Here we go again

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s getting really really close to Christmas now. And although Chanukah is almost over, there’s still time to give a gift or two.

So once again I’m asking you to solve all your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon.

And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money yourself. What could be more wonderful?

I thank you all in advance. And I’ll be bumping this up and/or re-posting it every now and then until Christmas.

[NOTE: In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).]

Islam: religion or not?

The New Neo Posted on by

Quite a few critics of Islam say that it’s not a religion.

My answer is that Islam is not a religion like other religions. But in certain respects it is similar to a religion and/or is functioning as a religion and not just a political system like Communism, which was a belief system that replaced religion but did not have these aspects. For example, Islam includes belief in a Supreme Being, clerics, houses of worship, guides to living, and belief in an afterlife. And even for those people who say it’s not a religion, a problem is that Islam calls itself a religion, has done so for over a millennium, and is widely regarded the world over as being a religion.

As a religion (or as something with many aspects of a religion that calls itself a religion), Islam promises many things, including an afterlife in paradise for its terrorist murderers. Even Communism couldn’t offer its followers that; the rewards it offered were in this lifetime, especially if the person was a higher-up in the Party. So, as a religion (or as a religion of sorts), Islam can do two things (although not just these two things): it can use our own principles of religious tolerance against us to destroy us and those principles, and it can whip its followers up to even greater fervor by its promises about rewards in an afterlife that will last forever. It also offers membership in a whole that transcends the individual, but Communism made that offer to its devotees as well.

So I repeat: although in many respects Islam goes beyond what we think of as a religion, into the governmental and political (you can see some of the results in Iran), religion definitely has something to do with it. And if Islam did not call itself a religion, it would not be so difficult to rally support for fighting against jihadis, who present the added problem of masquerading as being followers of a regular religion rather than a murderous apocalyptic death cult.

Are all Muslims followers of a “murderous apocalyptic death cult”? No, but (a) they are followers of a religion that in its most fundamental form can easily become one, and often has; and (b) they are followers of a religion which, if adhered to at all strictly, is antithetical to our Western doctrines of liberty and human rights.

The Trump addiction: madder music and stronger wine

The New Neo Posted on by

.Victor Davis Hanson on Donald Trump’s appeal:

Trump sees his daily bombast as an injection of outrage for a constituency now hooked on someone who finally voices their pent-up anger. The more reckless Trump’s doses of scattergun outrageousness, the better the fix for his supporters.

For quite a while I’ve thought that was one of the reasons nothing Trump has said has given the slightest indication of turning off his supporters, and nothing is likely to do so. The more “outrageous” he becomes, according to the MSM and the 3 people who are planning to vote for Jeb Bush, the more his supporters enjoy it.

One of the many interesting aspects of the Trump phenomenon is that “regular” politicians seem pallid in comparison to him. Their sober, articulate, seemingly well-thought-out answers (I think some are, anyway) don’t send that thrill up (or is it down?) the leg, that frisson that means something exciting is happening, and something else exciting might be happening in just a moment if you stick with it.

The rest of the field? Well, every now and then there’s a joke, but other than that they sound like Teacher giving a lecture on Stuff. Policy, details—who needs it? Let’s have another shot of that Trump adrenaline. I’m not saying that’s the only reason Trump’s supporters are drawn to him—it’s not—but it’s part of it, and it’s part of what keeps people riveted on him and keeps the publicity coming his way. Trump is well aware of this, and keeps it coming, both from his own predilection for that sort of thing and as a tactic.

Obama had a similar galvanizing effect on his constituency, although his outward style appeared very different: professorial, smooth, cerebral, intellectual (or, as it seemed to me, pseudo-intellectual). I seemed to have been immune to his appeal, and I’m equally immune to Trump’s appeal. But I observe them both.

If you’re as old as I am, you remember when the children’s television show “Sesame Street” first came on the air. Younger people may not realize how very different it was from the kids’ shows that had gone before, which had been somewhat low-key and slow-paced. “Sesame Street” was a children’s program on steroids, fast and irreverent, cutting back and forth quickly, and witty enough to keep parents laughing and entertained. Speculation was that the show would help shorten the attention span of the generation that grew up watching it, and I believe it did.

