaze on political unrest for the world outside Iran.”

This is what we can do, watch and witness and not look away, and let them know we are watching.

The Gravity Well in Qom

2009-06-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

/sigh

Andrew has a thoughtful column up on Niebuhr's fantasy influence on Obama.

Think of it in game theory, as the British blogger Marbury did last week. Obama is playing “Retaliator”. He starts out as a dove and waits to see the response. If the response is also a dove, he reciprocates and builds trust for mutual benefit. If the response is a sharp-clawed hawk, he becomes a hawk. But the dove’s posture is always there beneath and is established early for maximal advantage. What Obama wants to do now is what he tried to do in Cairo — to lever the people of Iran against their rulers. He won’t take the bait of easy conflict, but neither will he concede without a Khamenei concession. So the pressure builds on the Tehran regime from within and without. And Obama carefully and methodically bides his time.

Ummm....in Game Theory this is actually classic tit-for-tat, a theoretically unbeatable strategy.

I like to think that possibly Obama has some captive experts on Shi'ia Islam that are advising him instead of the ghost of some antique Catholic theologian.

The irreplaceable Al Giordano gets it mostly right, but the true locus of power in Iran is Qom. Here is a good backstory of what likely happened on election day.

Giordano likens the street protest movement to self-organizing systems, a kind of spontaneous flash mob that can colonize legal venues like Beheshti's memorial or evolve fresh strategies in realtime like these protestors.

Meanwhile, back in Qom, Rafsanjani is consolidating support in a sort of simulated annealing process, moving slowly and deliberately to spread and solidify support among the clerics.

The Assembly of Experts can remove Khameni.

They have the power.

I think....that the best option for the regime at this point is for Nejad to resign (rather than annulling the election results, which were, of course, sanctified by Allah) and Rafsanjani's Council to replace the position of Supreme Ayatollah. Khameni or Motjaba could be given a council seat, the most graceful climbdown available to them I think.

Are the recounts and arrests just ways of jockeying for position? I don't believe Khameni thinks he will emerge from this as the Supreme Leader with his power undiminished.

If Khameni is deposed it will be because the clergy (which is also the judiciary and the executive in an Islamic republic) has been convinced that Khameni has broken islamic law.

al-Islam itself is the greatest power the Green Wave possesses.

It is foolish to ignore it.

Mitch Speaks

2009-06-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Makes a lot of sense.

With respect to how planned the vote fraud was, in a way I think it goes back to 2005, and the runoff between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. There was piecemeal fraud back then too, no doubt sanctified by figures like Mesbah-Yazdi, but because it was Rafsanjani who was the victim - a mere "least worst" option for many voters - there was no national upheaval, merely anger from Rafsanjani and his cronies that was later appeased by increased power for them elsewhere in the system. The parameters of this election were set by the same factional battle, only instead of directly facing Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad faced a coalition: Rezaie to pare away the military vote, Karroubi the clerical vote, and Mousavi as the man he would face in the second-round runoff.

So Ahmadinejad's supporters again carried out the fraud, this time on a massive scale meant to decisively preempt a runoff; but they didn't anticipate that Mousavi would draw Khatami-like support. Thus 2009 is a combination of 2005 and 1997, and the system's managers, usually so politically adroit, stumbled into a crisis.

That's my tentative assessment of what happened and how it came about.

Sea of Green

2009-06-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

This is what I think.

Everyone with a blog, liberal or conservative, embed this.

So when Iranians look out onto the interwebs they will see a Sea of Green.

Tribe of Thamud

2009-06-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

Evil old men.

Just die already, Sick Grandpa.

The last thing the Green Wave needs is more chances for that other evil old man, Khameni, to superglue the american-foreign-instigator label onto more protestors and dissidents so they can be jailed and tortured. The only defense the protestors have are the people of Iran and the holy men of Qom. Khameni is trying desperately to paint the whole Green Wave as an american-sponsored velvet revolution.

This is a naked attempt to beat Obama with the Iran cudgel, like McCain tried to do with the martyrdom of Neda Soltani.

McCain has no heartmelt for the Iranian people.....we saw that already.

He is wicked, and he is working tirelessly and shamelessly to discredit Obama by any means even though he coats his hands with blood of the Green Wave.

Cage the Elephant indeed.

Qompromise

2009-06-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to find everything I can on what Rafsanjani might be up to.....this is interesting.

A source familiar with the thinking of decision-makers in state agencies that have strong ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said there is a sense among hardliners that a shoe is about to drop. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- Iran’s savviest political operator and an arch-enemy of Ayatollah Khamenei’s -- has kept out of the public spotlight since the rigged June 12 presidential election triggered the political crisis. The widespread belief is that Rafsanjani has been in the holy city of Qom, working to assemble a religious and political coalition to topple the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"There is great apprehension among people in the supreme leader’s [camp] about what Rafsanjani may pull," said a source in Tehran who is familiar with hardliner thinking. "They [the supreme leader and his supporters] are much more concerned about Rafsanjani than the mass movement on the streets."

Ayatollah Khamenei now has a very big image problem among influential Shi’a clergymen. Over the course of the political crisis, stretching back to the days leading up to the election, Rafsanjani has succeeded in knocking the supreme leader off his pedestal by revealing Ayatollah Khamenei to be a political partisan rather than an above-the-fray spiritual leader. In other words, the supreme leader has become a divider, not a uniter.

Now that Ayatollah Khamenei has become inexorably connected to Ahmadinejad’s power grab, many clerics are coming around to the idea that the current system needs to be changed. Among those who are now believed to be arrayed against Ayatollah Khamenei is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shi’a cleric in neighboring Iraq. Rafsanjani is known to have met with Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani’s representative in Iran, Javad Shahrestani.

A reformist website, Rooyeh, reported that Rafsanjani already had the support of nearly a majority of the Assembly of Experts, a body that constitutionally has the power to remove Ayatollah Khamenei. The report also indicated that Rafsanjani’s lobbying efforts were continuing to bring more clerics over to his side. Rafsanjani’s aim, the website added, is the establishment of a leadership council, comprising of three or more top religious leaders, to replace the institution of supreme leader. Shortly after it posted the report on Rafsanjani’s efforts to establish a new collective leadership, government officials pulled the plug on Rooyeh.

