Dear patient readers, I need to regroup a bit after all this Greece coverage, which is likely to continue at a busy pace this week. I hope to do some catchup posts but no promises.
New Study Finds Therapy, Antidepressants Equally Effective At Monetizing Depression Onion (David L)
2015 – Breakthrough Technologies MIT Technology Review (David L)
Is Google making the web stupid? Seth Goldin (Keith M)
Google and blogs: “Shit.” Macro (Keith M). FWIW, our traffic is up from last year, before our intensive Greece coverage, and that means up before our May traffic whackage kicked in (as in not relative to what they euphemistically call on Wall Street “easy comparables”). So it must be our intensely engaged readers getting like-minded people interested.
How Hot Peppers Can Ease Pain The Scientist (Nikki). The pain killing properties were long known, the mechanism not.
Unbalanced hopes for the world economy Martin Wolf, Financial Times (David L). Important.
Bee confirms, Berlusconi denies AC Milan bid
Grexit?
Greece to request bailout extension Financial Times
Greece to try for loan extension from eurozone ethakimerini. This seems bizarre. on the one hand, Tsipras proposing a deal that calls for “no unilateral action” which basically means not implementing any new measures that would affect the primary surplus while the loan extension, as opposed to bailout extension, is in place. That means no new social programs. On the other hand, Tsipras tabled measures today that come up for a vote Friday, as in before the Eurogroup could decide, even assuming it agrees to meet, that do precisely that. Is this meant as a poke in the eye? It is a very mixed message at best. Or maybe is presupposes that the proposal won’t even lead to a meeting.
Greece to submit loan request to euro zone, Germany resists Reuters. Early AM update. Quelle surprise.
The pro-worker, pro-growth experiment in Greece is under threat Bernie Sanders, Guardian
EU Faces Greek Democracy in Great Euro Poker Game – UKIP Leader Nigel Farage YouTube (Chuck L)
Your updated Greek calendar FT Alphaville
Eurogroup meeting Overview; Presentation Greece Finance Ministry (Δημήτρης)
Greek Minister Yanis Varoufakis’s Style Irks His Eurozone Peers Wall Street Journal. Jeff W; “If they can’t criticize you on substance, they’ll criticize you on style.”
Swiss prosecutor raids HSBC premises Financial Times. This is major.
Peter Oborne resignation: Senior writer dramatically quits Telegraph over HSBC allegations Independent (Chuck L)
PETER OBORNE QUITS TELEGRAPH Guido Fawkes. Richard Smith: “Torygraph earthquake”.
Ukraine/Russia
Der Spiegel: ‘In the Crisis, Nuland Herself has Become the Problem’ Der Spiegel (YY). This is in German but worth your time to run it through a translator if you don’t read German. This is pretty brutal by Der Spiegel standards.
Ukraine crisis: US warns Russia as UN backs ceasefire deal BBC
China, Russia to mark 70th anniversary of the end of second world war in show of unity South China Morning Post
Syraqistan
What ISIS Really Wants Atlantic (furzy mouse). Get a cup of coffee. A must read.
Fathers of ISIS Ziad Majed (Selva). From last year, still germane.
U.S. to Give Some Syria Rebels Ability to Call Airstrikes Wall Street Journal. As Lambert would say, “What could go wrong?”
Israel’s Fifth Column Unz Review (Bob H)
HARPER: NETANYAHU WRECKED TWO STATE DEAL IN 2011 Sic Semper Tyrannis (Chuck L)
CIA Looking Into Weather Modification As A Form of Warfare George Washington
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Meet the serial failures in charge of protecting America’s online privacy Mark Ames, Pando
Obamacare
Elimination of ‘public option’ threw consumers to the insurance wolves Center for Public Integrity (furzy mouse). Note a big misdirection at the top, that the public option was ever a serious proposal. But the fact that an article is trying to pin the ditching of the phony public option on Lieberman looks to be a sign that the Dems are seeing Obamacare become more and more unpopular as users get more experience with IRS hassles, unexpected costs, narrow networks, and high deductibles.
Number enrolled in Obamacare nearly doubles Financial Times
Hospital Discharges Rise at Lucrative Times Wall Street Journal
US sets deadline over crisis-era charges Financial Times. T minus 90 and counting.
Wall Street Is Scared of a President Rand Paul, But the Entire GOP Field Should Frighten Them New Republic
Home Alone: N.C. State Sen. Jeff Jackson Storify (Laura C)
States consider requiring shareholder approval for political gifts Center for Public Integrity (furzy mouse)
Crude-By-Rail Shipments Through Bay Area Halted CBS San Francisco (EM)
Derailed CSX train in West Virginia hauled newer-model tank cars Reuters (EM). To get an idea what this looks like: Towns evacuated after crude oil tankers derail, explode in West Virginia YouTube (Paul Tioxon)
The Miracle of Minneapolis Atlantic (Ryan R)
Class Warfare
VW recognizes anti-UAW worker group ACE at Tennessee plant Reuters
Extinct—Extincter—Extinctest Dimitri Orlov (YY). I love his suffer no fools attitude toward climate change denialists.
Monopoly’s Inventor: The Progressive Who Didn’t Pass ‘Go’ New York Times (Chuck L)
Antidote du jour (Lambert via Twitter):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Great coverage Yves. Thank you. No one has done it better. And I imagine and hope Yanis is following along. Perhaps someday, he will take a moment out to thank you as well on behalf of Greece, for all your insights and contributions. Whether things turn out for the best or not for Greece.
Today’s ECB/ELA event looks like will not be terribly significant the way you have parsed it out in an earlier post. So, it like nothing substantive should happen til Friday re Greece, so think you will have a chance to pace yourself.
What ISIS Really Wants Atlantic (furzy mouse). Get a cup of coffee. A must read.
An excellent exposition. And consider this: the prevailing neoliberal view of the world is being rejected in favor of religious fundamentalism of the most brutal kind. Money isn’t everything. People need meaning.
“Money isn’t everything. People need meaning.” Awwwwwwww isn’t that quaint.
Quaint? Only if you think reactionary religious barbarism is cute. Because that is what neoliberalism’s insistence that money-is-everything leads to. If you really don’t understand that human being need meaning and purpose you are deluded. Or perhaps you are a neoliberal.
I think you are both right.
When one’s near starvation, the poorest of the society, money is everything in order to survive.
After that, beyond that, there has to be more.
It’s like quantum physics and relativity – it depends on where you are moving to the scale.
But it’s not quite Zen’s ‘it’s not this, it’s not that; it’s neither and it’s not both,’ All I know is it’s not black-n-white.
When one’s near starvation, the poorest of the society, money is everything in order to survive.
No money necessarily but primary physical needs. Which is why IS acts as a social services agency when it is in control, providing for free all basic needs (for believers only, of course).
After that, beyond that, there has to be more.
Exactly so. Which helps explain why Western Muslims are gravitating into fundamentalism. The philosophy of the West has no soul.
Yes and so does the Golden Dawn etc. act as a social service agency if you meet the criteria (probably not an immigrant etc.). They do cynically in my view, what the anarchists do sincerely because the anarchists actually believe in mutual aid.
Think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
We really need a “sarcasm emoticon” so that people can signal that they’re being funny, not serious. :-P
Replying with “aww quaint” is a window on your lack of perspective (and i’m putting that nicely, out of respect for YS’s site). I strongly suggest you read what George Orwell wrote in his review of Mein Kampf by that man whose name should never be mentioned in comments sections.
http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/george-orwell-reviews-mein-kampf-1940.html
The level of insight in this section for just one example…
“The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. […] Hitler … knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.”
…which came from the pen of somebody who despised everything to do with the man whose name should never be mentioned in comments sections, is a direct link to the 100% correct point made by wbgonne 75 years later. Get some learnin’, pal.
You don’t even have to invoke something like a Hitler. Marvellous things can come from a search for meaning. It’s very likely (check with the current anthropological, historic and other research, don’t just take my word for it) that the real reason the pyramids were built all had to do with a search for meaning. None of them involving war or slavery. Or vicious ethnic cleansing
The search for meaning can take different forms.
For some, it’s work and thus, we need Job Guarantee.
But it could also come through navel gazing as well, others believe.
Many wonderful diverse ways. A new world opens up when we no longer insist.
“Search for meaning”
As oldest monument of human reading the mysteries of being the zodiac
appears to me as the “architecture of meaning”.