At any rate, something seems to have made us more impatient, or some combination of things: the internet, video games, the prevalence of action movies, texting? A few years ago, for example, I watched a favorite old film, “The Day of the Jackal,” and was surprised at how slow it seemed now. I still love the movie; I think it’s a masterpiece, actually, and that the remake is an abomination. But many people nowadays find the original hard to watch because of how its more leisurely (although IMHO, still suspenseful) pace compares to what we’ve become used to.

And so I observe that, among all his other qualities, one of Trump’s big appeals is that people find him exciting to listen to and to watch. Whatever will he say next?

[NOTE: The title of this post comes from this poem.

And yes, I’m aware that Trump doesn’t drink. The title is a metaphor.]

[NOTE II: By the way, this post is meant to be a reflection on Trump’s style vs. the style of the other candidates, not on the relative merits of their positions. I’ve certainly discussed the latter, too—ad nauseam, perhaps—but that’s not what I’m trying to talk about here. Like it or not, a lot of what draws people to one candidate vs. another is personal style.]

Phytoplankton: we have not a clue

The New Neo Posted on by

Phytoplankton have been proliferating in the North Atlantic when they were predicted to be doing the opposite, and we haven’t a clue why. Nor do we know whether the increase is beneficial or harmful.

Here’s an observation on this from Anand Gnanadesikan, who is an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins.

“What is worrisome,” he said, “is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.”

Here’s blogger Richard Fernandez:

This is important because phytoplankton are the foundation of the food chain.

Conventional wisdom held they should be dying. For years the numbers of phytoplankton were thought to be in decline due to Global Warming…Just as nuclear power and radiation explained everything in the 1950s, in 2015 the usual suspect in all modern mysteries is Global Warming…The way the narrative works is the Usual Suspect is guilty in every case. Things are simpler that way.

I am not a scientist, although I am more science and math literate than most people. But I’ve long been worried about the belief that the current state of computer modeling can deal with some of the most complex systems in nature adequately enough to predict the future or understand how an intervention would actually affect the system in the real world.

Fernandez quotes a work in which the late Michael Crichton has a character explain:

Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like John von Neumann thought that if you had a computer-a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously-you would be able to predict the weather…They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything.

Our very short-time weather prediction is excellent. But chaos theory throws off weather prediction if it’s just a bit beyond a week or so ahead. Weather prediction of that type (which is still relatively short-term) and climate prediction (which is far more long-term) are different creatures from each other, of course. However, the basic idea that we have enough variables and enough knowledge to reliably predict these things—and particularly to be able to intervene productively in them—appears to be a form of scientific and political hubris.

And that is true even without postulating that some scientists or especially government officials have an interest in fudging data or misrepresenting data, a question we don’t even have to consider for the purposes of this post. Even if it’s all on the up and up, how trustworthy would the conclusions be?

[NOTE: I highly recommend the work of Judith Curry, a respected climatologist who also respects some of the doubts of the so-called “AGW skeptics.” Here’s a sample of the sort of thing she writes at her website, which is worth a visit.]

Liberty: yesterday and today

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some quotes about liberty that seem timely today. Perhaps quotes about liberty are always timely.

From George Washington:

“The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.”

From Ronald Reagan:

“It is freedom itself that still hangs in the balance, and freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

Or less than one generation.

Here’s another timely quote, if not about liberty exactly, then about the sensation of the threat today and our current reaction:

“We are, I am afraid, drifting in a state of semi-animation, towards the rapids.” Those were the words of Hugh Dalton, Clement Attlee’s chancellor of the exchequer, describing the state of Britain in the winter of 1947, on the eve of the end of Empire.

Seems very apt, doesn’t it?

On Enrique Marquez

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s as though the San Bernardino shooting were a primer designed to demonstrate several of the possible ways to be a jihadi in the US.