To me, that seems like the solution that Qom is most likely to go for. It is a way to climb down gracefully. The regime does know it cannot win. It has to be frightening to the regime that the Greens are using the same techniques that succeeded against the Shah......perhaps puppet-master America reined in the Shah's Tianaman tendencies, while Qom serves that function for Khameni.

He well knows there is a line of blood that if he crosses it, Qom will go against him.

I wonder about the make-up of the council....if Khameni is one member, or Mojtaba, that is a way for them to save face and ensure the succession. Rafsanjani is an obvious choice. Montazeri possibly?

But Sistani would be the genius choice I think....given that he is really the titular head of the Shi'ia and his lineage and scholarship are impeccable. Certainly that would present a strong united Shi'ia front to the world...and heal the breach between Najaf and Qom, and the breach between Iran and Iraq.

Bonus....every neocon head in the USA would simultaneously explode.

Ya Haqq!

Excellent background from Tehran Bureau

Sick agrees with Dare.

In a contest between religious belief and and oligarchy, belief wins in the end I think....the christians beat the romans, and even stole their name. The once mighty roman empire is dust.....the Roman Catholic Church is the largest land holder in the world.

Speaking in Tongues

2009-06-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

This is excellent, via Sully, who is on fire, basically.

Sully is supernova bright in the social network diagram of Iran news.

What I noticed, is that when an Iranian, or Iranian/American like Majd speaks to americans, they do use the word democracy.

Also you see this here.

Mr. Makhmalbaf predicted that the pro-democracy forces in Iran would eventually triumph.
"Before this, everyone was saying the Iranian people are not ready for democracy, but we see now the Iranian people will die for democracy," he said. "We cannot lose this time."

To a western audience, the use of the word democracy creates empathy, shared values.

To show empathy with the Sea of Green, Obama references MLK and avoids the word democracy, using instead freedom and justice.

Freedom and justice are the core basis of real democracy.

Full of Win

2009-06-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

ZOMG!

Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer, told the New York Times that Obama saw the panel as "a philosophically leaning advisory group" handpicked by the Bush administration, and that he wanted to appoint a new bioethics commission that instead offered "practical policy options."

Dr. Peter Lawler, chairman of the department of governmental and international studies at Berry College, was one of those terminated by Obama — via a note saying he would no longer be a member of the council by the end of the next business day.

At last the bioluddites are being tarred and feathered and run out of town.

Hilariously, the tool that wrote this article tries again to equivocate hASCR and hESCR.

ONE MORE TIME!!

hASCR and hESCR are complimentary, not competitive. hASCR is better for tissue replacement, because of rejection issues, but hASCR is useless for disease modelling and markedly inferior for anti-scenescence research.

Seriously, how can I not lurv the guy? He embodies two of my most favorite things evah....bricolage and parsimony. Note he just the sacked the bioluddites and socons on the Council. He plans to reuse it for a different function like any good bricoleur, by replacing Bush's socon stooges with real scientists and pragmatist/realists, while retaining any actual authentic talent and coopting it for his adminstration. And quietly, quietly...they hardly even feel the blade slipping in....not a single mention of this on HotAir or Redstate.

This is how Obama is reshaping our culture.

Simply full of win.

I'd like to use this post to respond to Sully's reader.

Just because Obama isn't executing reciprocal wilin' out on the republicans doesn't mean they are winning.

My beloved Stephenson--

Lord Finkle-McGraw couldn't prevent his granddaughter Elizabeth's parents from sending her to the very schools for which he had lost all respect; he had no right to interfere. It was his role as a grandparent to indulge and give gifts. But why not give her a gift that would supply the ingredient missing in all those schools?
It sounds ingenious, Hackworth had said, startled by Finkle-McGraw's offhanded naughtiness. But what is that ingredient?
I don't exactly know, Finkle-McGraw had said, but as a starting point, I would like you to go home and ponder the meaning of the word subversive.

Obama is subversive. He is reshaping our society and culture and government while the republicans pout and spit damn.

Because that is all they gots.

;)

Sarah Palin Crack

2009-06-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

At TAS we were talkin' about how Ross and Reihan usta be gonna rule the world. That was right about when they started dealin' that Sarah Palin crack to the low information base.

Do you know what is showing in the Major's crystal ball right now?

The tragic demise of the GOP.

Which just goes to show why dealers should never sample their own merchandise.

Shahid

2009-06-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Another thing Obama spoke of in his speech that is islamic code, is bearing witness.

In Islam, the word shahid means both witness and martyr.

He used that three times. While I am fairly confident about his use of the word justice and the MLK references, I am not as sure of this. I wish I could ask. ;)

“But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society.
And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.
This is not about the United States or the West; this is about The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That’s precisely what’s happened in the last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice. Despite the Iranian government’s efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cellphones and computers, and so we’ve watched what the Iranian people are doing.
This is what we’ve witnessed. We’ve seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We’ve seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard. Above all, we’ve seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we’ve experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

Musavi and the other candidates protests are based on a violation of Islamic law in an Islamic republic. The Iranians live under a rule of law in a republic, just like us. It is just islamic law and an Islamic republic. And it is definitely a reform movement.
tant pis for the neocons, the Islamic republic of Iran will survive, but perhaps with changes.

Sayeed Ali al Sistani is the titular leader of Shi’ia Islam. But when the holiest site of the Shi’ia was controlled by Iraq, an enemy of Iran, Iranians established the holy city of Qom where shi’ia muslims could fulfill their obligation to hajj. So Qom does not actually owe subservience to Karbala, or take direction from Sayeed Sistani….they are more parallel, and authority flows from both holy cities independently.

The Assembly of Experts has the constitutional power to remove the Supreme Leader. What would happen if the Leader became corrupt, insane, or too ill to perform his service to the people?
It is being said that Khameni is ill and old and wishes to ensure his son Mojtaba will succeed him, and that Mojtaba made a shaitan bargain with Nejad. There has been noise calling Khameni “the Ali of the Age”, implying he could hand down his position to his son like Imam Ali handed his to his son.
Both genetics and scholarship figure prominantly in succession in Shi’ia islam.
Remember the 1979 revolution took about a year. Every action the regime takes against its people de-legitimizes it more in the eyes of Qom, the true source of authority. It is the greatest sin for a muslim to kill another muslim.
This is actually much more a culture war between two versions of al-Islam. Nejad’s fundies are rural, poor, older, ostentatiously pious, less educated, socially conservative and….outnumbered. Much like conservatives in this country they are frightened and angered by the loss of power that demographics is dealing them. 70% of Iranians are under 30.