The full circle of life with its stages of material, animous and spiritual being
gives qualities of time together with their due complementary opposite-partners, for everyone and anything to fit in.
So the sea-change with Mars and Venus (attack and resources) after completing the full circle and the passage through the final dissolution of Pisces on Thursday and the leap together into Mars’ realm Aries, has to be taken into account. Mars in Aries: the attacker in his strength …
This week in chart and reading:
http://astromundanediary.blogspot.de/2015/02/2_16.html
It’s got some good info, but I have to say, I was a little disappointed (though not at all surprised) that the Atlantic pulled the old “let’s conflate a fundamentalist, terrorist sect, with a religion,” nonsense. If they did the same thing with Christianity, they would be laughed out of the serious journalism business altogether. But hey, when it’s just a bunch of brown people who speak funny languages that you’re slandering, who cares!
I would like to offer the thought that perhaps looking to a “secular expert” to explain what Islam really is, is moronic. Yes, we’re told, the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject the theology of IS, but they are nonetheless a pure example of what Islam teaches and is all about. One could just as easily make that same claim about the Christian Dominionist movement, and claim that violent homophobia and misogyny are what Christianity is really about, since that’s how the old folks did it–only a whole bunch of Christians would throw a fit because that’s obvious nonsense.
The current members of a religion are the ones who get to decide what appropriate interpretations of their scriptures are, not secular “experts,”–and when an overwhelming majority of practicing Muslims disagree w/ the theology, philosophy and methodology of a particular group, I think it’s pretty safe to say that it’s that group that is NOT a “real” part of the religion, not the other way around.
But according to the Atlantic, IS is the epitome of Islam:
Oh, yes, why don’t we look to the guy who is not a Muslim to explain what Islam is to us. That makes perfect sense!
And then there is this unmentioned paradox. IS is a Sunni group who reject most other Muslims as apostates, which makes them self-declared apostates from the religion of those whom they reject. But if we allow the majority of followers to decide the definition of a religion, then IS is literally declaring itself outside of what the rest of the world, and most Muslims, consider to be Islam–i.e. they are declaring themselves to be non-Islamic. In exactly the same way, the majority of Christians reject the actions of the Christian Dominionist movement, considering them to be literally un-Christian. Hell, they are operating in a Majority Shi’ia area, which means that, according to IS, either they or the majority of the inhabitants are real Muslims:
So, according to Mohammed (PBUH), when the IS declares most other Muslims apostates, they are saying “either they’re not Muslims, or we’re not.” The Atlantic, apparently, sides with IS–and some doofus from Princeton. {sigh}
I was also troubled somewhat by some of the presentation. But I think the fundamental (pardon the pun) point was that IS truly is most “faithful” to the Islamic texts in the same way (as you allude) that fundamentalist Christians are the most “faithful” to Christian texts, or for that matter, the way Originalists like Scalia are most “faithful” to the Constitutional text. That is all true if one equates “faithfulness” with literalness and allows for no interpretation or practical constraints in application. I did not think the article was perfect but I think it is long past time that we actually tried to understand what these people want and why, rather than just assuming we can bomb them into oblivion.
Literalist interpretation of scripture is a Christian problem, not a Muslim one. The Sherman Jackson link I provided below explains this in detail, but, in short, even those scholars to whom the IS alludes when they claim some imagined exegetical basis for their actions do not have a strictly literalist interpretation of the Qur’an or hadith. The problem with Muslim political violence is related to the legally monist nature of the modern nation state, not to literalist interpretations of scripture.
I wanted to respond to your thoughtful comments here and below. To begin, I am not a religious scholar of any sort. As you suggested, I listened to Prof. Jackson’s talk (30 minutes but think I got the gist of it). My comments on this topic relate to the reasons why someone might choose a path of fundamentalism in the modern world, not whether such fundamentalism is the true essence of Islam (or Christianity or American Constitutional Law). Clearly, you think not and I agree.
Fundamentalism generally is a refuge for people seeking clear and simple answers. It is not, IMO, the correct manner to interpret any doctrinal text, whether religious (Qur’an, Bible) or legal (U.S. Constitution). Such general texts, again IMO, are designed for flexibility and adaptability and therefore require interpretation for proper implementation. However, all such text-based systems are susceptible to literalism. That doesn’t mean the literalism is “correct.” Indeed, it seems clear to me that this is the wrong interpretive mode for such core texts.
Further, literalism is generally false since there is always some manner of interpretation required and quite often there are conflicting passages in the texts. Moreover, one necessarily resorts to cherry-picking passages that support one’s position and ignoring those that don’t. So it is a fiction to presume literal interpretation.
But returning to the beginning: to me, the real question is why such a mode of belief is so attractive in the modern world. I suggest it is, at least in part, a result of the lack of meaning in the dominant world system.
I do want to ask you one important question: you suggest, as did Prof. Jackson, that Islam questions “the legally monist nature of the modern nation state.” Is this another way of saying that the separation of church and state is incompatible with Islam? I hope not.
In any case, thank you for the exchange. I look forward to reading your response.
The literalists…
This contracts with Chan’s ‘transmission outside the scriptures and no dependence upon words and letters.’
Hint: When responding to the master’s koan, the vitality, energy and decisiveness of your answer impress more than the words you mumble.
i think another part of the problem, and part of the appeal of isis in places like the levant and elsewhere in the middle east is that those countries haven’t been allowed to join the modern world. the frustration that that leaves people with is then channelled into extremism. a similar thing is happening at a secular level in europe with the rise of far right parties in europe.
Locked out of edit, but the first paragraph was intended to be a quote of wbgonne above.
“is long past time that we actually tried to understand what these people want and why, rather than just assuming we can bomb them into oblivion.”
If we look at their actions, they seem to want to be “in charge”, and they seem to believe that they really are “in charge” and that gives them the right to do as they please.
We have some US politicians (and a few Supreme Court Justices) who seem to believe the same, and they do incredible damage to innocent people. But neither their actions nor the damage to their victims gets any real coverage in the MSM.
You can put whatever effort you want into understanding what Jeffrey Dahmer really wanted. It will probably turn out that what he wanted was to be loved and respected.
Understanding what some people want is dangerous to your mental health.
You can put whatever effort you want into understanding what Jeffrey Dahmer really wanted. It will probably turn out that what he wanted was to be loved and respected.
And if we as a society put no effort into determining why anomie grows we ensure that it will. Jeffrey Dahmer is not a good example since he was clearly horribly mentally ill. But there are lots of petty criminals and now many religious fundamentalists doing serious harm. We ignore their reasons for acting at our own peril. In fact, I’d suggest that such an approach is our own version of being “in charge.”
there are always people who want to be in charge. the question is, what makes people turn to them for answers?
Worse, what makes people harm themselves and others to elevate those who like to be in charge, and worse, rationalize it with vapid, smarmy, *false* sales pitches?
Sun Tzu said: Know thy enemy and know thyself and in one hundred battles, you will not be imperilled.
And…
When deciding which target to attack, the first choice should be to attack his(the enemy) strategy.
I enjoyed the depth of this article. The veracity of his evidence would still need to be verified, but this article yields plenty of key insights into the mindset of Isis and its followers. This leads to crafting solutions that may be much more effective at defeating Isis without the need to resort to continuous war and the suffering and death of many people, although in the near term this is inevitable. Coordinating moderate Muslims to use the Koran to discredit its ideology, plus exposing any hypocrisy among its leadership, and as the war nerd points out, isolate ISIS into the Sunni areas, and in time the various factions and tribes, frustrated amongst themselves, might most effectively discredit and disempower the ISIS ideology.
Yes, and the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights, by that formulation, were the purist form of Christian imaginable–willing to surrender all to spread the Gospel and smite the heathen. Ditto the Conquistadores (think Pizarro strangling that nasty pagan Atahualpa for Christ and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles).
Western “experts” and Moslem fanatics have one powerful thing in common–a desperate desire to portray Islam as an essential and unchanging (reified, to use the old-fashioned term) “thing”, with no history or possibility of change or adaptation. This is of course ahistorical claptrap, but it serves their interests nicely and in a global culture of historical amnesia, they can get away with it.
Nicely put.
Will no one just read the Koran? Then come back and we’ll talk.