First, we have Syed Farook, a man whose parents were immigrants from a Muslim country but who was born in this country. Then we have his wife, a woman from Pakistan who had lived at times in Saudi Arabia and who came here recently as Farook’s bride under a special fiance visa program that seems to have involved almost no vetting at all of any use.

Now we have a new variation on the theme, the Hispanic Muslim-convert gun-supplier-childhood-friend Enrique Marquez. He’s a bit of a mystery man, but the story so far is exceedingly odd. I haven’t yet seen a word about whether he’s a citizen or not, but he was raised next door to Farook in Riverside, California, so I’d guess “citizen” (no idea about the original immigration status of his parents).

Marquez’s conversion to Islam is part of the mystery. We know it happened a few years ago, and I will speculate it may have had something to do with his friendship with Farook. The guns he gave to his friend were purchased three years ago, and it’s not clear when the transfer was made because there’s no record of it (no surprise there). It’s also not clear how much Marquez knew about the attack, but it is highly possible he knew quite a bit, since he and Farook are reported to have planned a previous attack in 2012 that they then abandoned:

The FBI has labeled the killings a terrorist attack and investigators are also trying to determine if Farook had abandoned plans to launch an attack in 2012, according to two people familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Federal authorities questioned Marquez, 24, after searching his mother’s Riverside house over the weekend, but have not charged him with a crime. They are still trying to determine how the couple got the weapons.

Marquez told investigators that he and Farook planned an attack in the United States in 2012 but never followed through, according to one law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. It was unclear what caused them to cancel the plan.

But there’s more about Farook, Marquez, and immigration, although it’s unclear how the rest relates to their terrorism. Farook’s elder brother, whose name is also Syed (as is the father’s) but who goes by middle name “Raheel” (more about him a bit later) and Marquez each married one of a pair of Russian sisters who came here on J-1 visas, “which allow foreign individuals to enter for work-study cultural exchange programs.” Marquez’s marriage had some very odd characteristics that make me think it was not a real marriage:

Marquez did not live with his wife, [Ramirez, a friend of Marquez’s] said, and he never explained his living arrangements…

Brittani Adams, a neighbor of Syed Raheel Farook, said she had seen Marquez and Chernykh around the family home but the two looked like anything but a married couple.

“He would never leave with her, come with her, not hug her,” Adams, 24, said. “None of them seemed like they were married. It was very weird.”

They were married in November of 2014; Raheel and the other Russian sister had been married in 2011. Marquez is also reported to have been eager to enlist in the Navy, which is a prospect I don’t want to even think about.

Syed Raheel, the older brother of shooting perpetrator Syed Rizwan, is reported to be a very different sort of person than his younger brother:

One brother [Raheel] liked to party and chase girls. After high school, moved by what he saw as his patriotic duty, he enlisted in the Navy and received two medals recognizing his contributions to “the global war on terror.”

The other was deeply religious and became increasingly intolerant, ultimately nursing a growing hatred that led him, along with his wife, to open fire on a San Bernardino holiday party last week, in what law enforcement officials have termed a terrorist attack.

Syed Raheel Farook and his younger brother Syed Rizwan Farook grew up in the same house, attended the same high school two years apart and, as teenagers, often socialized in the same groups. But as they grew older their paths diverged.

Raheel seems to have always been more easygoing and outgoing, and well-assimilated. We know, of course, from Boston bomber Dzohkhar Tsarnaev that those signs don’t always mean anything at all, but in Raheel’s case they seem to have indicated he’s a relatively non-religious Muslim who probably married a non-Muslim (although even that isn’t all too clear, since we know little about these Russian sisters). According to the family’s attorney:

Attorney David Chesley told CNN on Monday that Raheel “is very upset with his brother.”

“He’s totally depressed and broken with grief.”

Whether the attorney is telling the truth or not is still another question. We simply don’t know, and that’s part of the horror of the situation. But if the description of Raheel in Haaretz is accurate, it’s exactly how I would think he’d feel.