I would expect a large protest at 40 days out from Neda Soltani’s martyrdom. If Rafsanjani has consolidated his coalition in Qom, he will make his move then.

The brutal crackdown today I think is a mistake, but it is truly the only option left to Khameni and Mojtaba to secure the succession. If they cannot brutalize the population into submission before the 40 day event they will fail. I do not think the regime can achieve a sufficient quantity of brutality to destroy the dissident movement, and they can only force it underground for a time. It may take a year, like it did with the Shah, but the Shi’ia will never accept a dictator. The Shi’ia are very good at non-violent protest and resistance. That is how they survived the Umayydd Caliphate, and how they overthrew the tyrant Shah.
I would place my bet on the Green Wave.

Code Talker

2009-06-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

I am reprinting a comment I made at Eunomia, of things I see in Obama's speeches that I believe are designed as a kind of coded message for the Sea of Green.

So that I can link it...and because I am afraid to post it at Talk Islam because of my war on Razib.

;)

Daniel, I don’t see any change. Georgia was during the election and McCain could actually hurt him then.
McCain is perfectly cognizant that endorsing the Sea of Green and Musavi would powerfully de-legitimize the resistance and allow that evil hirgabi Khameni to paint the Sea of Green as part of Operation Ajax Redux. John McCain is an evil old man (just like Khameni) that cares nothing for the consequences to the Iranian people, if only he can somehow make Obama look bad.

I realize most people don’t have my knowledge of Islam, but I tell you Obama has been sending a coded message to the Sea of Green, a message of support and encouragement that is inaudible to McCain and his posse of Obama hatahs.

Justice is the beating heart of al-Islam. The Prophet said a nation can exist without god, but a nation cannot exist without justice. salihat, just duty, is part of the 5 pillars and the 8 practices of Islam. So today Obama said justice six times. He did not say democracy even once…because sadly democracy has come to mean something else to the people of MENA. It means western meddling, attempts at democratization by force of arms, the war on al-Islam, and triumphalist colonialism. In his last speech before this Obama said justice three times.
The Shi’ia have a strong tradition of non-violent religious protest. It is how they survived the Umayydd Caliphate after the martyrdom of Imam Ali. It is how the Shi’ia overthrew the tyrant Shah. Even now non-violent marches and the chanting of Allahu Akbar and Death to the Dictator is exactly what happened 30 years ago. Obama today, and also the last time he spoke on this, referenced MLK. Obama himself is a visible and powerful symbol of triumph over injustice, and the success of a non-violent religious civil rights movement in America. The Sea of Green are muslim, and MLK and his followers were Christians, but the parallel is strong, and that is why Obama references it each time he speaks.

This message is unintelligible to McCain and the neocons and the base of the right. For years they have heard only a cartoon version of al-Islam, the jihaadi/fundamentalist version promoted by VDH, Robert Spencer, Steyn, Michelle Malkin, Pipes, Spengler/Goldman. The right is trying hard to frame the conflict as secularized young people revolting against “the mullahs”.
But their narrative is false for anyone with eyes to see.
It is especially terrible for us muslims (I am a Sufi convert) to see the martyr Neda Soltani crudely used as a club to beat Obama with by that evil old man, John McCain, when the right will not even acknowledge that she was a devout muslimah, because it does not fit their selfish and evil narrative.
Khameni and Nejad killed Neda along with many others, not Obama.
And McCain and his ignorant neocon supporters care nothing for the plight of the Iranian people except as an opportunity to strike at Obama.
The Iranian people remember well who sang bomb bomb bomb Iran. It was played many times on state tv.
And muslims do not forget. We have long memories.
dhikr, remembrance, is one of the five pillars.

But I believe the Sea of Green will overcome.
Just like MLK and his arc of justice.
If not tomorrow, then another day…one more part of the practices is sabr, patience.

Ya Haqq!

sabr is needed....the 1979 revolution took about a year. Look for an event, a very large demonstration on the 40th day after Neda's death. Possibly Rafsanjani will have consolidated his support by then, possibly not.

I remain astonished at the ugliness and bigotry and hypocracy of the right. The consumate evil of McCain and his following will not even allow her true name in death...Neda means "divine calling" not "voice", and she was studying islamic philosophy and religion, not "philosophy".

Is there any difference at all between evil old man John McCain trying to exploit Neda's death for political gain and evil old man Khameni trying to destroy the meaning of Neda's death by turning her into a MEK terrorist?

I see no difference at all.

They called him liar
and hamstrung her for the slaughter
Then their lord rumbled down upon them
for their crime and wiped them away
with no fear of what came after

Evil old men McCain and Khameni are in the same tribe now.

The tribe of Thamud.

Return of the Na'qaat

2009-06-23T15:54:00.000-07:00

One of my very favorite legends of the jahilyyah is the tales of the na'qaat, the tribal combat poets of pre-islam.
I first learned about the female na'qaat in Michael Sells' Desert Tracings, where he mentions bedouin poets Futayma and the Jashiriyyah by name.
I heard anecdotal data from a yemeni jew, a friend of mine.

The female na'qaat, the tribal combat poets, would stand between the two tribes arrayed on the plain of battle for jizyya combat. Sometimes the declaimations were so witty and scourging, that the opposing tribe would fall from their saddles, overcome with laughter.

The na'qaat were the first meme warriors, that fought with words instead of swords.

In Iran today, in the brutal street conflict of urban warfare, and in cyberspace, muslimahs, my sisters, taking on this same role. Fighting with words and images for freedom and justice.

The Prophet said the ink of the scholar is holier even than the blood of the martyr.

The world is watching and listening for your voices my brothers and sisters.

Ya Haqq!

na'qaat

Endgame State

2009-06-20T06:47:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of speculation about whether the Iranian vote was fixed. When the Guardian Council authorized a partial recount, that is an admission that only some of votes are proveable. Otherwise there could have been a full recount.

So yes, it was fixed.

So what does Khameni view as an acceptable outcome?