It’s a wonderful relic of 7th century Arabian religious and political ferment. But it’s not sufficient to read the Koran. One must take in the sayings and deeds of the prophet as well as regional tribal customs. Some muslims are appalled at female genital mutilation while others consider it the sine qua non of islamic femininity. Defending muslim believers (or simple inhabitants of regions and countries where Islam is a dominant cultural force) is all well and good -indeed necessary- but everybody discussing this stuff would do well to remember all these ‘abrahamic’ religions are a mishmash of philosophical and metaphysical concepts. Unless you really believe in Moses and looking at the other comments on this blog, I kind of doubt it.
It is impossible to take into account the deeds of Mohammed because hundreds of thousands of false and questionable hadith sprung up after his death. As always in religion, others immediately began twisting and rending to suit their own agendas.
Wood himself claims to rely on the Qur’an to make his case while getting quotation after quotation wrong, assuming he made mistakes rather than outright fabrications.
Religiosity, rather than spirituality, pervades in many spheres of our lives, especially when we look to without what we possess within.
We may prostrate in awe before a creator or an omnipotent institution.
“It is impossible to take into account the deeds of Mohammed because hundreds of thousands of false and questionable hadith sprung up after his death. As always in religion, others immediately began twisting and rending to suit their own agendas.”
The entire science of hadith criticism exists in order to deal with this problem. There is a reason hadith are rated in terms of the soundness of the chain of transmission, the reliability of the reporters, the soundness of the content, etc.
diptherio writes: “Oh, yes, why don’t we look to the guy who is not a Muslim to explain what Islam is to us.”
Well, why on earth would one need to be a Muslim to explain what Islam is? Would one also need to be a Nazi to explain what the Nazis were up to, or a communist to explain what communism is? Moreover, your requirement would also make comparative studies of religion impossible, or at any rate rather difficult, since it would require one to believe in all the religions one happens to be studying.
This relates to a more general question – do we need to be a Martian to represent Martians in a democracy?
Do we need to be a bankster in order to be able to say something about banksters in general?
Carpocratians, a Christian sect, taught all must experience every way of life, good and bad, in order to, I guess, pass judgment.
Screw the Martians. The mainstream media is just too PC to report it, but those aliens are abducting real Americans all the time. (And don’t you tell me it is just a few deviant Martians: they’re all like that.) I know because some guy on talk-radio told me so.
Anyway, nice talking to you, but I have to go take my meds.
It’s true you don’t have to be a Martian to be green (hello, environmentalists), but still, Martians are people too.
Diptherio, I skimmed the piece. I did NOT read Juan Coles’s alternate piece. I wonder what can be said. ISIS is, by self-definition, Islamic … Deeply Fundamentalist Islamic. It is their claim to greatness and justification. The notion of the lost greatness of the Caliphate is deeply attractive to the disaffected who find the values of the Atlantacist West discomfiting. The ISIS organizers have done a great job.
The US fueled the Jihidi Islamists with money and reputability in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) and continue to use them as proxies, apparently working in close partnership with the Saudis and others. They are useful. They turn on you and become dangerous. Mercenaries are untrustworthy.
For me, the irony of deeply faithful fundamentalists with their Literalist Interpretations of Sacred Texts acting out “Renaissence Faire” activities held to be authentic with smartphones in their pockets, rocket launchers over their shoulders, and radio walkie-talkies on their belts is enormous.
Meaning? What people seem to like is having someone else decide when to pray, what to wear, who to marry, and who to kill. Life is easier when it’s less uncertain and you don’t have to make so many decisions on your own, with plenty of absolute rules to follow. Thinking for yourself is painful.
Life is easier when it’s less uncertain and you don’t have to make so many decisions on your own, with plenty of absolute rules to follow. Thinking for yourself is painful.
That is my point. A desperate search for meaning often leads to religious fundamentalism.
Exactly. Because a desperate search for meaning is an appeal to authority, in more than one sense. For that matter, isn’t every teleology an appeal to tradition?
My point is about the conflation of those people you pillory (rightly) with the religion of Islam…you seem to have missed it.
Apologies, missed that you were replying to Jef. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This: \_(“/)_/ is very clever.
Wall Street Is Scared of a President Rand Paul, But the Entire GOP Field Should Frighten Them
Nonsense. Does Jeb Bush, the likely GOP candidate, scare Wall Street? Scott Walker, the second most likely, is scarfing up Wall Street money right now and is backed by the Koch Brothers. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is Wall Street’s princess. I don’t think Wall Street is very nervous.
It just shows you how spoiled Wall St. has become. Even those people in our political landscape most willing to oppose Wall St. interests are quite moderate. They are only asking for a return to something closer to the balance between labor and capital that existed under the Republican Eisenhower administration!
It just shows you how spoiled Wall St. has become.
Right. They even turned on Obama (sort of) in favor of Romney. I can just imagine Obama thinking: “After all I’ve done for you guys!” But Obama, of course, was just the fail-safe in 2008 to satisfy the Hope&Change clamor.
And returning to this year’s models. Is Wall Street afraid of Chris Christie (though it looks like he’ll never lumber out of the starting gate)? Not hardly. And as for that frat-boy philosopher, Rand Paul, he’d likely jettison his lite-libertarianism in a second if he smells the White House. On this one, however, I do see some cause for Wall Street worry. Which is enough to absolutely guarantee that Paul stays right in Kentucky with the coal-miners and tobacco farmers.
I daresay that Rand Paul wants a closer balance between labor and capital.
He could care less about minimum wage(actually thinks increases lead to higher unemployment.) He wants to undermine their social safety net(social security) He submitted a bill to make the country “right to work.”
So if Wall Street is afraid of him it’s not for his labor viewpoint.
I didn’t have Rand Paul in mind, that’s for sure! I was thinking more of people like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.
i really appreciate the coverage of greece on nc, it’s the best i’ve seen.
Thank you!
I follow (too) many people on Twitter, so I would guess I see less than 1% of the posts on my timeline.† However, in this small sample, I have started to regularly see links to Naked Capitalism posts. Yesterday, I saw these articles linked to, by different people:
• The Boston Globe Covers Up for Wall Street, Ignores Swaps Losses in Coverage of MBTA Turmoil
• Michael Hudson: Has the IMF Annexed Ukraine?
I think Mark Ames and Yasha Levine are two of the people who have introduced Naked Capitalism to a new audience, if only through the occasional link on Twitter. Once politically-engaged people‡ find an interesting article or two, I imagine they start to regularly check the site for more articles that overlap their political or economic interests.
† My timeline is like browsing the bulletin board and flyers in the entryway of a radical bookstore, which I used to do when there were several around town.
‡ Many people follow politics, on sites like reddit or Hacker News, but from the stats I have seen these people tend to click-through and then never return to a site. There is a smaller set of politically-engaged people who use links to find interesting sites or authors, to follow on a regular basis.
Reuters:
One can imagine two possible non-Grexit outcomes. First, if the existing bailout agreement can be fudged enough to give Greece some relief, while allowing Germany et al to claim that it’s being fulfilled; second, if a new bailout agreement is agreed.
What’s not on is suspending the bailout terms but continuing the lending. It’s like asking your bank to burn the ‘usurious’ note of your home equity loan, but to keep the credit line open. Lending is simply not done without terms.
Maybe that’s not what Tsipras and Varoufakis meant. One hopes not, because it’s an obvious non-starter doomed to fail.
But they keep saying they DO want credit without terms:
Setting aside the motivations and intent of the Eurogroup, accountability to their own electorates means they cannot lend on ‘conditions to be negotiated later.’
One hopes the Greek government is quietly printing up drachmas, because the current negotiating ploy is so otherworldly that it’s dead in the water.
Perhaps, in a pinch, the 101 Helicopter-Money-Drop Division can supply the needed global reserve currency.
“It’s the most dangerous mission you will ever face, boys. But you are saving the world.”
They want to negotiate the “conditionality” meaning the austerity part (the structural reforms) and not the financial terms. They separately agree to keep the primary surplus in place. What they want is latitude in terms of what they do to meet that, and to be freed of the insane requirement to increase it. Greece is already running the highest primary surplus in the Eurozone.
It’s a bit like asking your bank to keep the note (the ‘financial terms’) and burn the mortgage (the ‘conditionality’). The two are legally linked, so no lender would consent.