What a tangled web of deception—and all of it undetected until too late, and much of it still unknown.

Still another reason not to let in Syrian refugees

The New Neo Posted on by

Whatever could go wrong?:

American authorities are warning the terror group’s followers may have infiltrated American borders with authentic-looking passports ISIS has printed itself with its own machines, according to an intelligence report obtained by ABC News.

The 17-page Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Intelligence Report, issued to law enforcement last week, says ISIS likely has been able to print legitimate-looking Syrian passports since taking over the city of Deir ez-Zour last summer, home to a passport office with “boxes of blank passports” and a passport printing machine. Another passport office was located in Raqqa, Syria, which has long been ISIS’s de facto capital…

Fake Syrian passports have already been discovered in Europe, most notably two used by suicide bombers in the horrific terrorist attack on Paris last month. The two men are believed to have slipped into Europe with a flood of Syrian refugees fleeing the violence in their homeland.

According to the source that provided the passport information to homeland security officials, Syria is awash in fake documents.

“The source further stated that fake Syrian passports are so prevalent in Syria that Syrians do not even view possessing them as illegal,” the report says. “The source stated fake Syrian passports can be obtained in Syria for $200 to $400 and that backdated passport stamps to be placed in the passport cost the same.”

It sounds as though these passports are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. And since we apparently can’t cross-check them against official Syrian records (whatever and wherever and however accurate they might be), it’s hard to know how these passports could be authenticated by authorities.

I repeat: whatever could go wrong?

Or rather: whatever already has gone wrong, and will go wrong in the future?

And again, there’s Amazon for the holidays

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s that time. Again.

Christmas, Chanukah, and whatever other holiday might suit your diverse fancies are all coming up sooner than you think. In fact, Chanukah is already here; we’re just about smack in the middle of it.

So I’m encouraging you to feel their hot panting breaths on your neck, and to solve all your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon.

And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money yourself. What could be more wonderful?

I thank you all in advance, and I thank all of you who’ve already done your shopping through my blog. I’ll be bumping this up and/or re-posting it every now and then until Christmas.

[NOTE: In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).]

Happy Chanukah

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of a previous post.]

Chanukah began last Sunday at sundown. But since it has eight days I still get a chance to wish you a happy one—tonight and for three more days, anyway.

The words of this Chanukah song in Yiddish—written in 1924 before the Holocaust and before the establishment of Israel—are not happy. But I didn’t know that when I first heard it, and I post it anyway because I think it’s very beautiful:

Here are the lyrics, as translated by Theodore Bikel (you can hear an excerpt of him singing it—or rather, reciting it, quite hauntingly— here):

O little lights of mystery
You recall our history
And all that went before
The battles and the bravery
And our release from slavery
Miracles galore.

As my eyes behold your flames
I recall our heroes’ names
And our ancient dream:
“Jews were learning how to fight
To defeat an awesome might
They could reign supreme”

“They would rule their own domain
When the enemy was slain,
The Temple cleansed and whole.
Once there was a Jewish land
And a mighty Jewish hand.”
Oh, how it moves my soul!

O little lights of mystery
You retell our history
Your tales are tales of pain.
My heart is filled with fears
My eyes are filled with tears
“What now?” says the haunting refrain.

Remember: written in 1924.

Bikel translated the song that way in order to make the rhymes come out. But a more literal translation of that last verse might be:

Oh little candles,
your old stories
awaken my anguish;
deep in my heart there
stirs
a tearful question:
What will be next?

Indeed.

Obama the coward? (Part II)

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Part I is here. In it, I discuss the idea that Obama’s reluctance to go after ISIS is the result of cowardice, and I suggest that it stems from a strategic and philosophical group of motivations that I then describe. Here in Part II I offer an additional ideological reason that may contribute to why Obama isn’t going after ISIS. Now, it’s possible that he’s a coward, too—but I think it’s more important to understand the ideological underpinnings of his belief system, because even if he were not a coward I do not believe he’d be fighting ISIS more vigorously.]