A massacre would backfire on him, probably causing the Assembly of Experts to remove him, even if he could engage any troops except for the Basiji in muslim on muslim slaughter. So non-deadly prevention of assembly is his best shot. Tear gas and water-cannons.

The blast at Khomeini's Tomb was probably set by Basiji to prevent Mousavi taking refuge there. A time-honored form of Shi'ia civil disobediance.

The Shi'ia are resourceful and experienced at civil disobediance. Since the martyrdom of Imam Ali they have been oppressed. That is how the Iranians overthrew the tyrant Shah, and how the Shi'ia survived the Umayyad Caliphate.

Non-violent civil disobediance is the strongest weapon the Greens have.

Khameni's goal seems to be shutting down protests and hoping that whole mess will dissolve with time. But as long as the Greens have a rally point in Mousavi, it won't go away.

There was just a bit on CNN about an emergency meeting of the Guardian Council on State tv but CNN cut off the feed.

What are Khameni's options?

He could arrest Mousavi, and hold him accountable, like he warned. That would make Mousavi into a political prisoner. Bad press, and other nations might lobby for his release.

I think the next level of protest will be civil disobediance in the form of strikes.

If strikes are broken might we see a mass exodus of Iranians, the skilled ones at least?

Could Iran put its human capital in lockdown, like the Sovs did?

Would we see Iranian students called home?

I don't think so, because Iran is already globally integrated.

I don't see a way Khameni can achieve anything but temporarily stemming the tide, and he definitely risks being tossed out if he overreaches.

The West does not understand the conflict (although Obama seems to). It is not about democracy. It is about the conflict between two versions of Islam in a theocracy. Nejad's fundies are strongly analogous to american conservatives....ostenatiously pious, rural, lowtech, less educated, older. Mousavi's Greens are urban, hightech, educated, socially liberal, younger.....like american liberals. Like the outraged Mousavi spokesman said....."Ahmadinejad is our Bush! Mousavi is our Obama."

But even if the election is rerolled and Mousavi replaces Nejad, and the Assembly of Experts replaces Khameini with Montazeri, Iran will still be a theocracy, and an Islamic republic.

This is not a revolution, but a reform, an attempt to get the state to conform to its founding principles.

And it is not about "democracy" like the pompous sloganeers of the GOP trumphet. It is about justice. The Prophet once said, a country can survive without god, but it cannot exist without justice.

It is about al-Islam, and that is the great strength of the protestors, because Allah really IS on their side.

And anyways....isn't a democracy a perversion of a republic?

;)

Update: What he says....

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.

Bravo Sully!

2009-06-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

Read him if you can get on....the Daily Dish is the nexus of the Green Revolution......and the Revolution is being twittered! I saw a ViSC (visualization in compsci) simulation of a social network at a conference once...the nodes showed up like stars spilled on black velvet shimmering or glowing with various degrees of influence modelled as brightness.....the Dish is blazing like a supernova tonight.

How amazing what is happening in Iran.

How long have I been saying that al-Islam, the true Islam, could be used to fight injustice and tyranny and terrorism? The students are dar al Islam. They wear green, the color of Islam, and they are devout.

Obama did this.

Once I had the priviledge of riding in a clinic with the great Olympian Karen O'Connor.

I will never forget what she said about working with a difficult horse.

Karen said...."you have to open a door for the horse, to give him a place to go."

Obama's Cairo speech opened a door for dar al Islam.

Why I Loathe Ross Douthat

2009-06-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Well..one reason is that I got banned from TNC's crib for saying Douthat is just Kristol with a bigger vocab and more hair. Which is truthsay, btw.

But this is the real reason.

The same cognitive dissonance and pretzel logic that allows Malkin and Rev. George to blame Dr. Tiller for his own assassination, Ross extends to the Constitution and ALL of us pro-choicers.

McArdle-the-flaming-hypocrite vouchsafes the same sentiment.

So get this boiz and grrls......extreme rightwing terrorist Scott Roeder is our fault!

If anything, by enshrining a near-absolute right to abortion in the Constitution, the pro-choice side has ensured that the hard cases are more controversial than they otherwise would be.

Yes, Roe and the Constitution forced Scott Roeder to put a bullet in Dr. Tiller's brain.

If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically. Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester — as many advanced democracies already do – would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions.

Let me try this one more time, Douthat (you disgusting slimy poseur). Our side doesn't need to compromise. 68% of the electorate is against overturning Roe. Might I recommend that you move to one of those other advanced democracies?
And take your crappy terrorist apologia with you.

/spit

Sandwichboard Guyz, Monstershouters and Anger Whiggas

2009-06-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

In Stephen King's classic Manichaen epic The Stand, there is a character in the postapocalyptic world of the future called the Monstershouter. The Monstershouter roams the ruins of New York City shouting "Repent! Monsters!"

This is exactly what we see from conservative talktv and talkradio today...."Obama is a Monster! He is destroying America! Repent!"

So now we have Hannity, Levin, Rush, and Beck (and others)....Sandwichboard Guyz standing on their talkradio/tv soapboxes and shouting away.

What is it with fingerpointing puffy middleaged white guys? I think they are really Anger Whiggas.

I wrote a paper for class once on the globalization of hiphop culture. The common themes that pattern worldwide are disenfranchisement and disrepect. After the 2008 elections, or, as I prefer to call it the extinction event at the K-T boundary for Republicans, the GOP was crushed and humiliated at the polls.

They lost power, in the senate, the house, and the presidency and were soundly rejected by the electorate, 365 to 173 electoral college votes. And the future looks dim. In 2020 minorities become the majority, and the angry puffy whiteguy party will experience an even greater demographic disadvantage. Now all the conservative memes they venerated are increasingly direspected. The WoT, the Bush Doctrine (aka the Epic Fail of the Manifest Destiny of Judeoxian Democracy in MENA), enhanced interrogation (aka torture), Islamophobia (aka recruitment bonus for al-Q), Our Sacred Duty to Be the SuperAwesome World Police (aka neocon philosophy), and free market capitalism (Survival of the Greediest) have proven to be horribly unpopular, and even disastrous, as in the case of the Econopalypse. Even their most sacred fake-grassroots movements, the Tea Parties, were brutally mocked as contemporary slang for a sex act.