Where is Greece getting its legal advice? Unless this is an elaborate ruse to buy time for a currency conversion, it makes little sense. Not sure about the EU, but the IMF cannot waive conditionality. One might as well petition for an exemption from gravity.
Not burn, modify. And you know this.
Must be an international law involved here. Once Greece looked at the budget and decided it had to default, it then had to inform its creditors and work in good faith to remedy the situation. So that’s done. Now it can default according to schedule.
Events on the Ukrainian front are developing not necessarily to our advantage:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/18/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSKBN0LM0O620150218
What will the US (whose leadership appears as psychotic to outsiders as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un) do? Escalate the war by sending arms?
Ukraine has no prospect for economic recovery if the conflict expands, since waging war requires massive fiscal deficits. With a decision on the next IMF tranche due as soon as this weekend, it’s showtime.
It’s against the IMF’s charter to loan money to a country at war. What war, I don’t see a war, do you see a war?
That’s just a messy cease fire we’re watching as the New Russians march on Maruipol to finish the job of linking Eastern Ukraine with Crimea. Depending on the what right-wing militias Kiev can muster to slow the down the separatists, it might take as little as two weeks or a month at most.
The fallout between Europe and the U.S. over Ukraine is so bad, the Germans are considering sanctioning Ukraine oligarchs. Anybody up to sanctioning U.S. oligarchs, anybody?
There’s quite a bit of distance between Mariupol and Crimea, and trying for a land bridge would be a big mistake. For one, it is simply not necessary. Yes, it would be nice to have an alternative supply route to Crimea other than ferries, plus a bit of a buffer, but It is not like Kiev will ever be in a position to attack what is a large natural fortress. Second, time works against the junta, and so does the IMF.and Minsk 2.0. Zaporozhie, Kherson, Nikolaev, Odessa oblasts — all of those are not exactly loyal to Kiev, but not exactly willing to plunge into war either. In the inevitable weakening of Kiev by its implementation of IMF mandates though, and especially if it is forced to give Donetsk and Lugansk autonomy, they will follow Novorussia on their own, with a lot less bloodshed. Time and the circumstances are not Kiev’s friend, and there is simply no need to go past Mariupol, expending blood and stretching supply lines. I suspect the important decision makers in Novorussia and Moscow know this as well, and far better than I do.
Minsk 2, from what I read, did not mention Debaltseve. Since the NAF had the area surrounded, DPR leader Zakharchenko announced that Ukraine had abandoned its own troops. The DPR would send them home, to return alive and unharmed to their families, if they surrendered and turned over their weapons and military equipment.
Instead, the Ukrainian troops decided to fight their way out. Fascist battalions have also indicated that they will kill anyone in the regular army who tries to surrender.
The Saker said the “rebels” captured about 50% of Kiev’s army and this could trigger the neo-Nazi hardliners to demand more aggressive action and maybe dump the current Ukrainian President, with reports that his family has been moved to a safe location outside of Ukraine, in U.S. or Europe.
Don’t know if this is all true or not but interesting.
Is this their ‘Volgagrad?’
Beware of Valkyrie?
FYI: other than in WVa, there were two other derailments, fires involving oil frieght over the past week:
Oil Train Derails, Catches Fire In Canada – A train carrying crude oil derailed in northern Ontario, Canada late Saturday night, spilling oil and causing a fire. Twenty-nine of the 100 cars on the train went off the track near Timmins, Ontario, and seven of those cars were still on fire as of Sunday afternoon.
Fiery derailment near Dubuque involved outdated tank cars — A train derailment Wednesday near Dubuque that caused three tank cars to erupt in flames and three others to plunge into the icy Mississippi River involved outdated cars prone to punctures and spills. The Canadian Pacific freight train headed southeast derailed around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday in a remote area north of Dubuque. Eleven cars left the track, with 10 of those carrying ethanol, officials reported. Three of those cars caught fire and three slipped into the river.
It would be great if somebody could think up a way to move large quantities of oil without hauling it around the way John D. Rockefeller did, in rail cars. That approach is so 19th Century.
Oh, wait…
The silence from both the MSM and our politicians regarding these serial train derailments is interesting. It seems like there is nearly one a week but nobody is interested in connecting the dots? Why are so many trains going off the tracks? Decayed infrastructure? Lousy engineers? ??? I have no idea, but it’s interesting that there is so little concern.
Another opportunity lost (to make our security state ‘safer’) – bad guys.
The fact that they are not talking up this possibility – not connecting this particular dot, is, um, disconcerting.
It’s not polite to point out the stagehands during the play.
I fear this will increase the howling for that “safe” pipeline.
The MSM is like an elementary school teacher trying to teach illogic, throwing out nonsense and pausing expectantly for students to draw the “proper” conclusion from the “evidence” “presented”. For some reason I am amazed.
The German character will save the world but is it a world worth living in?
Kokuani,
I expect you’re right. There is the argument that pipelines are safer for transporting oil than trains are, to start from.
Here’s something about that pipeline, Keystone XL, that we hear so much about. It’s intended to transport, mostly, bitumen from the oil sands in Canada. Now, bitumen can’t flow through a pipeline–it’s much too viscous. It has to be diluted with less-viscous petroleum, such as condensate and other light oils that come from (wait for it) the shales! In North Dakota! And Texas! Canada, you see, gets the needed light oils, used to dilute its bitumen so it can flow through pipelines, from us. That’s US. We export 52 million barrels of mostly light oil a year, as of last November, and more than 90% of it goes to Canada.
We keep hearing about “stop KXL and you’ll slow down the development of Canada’s oil sands, to the good of us all and of the environment.” If you’re pushing to slow the oil sands’ development, folks, then push for stopping the export of light oils to Canada. That’ll do it. Stopping the northern leg of KXL won’t. (The southern leg has been operational since January 2014.)
Otherwise, well, last year Canada exported more crude oil to the US than she had the year before, and that was the story the year before that, and the year before that, and…
Otherwise, the bitumen will flow, even with prices so very low, until prices go back up. It won’t be easy, of course, but there are so many billions invested that stopping is unlikely.
There seems to be a good chance that Canada’s dependence on US light oil will decrease after development of two plays in western Alberta and adjacent British Columbia: the Montney and the Duvernay. A great deal of work has already been done with lots of exploration and drilling (E and P, for Production); the rates of E and P are dropping rapidly, of course, just as in every other aspect of the whole oil industry, but they’ll go back up when prices rise. As somebody put it: The oil industry has been through this before. They know what to do, and they’re doing it.
what if the entire world goes bankrupt? it’s borrowed more money than it can ever pay back.
but who did it borrow from? the future? itself? each other? how could the future have lent it money when the future hasn’t happened yet? oh man
if the entire world is bankrupt, who’ll forgive the debt? there’s nobody there to forgive the debt. Maybe Gawd will forgive it. Maybe the Nordics can lend it some money. Maybe even the Greys. You can read about this in esoteric texts. It’s possible, if not plausible.
All you need is a little loan to tide you over. Until you can get the 10-bagger. That’ll solve every problem and you can relax for a change. No more working like a dog. Even dogs don’t work though. Why do they say working like a dog. Dog’s lay around and eat and chase balls in the park. If you’re broke it’s worse than a dog for you. I’m not kidding. Can you imagine? The whole world worse off than a dog in a park? All because there’s nobody to forgive it’s debts.
‘Maybe the Nordics can lend it some money. Maybe even the Greys.’
What if the Nordics are the Greys? Has it occurred to you that Wolfgang Schaeuble may be the Greys’ chief emissary to Earth? And that you are not in compliance?
If we could only find out what planet C. M. Coolidge was portraying in his dogs playing poker series, we could go there and enjoy the dog’s life.
Well, we borrowed the money from ourselves, so we owe the money to ourselves,,,,and the only way we can go bankrupt is if we all quit work and couldn’t pay ourselves back. Which is why we work and our pets have a good time. Don’t let anyone BS you about that.
That reminds me. I saw someone walking their happy pet pig in the park the other day. Didn’t look like the typical fairgrounds type pig at all. He had black hair, stood about 3ft tall and wasn’t fat. Had a long tail that he waged just like a dog. He was wagging his tail, snuffling around with his big, flat nose and came up to me and stuck his nose against my leg and made a big snuffle. His owner advised that he just gave me a kiss! Then he would wiggle, wag his tail, and snuffle some more. Happiest pig I ever did see.
