Obama on Islam in India

Here is video of President Obama speaking on Islam after being asked a question about jihad and what he thinks about it. The answer is stunning and vastly ignorant. Just like much of the establishment political, media and academic elite.

What about Muhammad directly participating in war to further Islam? Why is there never logic connecting that to Muslims warring today? Why does he invoke Ghandi’s name? Ghandi has absolutely nothing to do with Islam or Jihad. It is Obama’s wishful thinking that somehow Islam’s enemies, Muslims who are violent, need to be isolated from the the Ghandi Muslims. Muslims are not going to care about Ghandi, it is Muhammad they follow and are loyal to. They will follow his mold principally rather then Ghandi, no matter how much Obama thinks they should do otherwise because Islam is a religion of peace.

What should have taken place after 9/11 or prior to be perfectly honest, is that Islam should of been singled out by the intellectuals and politicians as a violent religion that preaches Muhammad, who directly participated in war, is the Muslims mirror for his/her pattern of conduct. Obama you are a piece of work, and cannot intelligently deal with topics because your political investment swings counter to the truth.

Iran to meet Nasrallah – but who knows?

Amidst renewed although what seems to be fading peace talks between Israel and Palestinian territories, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided it would be a good idea to visit South Lebanon and Bint Jbeil. What is intersting, is that out of 4 different stories, here, CNN, FOX News and MSNBC. Only here has this very telling line;

During his visit, Ahmadinejad was to meet top Lebanese officials as well as with Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia which largely controls the southern border region with Israel and is also sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction.

We would figure that Lebanese officials would be met with by Ahmadinejad during this visit, however Hassan Nasrallah? The leader of Hezbollah? Why is it that 3 out of 4 major news outlets, including FOX News did not even mention that. Why is that?

According to Council of Foreign Relations Hassan Nasrallah profile, we can determine that he is indeed in Lebanon and as recent as July 2010 has met Khaled Meshaal leader of HAMAS. And as recently as 2006 during the Israel-Hezbollah war Israeli warplanes bombed Nasrallahs home.

While Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas do not have organizational ties, Nasrallah has met with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal several times, most recently in July 2010 when Meshaal traveled to Lebanon to discuss “regional developments” (Al-Manar) with Nasrallah. It has also been reported that Hezbollah gives military training, as well as financial and moral backing, to Hamas and has acted as a role model (PDF) for the group.

Fascinating, so we can easily determine that Ahmadinejad is visiting a terrorist leader, one of the biggest in the world right there in Southern Lebanon. The scene of devastating bombing by Israel in 2006, so of course Nasrallah would be there, among the people, infiltrating their hearts and minds with propaganda. I have an idea, let Israel eliminate their target! They are fully aware of the area, as they have significant experience within that Area of Operations. Obama, this is your moment, if they manage to take out Ahamdinejad the leader of Iran and a powerful pusher behind the weaponization of nuclear weapons, AND Nasrallah? This would be a devastating blow to enemies from the north and east, two sides of Israel with reverberations effecting Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Russia to name a few.

Do you think this will happen? I do not but I can hope and pray can’t I? Let me know what you think in the comments.

The Age of Discovery and Globalization

The Age of Discovery (15th-17th century) is dominated by the European peoples, specifically Spain and Portugal under the British Empire, extensive use of the waters to explore and map out the known world. In turn this introduced a scale of interaction between large swaths of land, ruled by opposing empires, never before contemplated. The Eurasian and African continents, for example, engaged in abundant trade of culture and peoples with the New World, raising the involved partners standard of living to new heights.ref During the time of this European naval expansion saw the rise of modern nation states which helped distribute influence and supplant fertile ground for diverse cultures. A foreign policy embodied in a civilization, that can be called proto-globalization, extirpates local and regional differences across the globe homogenizing human societies toward a common path of modernity.

During the 18th, 19th and 20th Century Western civilization or the West referring to North America and Europe (more specifically Western Europe) is a consistently integrated path of modernism that forms many geopolitical influences. Cornerstones of civilization such as culture, how society is corrected by law, religion coincide through political philosophy and with an economic history of proto-globalization within the West, led to an exportation of western modernism. Applied with varying degrees, for better or worse, is seen by most across the world as imperialism or colonialism by the British Empire and hegemony by the United States. Nations of the world were literally and essentially given a path that would either be adopted completely, rejected wholeheartedly by a strict brand of their own modernism or stasis, or a hybrid system was pursued accepting Western wealth through economic globalization but for the support of their own identity in regional traditional culture and posture in the world upon the international stage. With support for only specific elements of Western civilization, namely economic proto-globalization, many nations map out a hybrid system for their own internal domestic politics in ways which are consistent with its societies heritage of culture. Subtly during the 20th and 21st centuries industrial modernism through the Western civilization template, has been pushed back significantly and continues to be challenged by many, now modernized and sufficiently culturally assertive, non-West nation states.

A very good book to read on this topic is: The Clash of Civilizations And The Remaking of World Order By Samuel P. Huntingtonref

Hu Jintao and Chinese government hold prisoners

*UPDATE*: Wife of Liu Xiaobo has now disappeared.ref

Chinese President Hu Jintao, free Liu Xiaobo and Gao Zhisheng. NOW! Speak up Obama, speak up Clinton! SPEAK UP AMERICA!