Powerless to overturn Roe or stop the inevitable inexorable march of cultural evolution that is bringing us SSM, hESCR, genetic anti-scenescence therapy and ectogenesis, they are bitterly disenfranchised and disrespected by the cultural oracles they profess to despise, hollywood, science, academe, the media, and the international community.
So the Anger Whiggas can only represent and double down on their failmemes, insisting that the "real" conservative ideology will sweep them back to power, if they can just get past the stopband filter of 21st century media.
Riiiight.

I think it will take at least one more righteous kerbstomping at the polls before these wannabe gangstahs give up their mics to more rational reformers.

Or mebbe two.

;)

Update bonus! More puffy fingerpointing middleaged white guy.

Munaasafa

2009-06-05T07:42:00.000-07:00

Obama's speech was brilliant.

The part where someone in the audience called out "We love you!" was especially moving for me.

For three years I have been saying on this blog that we can use can use al-Islam as a lever to move the world. And we can...

There was one thing, that I think Obama left out in his condemnation of Holocaust denialism.

The core theme of Islam is justice, fairness.

I think he failed to reach some of his target audience, the muslims under 30.

The Times Lede blog has a fascinating set of responses to Obama's speech from Arab students. For the most part, they appreciated Obama's courage and directness and gestures of respect; their responses are nuanced and complex.
Deeply disturbing, though, are students' reactions to Obama's discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Three out five students who reacted to this issue rejected Obama's attempt to be even-handed, specifically his parallel treatment of Jewish and Palestinian suffering. One of these three negative reactions was overtly antisemitic, a second implicitly so. All three reacted angrily at what they saw as an insinuation that Israel's existence was justified by Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.

Obama did not say that. But he seemed to.

Here is a rare flaw in Obama's speechmaking. It is not so much that the Arab students are denying the existance of Holocaust data, although they may quibble over statistics......it is that they deny muslim responsibilty for the Holocaust, any ownership of first causes.

Giving Arab lands to the Jews, the victims of the holocaust, is unjust, because muslims did not cause the holocaust.

Obama must acknowledge the validity of this complaint, before he can be wholeheartedly endorsed by his target audience.

Perhaps, as a machiavellian pragmatist he is focused on the primary problem-- the continuing Israeli building of settlements, while leaving the door cracked for the discussion of fairness and root causes later.

But it is a problem that must be addressed eventually.

We don't have a time machine, to go back and change history.

We must accept the pre-existing condition, the creation of Israel.

But Obama must acknowledge that the creation of Israel, was neither fair or just to muslims.

The optimum thing we can do now is convince muslims that the continuing existence of Israel is a fair and just thing, given the initial condition of Israel's existance. The muslim world must be able to believe that the Israelis and the Americans and all parties involved, will behave in a fair and just manner.

And that means, first-- stop the settlements.

From the Prophets lips to our ears--

“Do not say, that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them; and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them; but determine that if people do you good, you will do good to them; and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them”

Plucky Cyberchicklet vs. Uberblog Drama Queen-- Round II

2009-06-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you remember our first engagement.

It is kind of amazing how correct I was three years ago, and how the Uberblog DramaQueen now seems to be trending towards rationality, on Islam and Iraq at least. I understand Robert Spencer lost his spot at Hot Air.

Anyways, here we go again. I think we should use anime avatars this time to make it interesting.

Michelle Malkin: I repeat: Every mainstream pro-life organization has unequivocally condemned the killing.

*Princeton University professor Robert P. George is right about this: “Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. No private individual had the right to execute judgment against him. We are a nation of laws. Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence.”

The Major: That is simply not "an unequivocal condemnation".

...the blood George Tiller had on his own hands...

Shorter Dr. George-- Tiller's murder was awful, but he got what he deserved. Which is absolutely what the whole prolife movement is saying, as far as I can see. Every condemnation of Tiller's murder from the right is qualified with a but-he-deserved-it. This is the face the prolife movement is showing to the world, the visible face. BTW, Dr. George's degree is in theology. He is the head of the school of divinity as a part of his joint appointment. He was a member of the infamous President's Council of Bioludditry, and reportedly believes in medieval ensoulment. So, M'chelle, cher, that should read-- Princeton University professor AND seminarian.

Michelle Malkin: Unfortunately, it’s too much to ask the cable news networks and hyper-partisan snipers on the Internet to have the decency to restrain themselves. Prepare for a wall-to-wall onslaught of gleeful finger-pointing on the Left and heated responses on the Right. Prepare for whitewashed hagiographies of Tiller’s career as an abortionist. Prepare for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s defenders to gloat about vindication. Prepare for collective demonization of pro-lifers and Christians — and more gratuitous attempts to tar talk radio, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement as responsible for the heinous crime.

The Major: But all those things are truth. Scott Roeder is exactly the rightwing extremist and fundamentalist terrorist described in the DHS report. Dr. Tiller was shot multiple times and persecuted unfairly by over fifty dismissed lawsuits, had his clinic bombed and vandalized. One of the times Dr. Tiller was shot by another rightwing extremist was just after Clinton was elected. The domestic terrorist shooter at that time was reported to be inspired by talk radio. O'Reilly attacked Tiller on 28 episodes of his show. The DHS report IS validated by Roeder's and other prolifer's actions.

And now I think the prolife movement is finished.

Prolife position was trending up in the polls, and Obama was offering compromise (even though 68% of the electorate support Roe), but that window of opportunity is gone forever.
No compromise now.
Scott Roeder killed the prolife movement along with Dr. Tiller.

You see....the mask has slipped.

The public face of the prolife movement is no longer thoughtful intelligent Ross Douthat...but crazed domestic terrorist and life-jihaadi Scott Roeder.
By the time the prolife movement recovers from this (in about 8-10 years I project) we will have operational human ectogenesis. In Japan the j-womb has successfully gestated goat embryos to full term, in another 8-10 years we will be able to just drop aborted fetuses into our swell new Bene Tleilax host-womb-vats and gestate them to term. That is, if anyone wants them.
The prolife movement will become a movement without a cause.

What will you do then?

"Who can gaze into the mirror without becoming evil? A mirror does not reflect evil, but creates it."

Demonic Possession

2009-05-14T03:21:00.000-07:00

Poor Conor wonders why the party braintrust can't catch a break these days. I love this title-- No One on the Corner has Swagger Like Rush.