But alien technology could certainly help matters. The Borg use high speed quantum computers to support the money demand of all Borg resident consumers. Maybe they will assimilate us?? We should have a plan B in case the NeoLibs decide to cut the cord and make their own country somewhere. (Buy Switzerland maybe.)
It may be theoretically possible to borrow money from the future and — since you repay a loan in the future not the present — by the time the future arrives you can arrange things so other people have to pay it back for you. You can do that by spending all the money before the future arrives then getting a bailout from somebody, maybe the Fed even or maybe the Troika.
This is what Mr. Schauble thinks the Greeks did! He thinks they borrowed money from their future, with Germany only as a middleman, and then spent it. The future is now, and they don’t have the money any more. Where did it go? Oh man. That’s complicated. It may have gone back to Germany, it may have gone back to the same banks that helped loan it from the future. So if you look at it mathematically, it never even went anywhere. it started in the future and now it’s back where it was when it started. That’s like t – t = 0..
When people in the future lend you money AND pay it back for you, you know things are complicated.
That might be efficiency or it might be politics or it might be economics. But it’s complicated.
I hear ya. But the Borg fixed all that. They have a debt-money implant on a Wi-Fi connection to a high speed quantum computer. This satisfies all their needs to hear about money. Then they go about following all the other commands coming in on the other implants. If the Supreme Commander says it’s time to consume a BMW, then they consume a BMW. There is only the “now”. The future has been discarded as the useless mental construct that it is.
Tomorrow, my love
Why you call yourself Today
every time we meet?
– a haiku about my unrequited search for the real Tomorrow
Ha! Typed wrong handle by mistake but right email and the post took. That was a craazyboy comment. I’m the Borg expert, not craazyman.
If I borrow your chicken and you borrow my pig, and you eat yours and I eat mine, so that we can’t return what we have borrowed, we have to both declare bankruptcy.
Regarding the style vs. substance link, Norbert Elias comes to mind. It’s interesting the way that style, which is often thought of as social embellishment without serious consequence, in this context takes on the quality of taboo violations requiring punishment. It’s as though courtly manners and routines of the 16th century, which seem in important respects to have represented a massive containment, perhaps a sublimation, of all the raw potential for violence in the feudal order, continue on in pretty much the same form because bourgeois society holds the same potentials. Maybe Veblen is relevant, too, in that we’re once more confronted with the bourgeoisie showing a cultural face that is intended to evoke feudal terrors, Varoufakis as the interloping peasant in the hall of the nobility.
Except Varoufakis isn’t a peasant. He’s part of the nobility.
Is he Robin Hood or Barack Obama? I guess we’ll soon find out.
Just because he’s educated doesn’t make him nobility. You have to have a lot of money to be in that club.
His father is/was chairman of Greece’s largest steel producer (via Wiki).
I don’t know how much money he has, but his family knows the “courtly manners and routines” of 21st century Europe. He’s part of the club, despite his attire.
I don’t trust anything in the WSJ enough to bother getting past the pay wall, so I have my doubts about how much truth there is to this, and if it isn’t meant to stir things up and at the same time avoid the real issues — the ones NC (and Swedish Lex) are dealing with.
Five days ago IKATHIMERINI quoted Schäuble as saying: “He (Varoufakis) is a famous (celebrated) economist with extensive experience in the issues of the Euro-crisis and I don’t care (..δεν με νοιάζει αν..” — “…it doesn’t matter to me..”) if he wears his shirt outside or inside his pants or if he wears a tie or not.”
Did that show up in the WSJ article?
That’s dramatic, in a way, kind of like F.D.R. going after his own class, or Nixon going to China, or the One going over to the Republican side.
Yes, it’s bizarre how much of elite speech and presentation today is incantatory and talismanic. Obama, Bush, it doesn’t make any difference–the endless use of the same formulations, the ritual denunciation of some Other, the mindlessness and the lack of concrete connection to reality, are all indications of an elite caught in hallucinogenic groupthink. More and more the elite seem to talk and think like Chauncey Gardener.To address such people with what the British used to call the cold douche of reality is considered to be in the most obnoxious bad taste. It instantly identifies the speaker as a dangerous outsider. It would be like going to a NATO summit and mentioning the fact that Russia has national interests: why would anyone say such a thing, and what could it mean anyway? Interests? We’ll tell the Russians what’s in their best interests when we are good and ready to issue their marching orders–anything else is just defiance, intransigence, ingratitude, and cover for some nefarious plot to rule the world.
Global elites all seem to operate from the same (very blinkered and limited) mental playbook. They are amazingly self-serving while being so spectacularly un-self-reflective as to imagine themselves humanitarians and statesmen. Varoufakis is an unwelcome emissary from a world outside this bubble. I’m sure they view him deep-down as a kind of barbarian, fool, and/or enemy.
It also extends to wanna be elites, like political operative in the US. The Democrats and their Vichy Left hangers-on are big about having “conversations” and “narratives” which mean presenting things in a soothing and mildly dumbed-down manner (think NPR). If you are pointed or merely clinical, you are treated as a lout.
they probably think they’re trying to save him from himself.
That’s why, if he wore a Saville Row suit like Andrew Haldane (unless Dr. Haldane just looks buff in a Joseph A Bank slim fit for $199 and he does look sort of limber like a tennis player, sort of like Novak Djokovic with that slender physique (I’m not gay now Dr. Haldane, so don’t worry I’m not checking you out or anything, I’m just “observant” about the natural world, but very heterosexual in my orientation), that would be a good Joseph A. Bank commercial, since you kind of wonder whether it’s just you that looks a bit dumpy in a Joseph A Bank suit or whether it’s the tailoring, I have a couple Signature Gold suits and they’re not bad, but they’re too boxy and big in the cut, I really should have bought a slim fit suit, even for $199, with good tailoring, I doubt a lot of people would even know. It may not be exactly Saville Row, but from a few feet away when the bailout negotiations are tense, it’s not that relevant. Also, I noticed Mr. Tsipras has a boxy suit that looks a bit big on him. It may not be his top priority right now, but some careful tailoring and/or a trip to either Saville Row or Joseph A. Bank might be in order), and some Edward Green shoes, and tucked in his shirt, he (back to Dr. V here) might have a deal by now. Even Allen Edmonds shoes. They’re quite good actually and they take care to fit you right. Nothing like dropping $1500 on shoes and have them fit awkwardly. I have 2 pairs of fairly pricey shoes and in both cases, I wasn’t careful buying them. But Allen Edmonds, at least in New Yawk, they’ll take care of you and fit you right and the shoes look pretty good. They’re not quite Edward Green style, to be sure, but for office work or for negotiating bailouts, they’re fine.
You don’t have to convince us here, but you will have to convince the Elle Woods School of Law and Fashion alums.
only straight guys look as fashion futile as I do on an average day. Even on a good day, with my smartest outfit, I couldn’t pass for a gay guy!.My haircut alone would give me away.
that’s why you can tell Professor V and Prime Minister T are both straight guys. You can just look at them and tell. As far as the other negotiators, I don”t know. I havent rellie paid any mind.
But, but, when one is negotiating, every day is exceptional!
(BTW, if one is cruising for glory hole action, one need look no farther than the Eurocrat team. They are quite open about their desire to bugger everyone in sight.)
I agree — hair is always a dead giveaway for American males who are not John Edwards. It’s a bit trickier with continental Europeans though, they can be flamboyant as hell or fashionably dressed and coiffed yet be as straight and as prude as a Calvinist.
Het cis males can usually manage to pull some sort of coherent look together unconsciously, but if you’re seeking a bisexual male, and you’re not in a Walmart or laundromat, watch for the nonchalantly iconoclastic.
I wonder if bourgeois subconscious is why we call ourselves the 99%, instead of proletarians.
Good point. The statement “We are all middle class” is normative, not expositional.
Beautiful insight.
Yes!
Unduly harsh on on Moyers and de Vega in my opinion, but Dolan’s take on IS as a Muslim KKK stands up in a lot of ways:
http://pando.com/2015/02/12/the-war-nerd-islamic-state-and-american-narcissism/
yves & lambert,
i don’t know how you guys do it when i can’t even keep up with the content. great work, but don’t burn out!
The CIA is right about weather warfare…except the culprits are sitting in plain view…the fossil fuel companies are the ones who have declared war on the whole planet for the personal gain of a few owners.
it’s not just the fossil fuel companies that are the culprits but all resource extractors in general. the single most effective way to combat climate change would be a massive replanting of trees on a giant scale, though even that wouldn’t help much against enormous amounts of methane.