I wrote in Part I yesterday that Obama still thinks ISIS is the jayvee. Here’s an article by Peter Beinart indicating much the same idea [emphasis mine]:

While Obama doesn’t say it outright, he appears to be subtly referencing Robert Pape’s influential argument that the great driver of suicide terrorism is not jihadist ideology but occupation. Because Obama, unlike Bush and Rubio, believes the Islamic State is ideologically weak, he thinks America’s current strategy will eventually defeat it unless America commits a large occupying force, which would give the jihadists a massive shot in the arm.

The other unforced error America must avoid, according to Obama, is “letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want.” Because the GOP candidates see violent jihadism as a powerful, seductive ideology, they think that many American Muslims are at risk of becoming terrorists, and thus that the United States must monitor them more aggressively. Because Obama sees violent jihadism as ideologically weak and unattractive, he thinks that few American Muslims will embrace it unless the United States makes them feel like enemies in their own country””which is exactly what Donald Trump risks doing.

Curiously enough, The Atlantic—where Beinart’s article appears—had earlier published Graeme Wood’s excellent piece on just how very appealing and seductive ISIS is to Muslims. Wood’s article presents facts that contradict what Obama is apparently saying and thinking according to Beinart. The Atlantic also kindly helps us out in realizing this by placing an interview with Wood at the end of the Beinart article, although I’m not sure why they did it. Note the part that begins at 2:59, in which Wood describes just how very attractive violent jihadism is to young people in Western countries. Perhaps Obama should watch, although I strongly doubt it would do a particle of good:

When I read the Beinart piece, I was intrigued by mention of that Pape book that Beinart said was so very influential. Seeing this summary of its main thesis, it seems to me that Beinart is almost certainly correct that Obama is basing his approach to ISIS on Pape’s book (which was written, by the way, back in 2003). It seems highly plausible that Obama encountered Pape’s thesis and that it really did influence him—and in fact, I discovered that Pape had been an adviser to Obama (and Ron Paul) in 2008.

Read the review and you’ll see what I mean (I have not read the book myself; I’ve only just heard of it). The thesis of Pape’s work seems to fit in perfectly with Obama’s predilection for blaming the US and the West for all the ills of the world, and blaming colonialism or occupation in particular.

Here are a couple of quotes from the description of the book:

…Pape articulates his belief that the popular conception of a “connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America’s situation and to harm many Muslims needlessly.” Based a detailed examination of every suicide bombing and attack by non-state actors from 1980-2003, Pape identifies several underlying trends. First, that there is little or no connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. Second, that almost every attack is directed towards compelling modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that terrorists consider to be their homeland.

If the idea that Pape has influenced Obama is correct, it would seem that Obama may actually believe that that will happen if he just waits it out. It’s too good to not be true. It fits both his preference for inaction and his tendency to blame colonial westerners for the problems of third world countries, as well as reflecting his warm feelings for Islam and his disinclination to say that Islam is part of the problem. It wraps the problem of ISIS up in a nice neat ball that won’t require him to do anything that goes against the grain of his previous beliefs. In short, it’s perfect.

Here, Pape proposes a solution to the problem of terrorism, particularly suicide terrorism (which is hardly the only kind, as the Farooks demonstrated last week)):

…[W]e should affect a withdrawal from the Middle East and remove the reasons that Al-Qaeda has for attacking us. Now, in case you are worried, this is not giving in to a bunch of lunatics simply because if we do (even though historical examples prove otherwise) they might stop. Oh no, we should get out of the Middle East and resort to a policy of “off-shore balancing” where we attempt to exert influence without actual troops on the ground. Oh by the way, Pape thinks that energy independence would also be awesome. Along the way, Pape also discusses how we cannot possibly prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons so we should just try to talk them out of using them against Israel (who we should stop supporting so much because it makes Al-Qaeda really really really angry).

As I said, perfect.

[NOTE: If you’d like to see some criticism of Pape’s book, read this, this, and this.]