In fact, one gets to be a conservative who must not be criticized based on some weird standard I cannot figure out, except to say that Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are all occasionally invoked as guys beyond criticism from fellow right-wingers, so multiple divorces, the idea that the executive possesses unchecked power in wartime, torture, warrantless wiretapping, atrocious immigration proposals and wild deficit spending are apparently not disqualifying factors.
I don’t get it.
UPDATE: Now that I think about it, the deciding factor is perhaps how much one is reviled by liberals, and how over-the-top absurd one’s most strident liberal critics are. Any other ideas?

The deciding factor is Palinism, otherwise known as...Are you elite? You see, the advent of Sarah Palin on the electoral landscape summoned an ancient unkillable demon from the dawn of history-- Kylon of Croton and the myth that all men are created equal. You might remember Kylon as the pissed-off plutocrat that raised a mob of local farmers to protest his failed attempt to get into Pythagoras' school for rulers by chopping up the teachers with scythes and burning down the school. Now Palin is a nice enough average ordinary lady, as self-styled talking dogs with lipstick go, and it isn't really her fault that she was picked by Team McCain as part of the longterm Republican strategy of scam-the-base-into-voting-for-stealth-elites-pretending-to-be noble-yeoman-farmers. Sad for them, Palin turned out to be the 'realdeal', as Joe the Plumber so succintly put it.

In a way, its tragic-- olbos, koros, hubris, ate. Palin was a just a citizen doing a decent job up in Alaska when she got plucked from obscurity to be groomed as the next stealthy elite to take up space in the high office. Imagine the horror of Team McCain when they discovered she was ungroomable, due to profound lack of elite substrate. Lol! See, all men are created equal under the law (endowed by their creator with unalienable rights), but no man (or woman) is created equal under the genes.

So now the base is like a horse that has gotten into the barn and is busy devouring a whole grain bin of delicious Palinism. That will kill the horse, but it cannot be lead away nor beaten away from the grain. Bill Bennett and Newt and John McCain might try to pretend Palin doesn't exist, or that she is irrelevent. Reihan and Conor and Dave Frum might try to persude the base that Palin is a bad choice, and will doom the party's chance to widen the electoral appeal, but the truth is, once you crit Palin, you're a traitor. GTFO elitist snob! Once you advocate moderation, you're a heretic. In Palinism, or Kylonism if you want to be accurate, there is no "natural aristocracy", no gifts or talent or aptitude......there is only will.

The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

The conservative braintrust understands the need for intellectuals, academics, and elites in the party....but they simply can't have them now. Crits levied against Rush or Palin are treason against the base. Moderation is heresy. K-Lo and the rest of the mad shamans at the corner understand this. In a way, it is beautifully symmetrical.

hehe, Palin as well…..olbos, koros, hubris, ate. She was just a citizen doing a decent job up in Alaska, and got picked as part of the traditional Republican scam-the-base-into-voting-for-elites-pretending-to-be-noble-yeoman-farmers strategy. Lo and behold….Palin turned out to be profoundly non-elite. A perfect symbolic host for the spirit of Kylon. Its like demonic possession.
Now the base is like a gila monster. Won’t let go until you’re dead.
Relly, its perfect.
The Revenge of the NYFs.
And like Bacon said, revenge is a kind of wild justice.
— matoko_chan · May 14, 06:13 AM · #
I dig Nate.

Caveman Calculus

2009-05-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

It's like conservatism kills brain cells or something.

Will and Razib hevving BEEEEG serious discussion about teh biological basis for political determinism--

Why is the journey unpredictable? One reason: Cultural evolution is unpredictable and the content of the beliefs and norms attractive to those with partly-hardwired liberal and conservative dispositions — the parameters of the liberal-to-conservative continuum — at any given time is a matter of the forces of cultural history as they interact with the forces of population change. Ideas and norms can’t stick if our evolved minds are inhospitable hosts for them. So the fixed part of human psychology is a constraint on cultural transmission. If we find liberal individualism at all compelling, it’s because we already have a taste for it. Likewise thick communitarian socialism. Culture wars are wars in part over which tastes to gratify and encourage and which to stymie and treat as a threats to decent civilization.

Sheesh.

Why is this not gobsmackingly obvious to them?

BECAUSE OF THE IQ!

Take it away, Dr. Nyborg.

The present study examined whether IQ relates systematically to denomination and income within the framework of the g nexus, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97). Atheists score 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. Denominations differ significantly in IQ and income. Religiosity declines between ages 12 to 17. It is suggested that IQ makes an individual likely to gravitate toward a denomination and level of achievement that best fit his or hers particular level of cognitive complexity. Ontogenetically speaking this means that contemporary denominations are rank ordered by largely hereditary variations in brain efficiency (i.e. IQ). In terms of evolution, modern Atheists are reacting rationally to cognitive and emotional challenges, whereas Liberals and, in particular Dogmatics, still rely on ancient, pre-rational, supernatural and wishful thinking.
Keywords: Religion; IQ; High-IQ fraction; Denomination; Income; Gravitation hypothesis; Physicology

You see....it is not "two cylinders which serve as the motive force", it is the same old demon, negative correlation of IQ with religious belief. Conservatives are simply dogmatics. There is a high correlation of religious belief with conservative party afilliation. Razib argues for "traditional wisdom", never quite getting the hilarious fact that religious belief in general and creationism in particular are the epitome of traditional wisdom models. Religion is a powerful evolutionary fitness enhancer for the left side of the bellcurve.

If we mapped the upper right half of the bellcurve of IQ, I expect we would see solid red close to the mean, shading through purple to blue at the upper right tail. The liberal elite are also the elite of IQ I expect. Scientists, atheists, academics, intellectuals...usually uniformly liberal.

Sure there are outliers....like Razib and Will.

But not in sufficient numbers to turn the blue upper right tail even slightly purple.

Oh, and Will....

So, what if people with conservative impulses reproduce at a greater rate?