Why not just give potable water modification a chance?
It’s cheaper and more surgical, but perhaps less neoliberal.
Besides, this government agency has too much money to worry about budget constraints.
I thought the usual NC comment of “what could go wrong” would have been very apt!
Unrelated: great work on Greece, thanks.
What isis really wants… The nations of Iraq and Syria are destroyed. The complete collapse of infrastructure leading people to live in stone-age conditions. And lo and behold – they start behaving like stone age jerks. So, Saddam was evil, was he? And now Isis is even more evil? I would rather know what Amerika wants. They have Iraq, and Syria is a mess, what else is there? Put all locals in camps? Demonizing the opponents is starting to taste sooo stale. I mean, the entire world outside US seems to be run by lunatics and drooling idiots if one takes media seriously. Gaddafi was such a monster, and what is Libya now? And Al-Assad. And Putin. Is it all just to feed the military industry?
Some essential reading on Libya in Foreign Policy:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143044/alan-j-kuperman/obamas-libya-debacle
The section “The Road Not Taken” is most damning and shows devastating policy ignorance in Mme. Clinton’s State Dept.
This is Sarkozy’s mess too, imho.
The ClubOrlov post criticizes the foray into Ukraine as a result of the Brzezinski ‘grand chessboard’ doctrine. I’ve a logistic critique of that doctrine to present, if you’ll bear with me.
Humans can handle about 5 g’s, and a planet that is only twice as large as Earth puts more than 5 g’s of force on the body. This means that the maximum distance that humans can cross on a planet surface, to go from one side to the other, is no more than twice that of the Earth.
The Steppe is about 5000 km wide, about ¼ the distance from one side of the planet to the other. This is thus about 1/8 of the maximum distance that humans can expect to traverse in any military conflict in the universe.
The logistics issue is about energy. (Using back-of-the-envelope calculations to make the point.) Greek and Roman soldiers could not carry more than about 5 days worth of food and water. Alexander’s army moved about 13 miles a day, which meant that if they were to travel 100 miles over hostile terrain, they would have to march 2 days, dump 1 days worth of supplies, and then march 2 days back to do it again, 4 more times. In this manner it would take a month to travel a weeks worth of distance. While mules, oxen, trucks and cargo planes all serve to decrease these times, they all require more power to implement. The relationship is non-linear.
Brzezinski fails to grasp this. He looks at the maps and measures the distances and seems to think a victory is doable, against a foe that has already laid down storage depots and mapped defensive positions. Russia cannot be defeated, since they go to ground and wait for winter to kill you. A rock for the best military minds in history to dash their brains out on (see also Afghanistan).
I see nothing wrong with your point that logistics severely impedes attempts at conquest. I’m a little perplexed by this statement, though:
Assuming that the bigger planet has the same density as the Earth, if its radius is double the Earth’s radius, its volume and mass will be 8 times the volume and mass of the Earth. A person on the surface of the other planet will be twice as far from the center of mass as a person on the Earth. Since gravitation between objects has an inverse square relationship, if one is twice as far from an object, the force of gravity won’t be half, it will be a quarter. 1/4 of 8 is 2. Doesn’t this mean that the person on the surface of the other planet will experience 2 g’s? Have I misunderstood something?
mumble… flaw in the model…
The offending paragraph is not logically needed for the rest of the (logistic) argument.
My God, you people are intelligent. I feel more savvy just having read your comments! (Not sarc:-)
Russia has been defeated when its government collapsed and that is probably what some people are trying for.
Putin is not Nicholas II and we are not Germany with a multi-million man army right on its border the way it was in 1914, and it still took three years and greater losses than any American government (or army) could tolerate (plus Lenin) to push Russia out of the war. Hoping for a replay of Brest-Litovsk goes beyond hair-brained into the realm of insanity. British Royal Marines have about as much chance of landing in Maryland, defeating the US army at Bladensburg, and burning down the White House again as we have to defeating Russia and turning it into a vassal state.
Even if somehow Russia is defeated, how does the victor occupy it, judging by the human cost of the most recent two Afghan occupations or the one in Iraq?
One only has to provide security for the oilfields.
Re: What ISIS Really Wants
I’ve been in the comments more often over the last six months than at any time over the last 8 years of my readership here because of this kind of article. I am Muslim. My life is made substantially more difficult by the falsehoods people believe with respect to my way of life. My non-Muslim family members read this kind of thing and it has a real impact on my day to day life when they believe my religious commitments may include the violent overthrow of Western governments and the death of non-Muslims. Beyond that, the probability that Islam becomes the target of a new, violent, state organised and liberal-media-approved anti-semitism during the ongoing crisis in a similar way to the way Judaism did in the 30s is becoming non-neglibigle.
So, please understand that when I make the following request, I am doing so for those reasons: please, please run this stuff by someone who has studied Islam academically (Muslim or no) outside of, say, Samuel Huntington’s crude imitations of the great early orientalist scholars before you recommend it to a broader readership.
This is a long article, but it can be trivially debunked by looking at a short quote:
“But Adnani was not merely talking trash. His speech was laced with theological and legal discussion, and his exhortation to attack crops directly echoed orders from Muhammad to leave well water and crops alone—unless the armies of Islam were in a defensive position, in which case Muslims in the lands of kuffar, or infidels, should be unmerciful, and poison away.
The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”
There are four schools of law in Sunni Islam that are considered equally orthodox. If we take an ecumenical perspective, we could include the Jafari Shi’a and the Zaydis here (Zaydi jurisprudence is mostly Sunni but accepts some Shi’a principles). The minimum standard of evidence required to make the claim that a legal position is justified by a “coherent and learned” interpretation of Islam would be to point to a school and give an example of a scholar who supported that opinion. Ideally, the extent to which that was a marginal or consensus opinion should be noted, but minimally you need to be able to say which “coherent and learned” interpetation you’re referring to.
No such interpretation is referenced because none exists. In point of fact, the kharijite (the correct legal term here, not takfiri) movements have a great deal of recruiting difficulty relative to other movements (cf. the Tablighis, Deobandis, etc) precisely because they lack any traditional interpretative legitimation. Why do you think their recruits hail primarily from disaffected Western populations with no access to traditional education, and Maghrebis with a long history of anti-colonial and anti-Western violence (owing as much to Fanon and France as to Islam)? Because it’s self-evident to anyone who has spent more than a few months studying the tradition seriously that the kharijites are, in fact, outside the bounds of anything reasonably describable as a “coherent and learned” interpretation of Islam.
The fact that the author is, with a straight face, able to claim that there is any orthodox legal position which holds that Muslims should be unmerciful to anyone at all, is risible. In the Qur’an, God self-describes most frequently as Ar-Rahman, the merciful, and no Islamic legal fatwa would ever refer to its formulator’s opinion as leading to an unmerciful outcome, for that is prima facie evidence that the opinion is not justified! Is the author even aware that all 4 Sunni schools hold that to wage the lesser jihad (that is, armed struggle in the way of God, the jihad al-akbar being the struggle against the nafs, the self) requires the prospective fighter to obtain the permission of his local government and his parents? How orthodox are ISIS’ fighters in respect to the fiqh, the jurisprudence, of jihad, then?
Folks, we live in dangerous times, and for people who happen to be committed to particular monist Abrahamic traditions, potentially lethal ones. Part of the necessary process of freeing yourself of the agendas of the racial/religious/national essentialists and the corporate liberals who peddle this kind of stuff is in listening to Muslim and non-Muslim scholars talk about Islam and engaging seriously with the debate around modern Muslim political violence. Particularly relevant here:
Sherman Jackson on Jihad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crM6L1S00P4
Abdal Hakim Murad on suicidal terrorism and modernity
http://masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/moonlight.htm
Sincere thanks to anyone who read all that, and even deeper thanks from the bottom of my heart for anyone who takes the time to look at those links.
I will most definitely be checking out those links, and thank you so much for taking the time to write that. I attempted my own take-down of the article (above). Anti-Muslim bias is today’s form of acceptable racism, unfortunately, at least in the US and, it would appear, large segments of Europe. Sorry that you have to deal with people’s ignorance…I’m doing what I can to talk some sense into them :-/
Thanks for the kind words, and jazakh Allah khayran for attempting to correct misperceptions. As always, the best armament in these cases is knowledge, so inshallah the links will be of some use. They are quite long, but someone who looks at and understands the material in both will be, in my opinion, fully equipped to understand the significant features of modern Muslim political violence.