We must, as American foreign policy, constantly and consistently demean China through their human rights abuses. There is no excuse. Please visit Free Gao.com

US security contractors and systemic failure

This is why the war will never be won in any clear and concise way.

The committee reviewed roughly 125 unclassified Department of Defense security contracts between 2007 and 2009, and found that there are some 26,000 private security contractors operating in Afghanistan, the majority of whom are Afghan nationals. The review found “systemic failures” of the military oversight for contracts, including the hiring of what Levin called “many too many” security contractors who had been improperly vetted, improperly trained or were not provided weapons. ref

1. Our military is not in full command of securing its own personnel.

2. When command is achieved the security personnel are Afghan nationals, not U.S. military.

We need LESS reliance on security contractors and an overhaul of military procedure, structure and command of these contracts. As troops decrease from the wars the contracted private security firms are staying. This is going to lead to even less command and control by the military and more rampant purchasing through shady money, in which creates atmosphere easy for corruption. And continued systemic failure! The Congress of US does not care, it has given most autonomy for the war to the Executive Branch. Executive branch coordinates and ultimately leads the US military. But the military then contracts out to these private security firms. And thus command and control ultimately breaks down at that link it seems to me.

The security contractors are sacrificing along with US military personnel within the past few years. However the security personnel numbers maintain, while official US military personnel withdraws, this does not look like a good recipe. We are just now getting, “A scathing Senate report”… What is going on?! This is what happens when weak-kneed politicians in Congress don’t fully understand the need for the military and the need to facilitate it. They would rather demean military accomplishment and merit, and sneak in pork-laden crap for home districts and agenda items within funding legislation.

The world against NK-to little to late?!

South Korea hosts a nonproliferation drill off of the Busan coast with 15 other countries! First mistake, its to damn far SOUTH!

The two-day drill will start on Oct. 13, and participants will include the United States, Japan and Australia. The drill will focus on intercepting vessels suspected of shipping weapons of mass destruction with surface ships, submarines and fighter jets. Two South Korean 4,500-ton torpedo destroyers, two landing ships and four submarines will be joined by a 9,000-ton Aegis destroyer from the U.S., a 4,000-ton Japanese destroyer and Australia’s maritime surveillance patrol aircraft. ref

This in response to the sailors murdered by North Korea months and months ago and the regimes what seems to be, need to sell any type of weapons to any type of government as well as developing its own nuclear capabilities. What kind of knee-capped response is this? We should of taken extreme measures and merely shown this is in national China’s interest, and pressured China to cut off trade with North Kore until it lets in nuclear inspectors, human rights groups, etc to pacify a brutal dictatorship and rescue as many people from starvation as possible. If this does not work, we carry out the pressure on China further to destabilize and topple the regime. Of course with a transfer of power from Kim Jong Il to his son Kim Jong Un it has become to late, or if we were to exorcise such actions the window is to narrow for coordination.

These war games are a timid response, and I think akin to a kid who is bullied puffing out his chest and daring another attack, even though the bully just murdered people. This is NOT how you deal justice, this is NOT how you send clear messages in regards to acts of war. You do not respond to acts of war by acting like there is no war. These war games should of been comprehensively and continuously ran since 2008 or 2009!ref

Claire Berlinski on Uncommon Knowledge

Peter Robinson, is my favorite public intellectual despite himself modestly calling himself a laymen. He conducts interviews for Hoover Institutions Uncommon Knowledge video series. This is quite possibly one of the most undeniably intellectually stimulating sites on the Internet. On its recent video interview titled, “Thatcher & More with Claire Berlinski” Claire Berlinski discusses her new book and presents a fascinating history of Margret Thatcher prior, during and after.

Berlinski lays out the case that Great Britain prior to Thatcher was in desperate disrepair and the world knew it. The character and person of Thatcher is described as well. There is also a point that really set Thatcher apart through the moral view of essentially capitalism, or what is specifically labeled by Berlinski as “Thatcherism” compared against free-market economics in the economist sense. Margret Thatcher rigorously defended this view by stating the economic application is better, because morally philosophy is centered on the individual! The immorality comes into play when the personal economy of an individual, the actual choices made by individuals in their daily lives is limited and becomes afterthought. There was a strong religious component or background from which this view is diffused, interpreted and ultimately utilized as well.

There is one point in the video around 33 minute mark in which Claire Berlinski essentially states that, as i paraphrase the argument, we should not tell Muslims how to interpret the Qur’anic words such as shari’a and jihad. However coming from my position, we don’t, we let prominent Islamic scholars and traditions formed by prominent Islamic theologians as well as history of prominent Islamic civilizations tell us how to interpret the words such as Shari’a and jihad. What do we do with the history of Muhammad and the clear and concise tradition of Muhammad being a model Muslim, one which is to be mirrored in Surah verse 33, 21?ref1 Muhammad directly participated in warfare to further his religion, if a Muslim does not mirror Muhammad in all ways in his/her life, is that person fully Muslim? How does a Muslim reconcile with the violence expressed by Muhammad to further his religion? These are questions regarding Islam and Islamic history that need to be addressed yet not presented within the interview on Uncommon Knowledge for the Hoover Institution.

I feel it is almost a lazy position by Berlinski because it fails to account for other foundations of which arguments are made. However the clear and concise point about questioning Muslims respect for the superiority of the Constitution of the United States is brilliant and I think a fundamental.