This is what happens.

lol

End of the Party

2009-05-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

I was initially pretty excited about the Secular Right Blog. Razib Khan and John Derbyshire were two of my very favorite bloggers. But I began to get a bad feeling about the whole thing.....SR exibits a sort of raw cognitive dissonance about the religious right. Heather MacDonald posts an endless stream of snarky posts basically mocking believers for believing in transubstantiation or minor miracles, while completely ignoring the fact that religious belief is the ultimate fitness enhancer for the lower left of the bellcurve. Razib enthusiastically endorses "traditional wisdom" while completely ignoring the fact that religious belief and IDT/creationism are wholly "traditional wisdom", and posts craploads of statistics validating his mob-rule themes. John Derbyshire spends two whole posts trying to rationalize yuck-factor discrimination against homosexuals.

This commenter on Heather's thread pretty much sums it up for me--

Read enough of this obnoxious drivel and, as Sviluppo said, this feels “like being at a party and someone starts ranting about the racial inferiority of the Irish due to a lower percentage of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, and enough other people laugh and nod their heads that you think, ‘Maybe it’s time to leave, and not tell anyone I was here.’ “

I know that feeling...it basically creeps me out to see upper right tailers subliminating their substantial IQs in service of expressing solidarity with some sort of "conservative ethos", and ginning up convoluted apologia for bigotry and racism.

I think TMBG said it best....

It was the loveliest party that I've ever attended
If anything was broken I'm sure it could be mended
My head can't tolerate this bobbing and pretending
Listen to some bullet-head and the madness that he's saying

Out from the kitchen to the bedroom to the hallway
Your friend apologizes, he could see it my way
He let the contents of the bottle do the thinking
Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding

This is where the party ends
I can't stand here listening to you
Stand by your racist friend
I know politics bore you
But I feel like a hypocrite talking to you
And your racist friend

Failcake

2009-05-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

The current manic defense of conservative opposition to SSM has really highlighted the failure of the Secular Right blog. Stuttaford has the best post, imho.

The role of the Right should be to shape the way that this change takes place, by building in, for example, free speech and ‘conscientious objection’ protections to those who do not go along. If that’s the aim, a position of outright opposition is not the best place to begin,

Exactly...that should be the role of the Right, to moderate change, to buffer it, while accepting that cultural evolution is inevitable and inexorable.

Razib makes the "traditional wisdom" argument again with an actual straight face, completely ignoring the fact that religion in general and IDT/creationism in particular ARE "traditional wisdom". The truth is the left half of the bellcurve of IQ needs religion. They don't have the substrate to "get" Science, reason and logic. Based on stratification by IQ, atheism isn't really a option for them.

And the truth is, there is simply no valid secular reason to oppose SSM. So just admit it.

Just like there is no valid secular reason to believe in creationism.

In his post Derbyshire points to Dr. Cochran's gaygerm theory, apparently advocating that homosexuality be "cured". Here is a "cure" from "traditional wisdom".

Victory in Iraq!

whoot.

Trying to retrofit secular rationale on the religious motivations of the lower left half of the bellcurve seems pretty dumb to me. And Derbyshire is claiming the Secular Right bloggers are "smart"?

Why just not acknowledge cultural evolution is what it is, and acknowledge the negative correlation between religion and intelligence? Acknowledge the multi-modal distribution of IQ mapped on political affiliation, and that the religious left-of-the-bellcurve cohort votes republican.

Let me repeat...the lower left of the bellcurve needs religion to moderate social behavior.

You can consider religion (like government) an evolutionary attempt to solve the Friendliness Problem for homo sapiens sapiens.

Let's face it, homo sapiens has the Friendliness Problem. How many deaths (from war and democide and religion) have we had in the 20th century? 262 million--less than 2 billion by 7/8ths, but not good enough. Our coding is for survival. we have been trying to fix that with religion and government and philosophy since the Dawn, trying to fix our genetics with memetics. Gak! It just doesn't work. Sometimes it just makes for more death. We need to fix our genetics directly. Like Sir Richard suggests in Let's Stop Beating Basil's Car.

Religion, philosophy and government are all naturally occurring phenomena. They arise independently in all populations. My hypoth is that religion, philosophy and government are all evolved strategies for solving the homosapiens Friendliness problem, by reducinging intra-species death counts. But they don't work that well, ie, more civilian death in the 20th century, more death over all than the 19th century. All three can cause radical death-rate increase for those outside the memetic "tribe".

It isn't that hard....I thought you guys were supposed to be scient.

Sheesh.

I wonder....is it that the secular right bloggers understand that speaking truth will shatter the illusion they are conformant with their base? So they have to promote scams?

Well.....that is the ~~traditional wisdom~~ conservative way I guess.

A question.....because surely Razib and John Derbyshire are brilliant upper right tailers...in order to flaunt solidarity with the base.....is it really neccessary to pretend to be stupid?

Heres a hilarious comment on Heather from Dale--

Wow, this is quite an argument. I’ve re-read it to make sure it actually appeared in public, and yes, it did! We’re not hallucinating!
Suppose, from an abundance of charity, that we assume the validity of the argument: African Americans will be even less inclined to marry if marriage gets all gay’d up.
Shouldn’t we consider the other types of people that black people stereotypically dislike and ban their marriages too? Aren’t we compelled to do so, given that The Crisis of the Black Family is the biggest social problem of them all?
- Mexicans
- Korean grocers
- the LAPD (if not all police)
- Country music artists
- KKK members
- Republicans / Libertarians
- People who shush them when they talk back to the screen at movie theaters
- White dudes who think they can play basketball
- Elvis fans who fail to appreciate the extent of Elvis’s borrowing from African American performers
And so on. No doubt I’ve neglected numerous stereotypes here.
Awesome.

Haw haw......I saw the once unimpeachable Steve Sailer make this same sillie "gay'd up" argument at TAS.

The Secular Right blog has all the charm of a dog poop in a bag of sweet rolls.

Unbelievable.

I certainly feel like I'm hallucinating.

The Cake Makes Meh Puke

2009-05-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

Wow....I thought Razib and the Derb had plumbed the depths of stupidity with their creepy faux-secular arguments against SSM, but Heather has capped them with the fugliest fake-secular argument yet. From commenter Carlo--

I will say this: in a debate filled with arguments repeated ad infinitum ad nauseum from both sides, you’ve come up with an argument I haven’t heard before. It would never have occurred to me to discriminate against one minority group in order to teach another one a lesson.

I have never seen such desperate mental gymnastics in my life. How to reguard this as anything other than a sickening craven moronic attempt to give cover to religious bigotry is simply beyond belief.