All I can say is, it must be tiring to be Muslim, and so frequently put on the defensive. What changed some of my perceptions of Islam was Edward Said’s book on Orientalism, which essentially deconstructs how to see the Other. It’s harder for me to take othering for granted anymore, since it is literally everywhere in the media and culture. Muslims are just trying to survive within it.
We say that when God loves you, God tests you ;) The slaps of the beloved are, perhaps, better and longer lasting reminders of love than kisses..
Anyway, you’re right that our communities are constantly in a defensive crouch right now. The metabolism of our tradition chugs along on century timelines, so, it’s gonna take a while before we come to terms, as a community, with all that’s passed in the past one.
What about Salafism? Is it one of the 4 accepted schools? Graeme Wood says the caliph is a salafist.
The salaf are the companions of the Prophet (those who were alive during his mission) and the following two generations, roughly meaning something like “the pious ancestors”. Someone who self-describes as a “salafi” is somewho who by definition rejects the extant traditional schools of law in favour of some exogenous, novel, or personal interpretation of the supposed conduct of the salaf. Since this is definitionally impermissible in Sunni law, salafi has become little more than a slur, to be honest. If what you’re asking is :”does Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi subscribe to one of the 4 schools of Sunni law”, the answer is, in short, no; that he has no regard for the scholars of the traditional schools was what caused many of them to band together and to write the following letter:
http://www.lettertobaghdadi.com/
Re: What ISIS Really Wants
I’ve been in the comments more often over the last six months than at any time over the last 8 years of my readership here because of this kind of article. I am Muslim. My life is made substantially more difficult by the falsehoods people believe with respect to my religious commitments. My non-Muslim family members read this kind of thing and it has a real impact on my day to day life. The probability that Islam becomes the target of a new, violent, state organised and liberal-media-approved anti-semitism during the ongoing crisis in a similar way to the way Judaism did in the 30s is becoming non-neglibigle.
So, please understand that when I make the following request, I am doing so for those reasons: please, please run this stuff by someone who has studied Islam academically (Muslim or no) outside of, say, Samuel Huntington’s crude imitations of the great early orientalist scholars before you recommend it to a broader readership.
This is a long article, but it can be trivially debunked by looking at a short quote:
There are four schools of law in Sunni Islam that are considered equally orthodox. If we take an ecumenical perspective, we could include the Jafari Shi’a and the Zaydis here (Zaydi jurisprudence is mostly Sunni but accepts some Shi’a principles). The minimum standard of evidence required to make the claim that a legal position is justified by a “coherent and learned” interpretation of Islam would be to point to a school and give an example of a scholar who supported that opinion. Ideally, the extent to which that was a marginal or consensus opinion should be noted, but minimally you need to be able to say which “coherent and learned” interpetation you’re referring to.
No such interpretation is referenced because none exists. In point of fact, the kharijite (the correct legal term here, not takfiri) movements have a great deal of recruiting difficulty relative to other movements (cf. the Tablighis, Deobandis, etc) precisely because they lack any traditional interpretative legitimation. Why do you think their recruits hail primarily from disaffected Western populations with no access to traditional education, and Maghrebis with a long history of anti-colonial and anti-Western violence (owing as much to Fanon and France as to Islam)? Because it’s self-evident to anyone who has spent more than a few months studying the tradition seriously that the kharijites are, in fact, outside the bounds of anything reasonably describable as a “coherent and learned” interpretation of Islam.
as an attentive non-muslim, i’ve been watching this process unfold in slow-motion. you are now the Other; less-than human. sooner or later, that will become less-than-animal; a pest to be exterminated.
I can see that Islam is being demonized, both overtly and subtly by the Western media. At the same time, I believe that anti-semitism is also making a comeback. Dangerous times.
yes, absolutely. racism/tribalism/dehumanisation in all forms rears its ugly head when peoples’ lives start to suck. both britain and france saw a record number of anti-semitic crimes last year.
I don’t think, at this point, a resurgence of some kind of political antisemitism is preventable. Conditions are different enough now from the 1930s-40s that it’s impossible to say how that might shake out, I think, but I’m not real excited to find out.
Thank you for your informed comment.
As I’m sure you are aware, this is the type of “hit piece” that is, unfortunately, required to maintain the state of perpetual global conflict that is so vital to the establishment and maintenance of political and financial fortunes in the US today. No rational, intellectual analysis can be permitted when the objective is to inflame and incite the war-weary and increasingly restive american population. Hatred is a powerful, proven “uniter” that must be fed and nurtured.
The sheer size and ease of identification of the global Muslim population, along with the lovingly cultivated ignorance and lack of intellectual curiosity of most americans, makes Muslims the perfect forever foe. Straight out of central casting.
As I read the piece, I was struck by how often references to ISIS and islam–particularly the apocalyptic references–could apply to “christianity” as well. Studiously ignored was the multimillion dollar “rapture industry,” including the “Left Behind” franchise, which is so influential in contemporary american popular culture.
Not to mention the dark side of the millions of “christians” waiting to be “raptured” after THEIR preferred version of the “apocalypse,” which has been ruthlessly exploited by zionists to gain support for their nearly continual Palestinian pogroms.
Only slightly in jest, I don’t suppose islam’s condemnation of usury, or belief in “free housing, food, and clothing for all, though of course anyone who wished to enrich himself with work could do so” has won the religion many friends among influential american “thinkers” and policy makers.
Indeed, I don’t find anything to disagree with there. The Abdal Hakim Murad article I linked to in the full-length version of this duplicate post elaborates in significant detail on a number of the issues you raise, you may be interested in it.
Apologies for the double post. One was eaten, two eventually got through!
Not eaten, just hasn’t circled back through the caches yet.
Just a quibble re the Atlantic article. Out here, we call the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area either the Twin Cities or the Metro Area. Minneapolis is only one part of it. With all its failings, I rather like St. Paul. Also, there are problems in the TC. Last I heard, we had the poorest African American community of any US urban area. The condition of Native Americans is tragic. Almost 80% of Native American kids in Minneapolis fail to finish school. So, there is lots of work still to be done.
“Last I heard, we had the poorest African American community of any US urban area.”
I moved from the deep south to the upper Midwest a few years back, and what struck me about this area was the fact that there didn’t seem to be much of an African-american middle class, at least in Iowa and Minnesota. In the south, there were black judges, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. And yes, I understand that is a generalization and there are plenty of poor African-americans down south as well, but the difference was at least noticeable to me.
Another thing I notice about the TwinCities is the fact that while there are undoubtedly some people there who live like King Farouk, it seemed to me that there were few of the ostentatious displays of wealth you find in the Sunbelt. Not a whole lot of German luxury cars, just mostly a middle-class area. I have seen income stats on MN which break down the ratios of median income for the 5 quintiles, and MN had one of the lowest ratios between the top 20% and the bottom 20% in the nation. Of even greater interest to me was that the top quintile was not that high compared to other states. What brought MN’s overall income levels far above the national average was the fact that the bottom 20% and bottom 40% were significantly higher than every other state.
It’s not a unique Twin Cities problem though, that’s for sure. In the Midwest alone, I can think of several other metro areas where blacks are disproportionately poor, attending failing pubic schools, and lack access to decent housing: Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis. Of these, Chicago and Detroit are probably the “standouts” in terms of segregation and miserable failure to provide equal educational opportunities for blacks. The worst part of it is that, as far as Chicago goes (don’t know about the others but if someone knows let’s hear it) it is often done with the active consent of the black misleadership class, of which the Obamas are a part.
What I find particularly grating is how The Democratic Machine manages to co-opt even poor blacks into perpetuating the same system that segregates them. On Monday I saw local polling for the mayoral race that shows a 42% support among blacks for Rahm Emanuel. That’s simply insane given that he has done all that he can to disinvest from poor black neighborhoods as far as schools and public health clinics go. But Emanuel does have a large campaign fund, and for months now he has run commercials showing him surrounded by grateful, smiling black faces. I throw up in my mouth a little every time I see one of these.
I grew up in a near south suburb of Chicago during the reign of “hizzoner” Richard J. Daley. From what I can remember, a “large campaign fund” bought a whole lot more than just TV commercials.
Everyone always marveled at the ROI on a few thousand well-placed 5 and 10 dollar bills.
Things don’t change, Katniss. On public school closings, Rahmbo bought himself a few “protesters”: Wake Up, Everybody. Money excerpt:
It would seem that what’s good for the Nuland goose, is good for the Emmanuel gander.
There must be some sort of a study group. Or a club……
And maybe that’s the source of the “Minneapolis” miracle right there. I can’t even imagine a MN competent enough or crafty enough to do that. Lord knows Dayton would never be, unless the man is playing 121st dimensional chess. Maybe Norm Coleman would have been had he stuck around, but I doubt sticking around was ever in his plans. The weather and the money are so much better in D.C. and unlike folks round here, the general poplace probably couldn’t give a hoot if his wife had a few photos of herself taken in her underwear.
And then there’s our various and assorted celebrities and/or crackpots: Jesse Ventura, Michelle Bachmann, Al Frankin, depending on which side of the line you fall, and poor Walter Mondale. Not a mastermind in the bunch. Wellstone was something, but we imported him from New York, as we have most of the pols who knew what they were about….
The HSBC raid link is behind FT’s paywall. This reuters article is a worthy alternative.
This reminds me of the Vampire Lizard – it can lose limbs to protect its core.
It’s more dangerous than the Vampire Squid, I believe.
Google making the web stupid?
Besides the web, we can be made stupid from without, but more important, as just as important, from within.
We make ourselves stupid by not asking simple, child-like questions that may seem stupid, and also by being afraid of appearing stupid to others.
China, Russia…show of unity.
Won’t be long before the International Red Flying Dragon Brigade volunteers show up to fight side-by-side with their ursine brethren.
From Vineyard of the Saker:
“Russian rebels” in east Ukraine tell captured Kiev soldiers “we will feed, bathe, cloth you and treat you with the honor and dignity you deserve and send you back to your families”
America has a lot to learn from these people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfziRDambrY
BBC reporter reports that “Russian rebels” are breaking the ceasefire as Kiev forces fire upon him. He resumes his interrupted report and repeats his lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbGm5p672l8
re: ethakimerini report:
The Greek government is asking for a temporary (3-6 months) liquidity credit extension. During this time only their “emergency” program would be launched (First pillar in their Thessaloniki Program, less than 2billion € cost IIRC). Things like stopping evictions, avoiding people without heating because they can’t pay the electric bill, hunger, etc. During this period a conference would be held to definitely solve the problem.
The proposal sent explains why Varoufakis was mixing “Wednesday” in his timing. I guess they won’t send the document until it is at least to some extent deemed “negotiable about”. The proposals to be approved next Friday I think are from their emergency package.
Ukie patriot: let’s get NATO to bomb Novorussia, blockade them into starvation. Perhaps NATO should wipe your a$$ for you too? It still boggles the mind how our elites got us in bed with such ethnic-cleansing neo-nazis.
It still boggles the mind how our elites got us in bed with such ethnic-cleansing neo-nazis.
Nothing to be surprised of… bourgeois politics feels more at ease with the extreme Right and religious fanatics than dealing with the Left or atheism.
Amen. Any form of vested authority is an unavoidably right-wing concept.
You have a good point about the bourgeois, but I will have to quibble about our elites being the bourgeois class. Far too rich for that.
I know it shouldn’t boggle my mind, after all it’s not like the West didn’t collaborate with some prominent German nazis like Reinhard Gehlen after WW2 in the name of containing the Soviets. The US and Canada also gave shelter to a bunch of Ukie nazis from OUN (see Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret). I guess “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
No need to go to the pre-WW2; just a cursory glance at post-war Europe is tale-telling: Portugal and Spain almost to the end of 1970s; Greece engineered and funded civil war, and a military junta; Italy false-flag terror in the 1960/70s; in 1947 the French communists were forced out of the government due to the US pressure.
Notice how these are all “lazy Southern Europeans and French”. Quite the pattern the reaction established… Meant to ask you, where are you from originally?
I think the term here refers to the value system and sensibilities more than the class identity. These include such as blind devotion to Progress and liberalism, a sense of infallibility, arrogance, smarm, superficiality, and an unfortunate facility and compulsion to sales and commerce as the answer to any problem, to the near-total exclusion of any other form of social intercourse or activity or thought, let alone the reality of those differently situated.
As someone else wrote here, the salaries of those actually busting skulls and cracking whips for the regime are much closer to a hundred grand than a hundred million — with the lash and the prerogative to swing it in their hands, the crackers need to be made to Believe™ in the intrinsic rightness of the order (e.g. selective victim-blaming), not just an inflexible expectation of reward. Therefore, the politics caters to their tastes and prejudices (and their enforcer roles within the machine) to keep their interests aligned with the “correct” class interests.
Thanks for keeping us up to date on Greece, Yves. Most exciting topic going. No apologies called for.
We couldn’t find any coverage through Antham when we pushed onto covered California. We lost access to our plan under ObamaCare (remember when they said that wouldn’t happen). Our rates doubled, and we couldn’t find no doctors in our area that would take insurance.
BTW we found out recently that the plan we were kicked out of still exists. When we questioned Antham, they said that plan was only available to corporations. We had ended up in that plan (good rates excellent coverage) because Antham lost a class action lawsuit for selling a really crappy plan to us in the first place.
It appears the rates you pay is highly dependent on your political status. Powerful good rates good coverage. No power high rates, high deductibles, and narrow networks.
I just finished a handwritten letter to Nancy Pelosi today. People in my rural area not able to sign on with a doctor because very few accept covered california, and to make matters worse the cc obamacare rates are going up. I chose to hang onto my old plan and stay out of the mess (in spite of qualifying for a decent break with obamacare, but i just don’t trust the government so…) and my costs are being jacked up a second time. I am now to pay 45% more for my same old plan. They’ve got us over a barrel. It’s disgusting.
Extinct, Extincter, Extinctest. Great Orlov. Thanks. And thanks too for Der Spiegel on Vicki Nuland. She’s a holdover from the neocons, maintaining her position all the way thru Obama’s 2 terms. Nobody ever asks why we seem to have such fluid elections but ossified foreign policies; this explains it. And the Germans were so offended they simply ignored the US and worked to do their own foreign relations with Ukraine. So go Vicki! You are the best diplomat and/or foreign service envoy we’ve had in 70 years. You really should go on tour.
Funny how reality is like water. It follows the path of least resistance.
She is married to Robert Kagan….
I reserved my reading of Extinct, Extincter, Extinctest for last. I am torn between anguish over the horrible economic, political and too often military events of the present and the even more horrible events boding in the too near future. No matter what we do now, or work hard to do soon — can avert what promise to be disastrous events in my latter years (next decade) and in the prime years of my children. In spite of decades of warnings and protests, in spite of the too plain evidence for what is to come — nothing is being done, and there are no prospects for meaningful actions to address, or what is probably more realistic at this point, ameliorate the impacts of peak oil, overpopulation, and climate change. Our government’s answer seems to be spreading more wars and bringing war home to roost over our heads.
I used to fret. I don’t anymore ever since I learned about an entirely different kind of nuclear power from a different element — thorium. We actually developed this kind of power in the 1960’s and 70’s and then abandoned it in favor of uranium because we could easily make bombs out of uranium but not thorium. But thorium nuclear power is about to make a come back. It is extremely safe, extremely efficient, produces no CO2, would take only 5000 tons to supply all the power the world uses in one year today, and has very low levels of nuclear waste, which actually would be in forms we could actually use and would be extremely valuable. It was the nuclear power that was too good to be true.
Here’s a TED talk by the guy most responsible for it’s come back:
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel
Re. Ms Nuland, the “riot diplomat” (free transation that keeps the meaning): Her attitude would not seem to improve relations with the EU. Maybe that is a feature, not a bug (again a favourite NC-ism), but still if you then want to start dictating on trade agreements, Ukraine and Greece…. foot in mouth springs to mind.
This site is amazing. It is one of, if not the best, in compiling the most insightful and timely information not offered in the MSM. Also, congrats to many of the followers who provide excellent comments. I have become a true follower and find NC to be a daily required reading. My contribution will be forthcoming!
Start spreading the news and you can say you were there at the beginning.
Welcome aboard.