The Secular Right is not just a lie, but a joke.

Nice going Razib.

I thought I knew Razib and the Derb.

Here is something beautiful Razib wrote once.

I am not a utopian, I don't believe that all the world can be university educated and have a greater love of ideas than of cousin, evolutionary psychology tells me that won't be so. My aim is to make the world safe for my people, who are not defined by blood or belief, but a quirky disposition to dance with ideas and explore the bounds of our brains as if that was the end of life itself. I have suggested that my people should not deceive themselves into thinking that all are as they are, that ancient and deep bonds of belief, family and ethnic blood will be worn away by the application of ideas or the distribution of texts or even the compulsion of the gun. But neither should we accept our fate meekly and be bound again by dogmas, rites and rituals, in the straight-jacket of custom and tradition.

Here is something beautiful the Derb wrote.

Now you have joined up with people who want to trash the scientific enterprise and heap insults on one of the greatest names in intellectual history. For reasons unfathomable to me, you and Ben Stein want to sneer and scoff at our understandings, hard-won over centuries of arduous intellectual effort. Don't the two of you know, don't Jews of all people know, where this anti-intellectual agitation, this pandering to a superstitious mob, will lead at last? If you truly don't, I refer you to the fate of Hypatia, which you can read about in my last book (Chapter 3), or in Gibbon(Chapter XLVII). You new pals at the Discovery Institute no doubt think Hypatia got what she deserved.Civilization is a thin veneer, David.

Reason and science are bulwarks against the dark.

I don't know Heather.

And at this point I don't want to.

But Heather....shouldn't you be falling over yourself with praise for Obama? A hetero black family man as President of the United States will accomplish a thousand times more as a positive role model than your feeble attempts at justifying imposing socio-religious mores and taboos on unwilling citizens in a Republic.

Why can't you just say......there is no valid secular reason to oppose SSM.

Step on poseurs.

The Cake is a LIe.

Red State

2009-05-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

I admit to being shocked and horrified by the intellectual devolution of old mentors Razib Khan (David Hume) and John Derbyshire (Bradlaugh) at the Secular Right. Sure, one can be both secular and conservative, but does that require being pithed by partisanship?

Derbyshire, Heather, and Razib have all insisted there is a secular reason to fear SSM. Well..if your "secular reason" is that your base has a non-secular reason, that doesn't count.

Here is proto-fascist Cornelius Troost on Razib's thread.

Gay marriage, even if universal, will not change the reality of its deviance from normalcy. This is no crime whatsoever but merely states the aggressive politicizing of a biological abnormality. All kinds of handicapped people push for “rights” they once lacked, but deviance from normal states and conditions are not improved by refusing to acknowledge them. While the will to improve or succeed is admirable, it is still better to acknowledge the facts of the real world.
A Brave New World where late term fetuses are routinely destroyed, where all forms of what once were perversions are openly celebrated, where blacks are “inserted” into AP classes to create equality, and where a slip of the tongue can land you in jail is surely a bleak world with no future. If the massive slide from equality of opportunity to equality of outcomes steamrolls our meritocracy, we then represent one of the main tributaries flowing toward Hume’s utopia. Old conservatives like me may be acting out of a genetic predisposition, but this debate over the future of our declining society and world is too serious to avoid.

Niice. In the old days, when I was a co-blogger at GNXP, Razib used to swing the banhammer on stormfronters and neo-nazi racists and homophobes.

Now they are welcome.

Perhaps instead of flailing around trying to come up with a secular reason to oppose SSM, Razib might analyze the mainstreaming of rightwing extremists in the conservative movement.

Glenn Beck is the most popular host on FOX, and Erick Erickson hosts the largest conservative community blog. I think David Frum and Kevin Smith are right about the conservative movement. From Frum's essay on the Paranoid Style--

were moved more by the desire to dominate the [Republican] party than to win the country, concerned more to express resentments and punish “traitors,” to justify a set of values and assert grandiose, militant visions than to solve actual problems of state. More important, they were immune to the pressure to move over from an extreme position toward the center of the political spectrum which is generally exerted by the professional’s desire to win.

At Secular Right, rather than analyze the paranoid style in the contemporary conservative movement, we see a concerted effort to rejustify mob-rule, religious discrimination, bigotry and religious rationalization.

Because our constituency says god-says-so just isn't a valid secular reason.

Certainly there could be a more productive analysis of the process of cultural evolution, instead of trying frantically to patch up some sort of shared ideology between the godbots, scientific crypto-fascists and the free market libertarian capitalists.

But good luck with that, Razib.

See you in Jesusland.

Or not...I actually plan on living in the Rim States with my cohort.

You enjoy Jesusland with yours.

PS, Derb...you cite Cochran? the Cochran/Ewald pathogenic theory of homosexuality

How dare you!

What about Hamilton and the pathogenic theory of the evolution of ALL human sexuality?

Perhaps you would like to go back in time and "cure" Alan Turing? Oh, right, you brits already did that.

/spit

Cure by death....that would be the "traditional wisdom" too, wouldn't it?

For dealing with homosexuals, "sexual deviants" as Dr. Troost puts it?

Niice.

The Cake Is Still A Lie

2009-05-04T05:36:00.000-07:00

From Razib, homeslice of Glenn Beck.

But a dispositional conservatism serves more than a periodoc brake upon the inevitable march of history
blah-blah-blah.

The group assertion at Secular Right, including the Derb, Heather, AND Razib was --

there is a valid secular reason(s) to oppose SSM.

There is not.

Razib, you are asserting organic reasons to oppose SSM....not the same as your much vaunted secular logic and reason.

QED, FAIL.

Just admit it.

The Cake is a Lie Part Trois

2009-05-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

If "traditional wisdom" is a "valid secular reason" to oppose same-sex marriage and abortion rights, then shouldn't traditional wisdom also be a valid secular reason to oppose ToE and endorse Intelligent Design Theory?

The Major Settles the Torture Debate

2009-05-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Gotta love America for perfecting the paradigm of proof by lawsuit.

The only country in the world that could have exposed the pederast priests.

Update: David Schribman argues that Presidents Don't Prosecute Their Predecessors.

No need.

These guys will.

I love my country.

props to the Creator of Worlds