Cigar Room of Books

The Da Vinci Code

2009-10-12T19:21:00.001-04:00

The Da Vinci Code
By Dan Brown

The book uses the setting of a crime scene to quickly set the tone for a fast collection of “facts”. Be on guard, as the immediate set of facts has nothing to do with the outcome of the book, in my opinion. Without saying the word Catholic, Catholicism is indicted for non-consequential acts of conspiracy. The author wins the attention of a large group of people who have a problem with Catholics early on. The author also seems to have caught the passions of our doubting public at a time when fanatical religious fahtwas and 911 slammed our Western conscious, making the book a craze. Meanwhile the sublime proposition of “controversial interpretation” is lost in the shadows of angst to finally lay ones hands on proof. While the book criticizes Opus Dia for self-mortification practices, it seems popular for the readers I’ve talked with to punish themselves with a guilt complex vested in the book. The star player in the book is introduced as a famous professor with a knack for taking any symbol and making controversial interpretations. So we have a good-looking professor from Harvard, with a chocolate baritone voice to deliver a liberating message to the receptive American female ear. I had begun my reading with the intent to list each symbol Brown uses and examine them for error.

The controversy begins with a symbol interpretation of the Pentacle: A star, a pagan symbol of Venus and the feminine balance in humanity. The symbolism is orated in the book along side the Catholic strain of an Opus Dei practice of keeping men and women separate. In keeping with the spirit of the conspiracy theory I mused myself with my coincidental fascination with observing Venus bright on the western sky as my first start to see at night while reading the book. Star bright star light wish I may…

The symbol trail continues in an academic tone at first with PHI: Divine proportion. If you take any set of numbers from Fabonacci’s sequence, their quotients approach 1.618. Brown gets the reader excited all the marvels of mans accomplishments and underscores them with PHI. While there may or may not be truth in the coincidence of proportion, Brown offers no rationalization or evidence that the ancient engineering man or Renascence musician, purposefully applied PHI to their work. Nor beyond coincidence does Brown connect PHI with the Pentacle.

Mona Lisa: Da Vinci’s expression of the balance between man and women. Brown interpretation uses a few ancient Egyptian symbols Amon and Isis to (Mona Lisa) connect the balance. Brown applies his previously stated androgynous cryptology technique (with a few modifications to make it work) Take the A and move it to the back of Amon and then drop one if the Is’s and invent a L in the front and an A in the back. He also does a nice job teasing the reader with Da Vinci’s painting techniques to show a left to right imbalance giving a yin-yang or masculine – feminine perspective. When I look at the painting, nothing comes up. The secret Da Vinci held was also known in the Far East.

Browns attempt to use androgynous cryptology technique in modified form to produce results, which is a sin in the scientific community led me to read the rest of the book for mere entertainment of a mystery novel. And at this Brown does a fabulous job of presenting simultaneous storylines with unfinished business, conflicting agendas, blended with double-entendre riddles to keep you turning. All along the intrigue of police drama you are also strung along the feminine mystery line with your own drama that angst’s you to wonderment as to what exactly is the Holy Grail, why is it so sought after, where is it, and who is hiding it. If you remember the last scene in Indiana Jones, it is in the national archives…lost forever in the bowels of our government. Of course I am consumed with finding my car keys leaving absolutely no time for a Holy Grail.

Madona On The Rocks: Da Vinci’s expression of “so dark the con of man” The mission of the Priory as secret society to resurrect the balance of man and women that was apparently in existence before the Church. Brown trips over his story line in the demonizing of the Catholic Church when he mentions Judaism and Islam as co conspirators in the Crusade wars. Brown also drifts into the Hopi Indians that would trip ones memory of American Indians where women were not considered equal. But non the less if you were a “Women’s Right” advocate of any measure; you would now be easy prey to be seduced to thinking that Browns clues go beyond conspiracy theory and into facts to challenge the Catholic Church.

Through out the book Brown leaves other clues that use to be boring, except for those people consumed with the “truth” as though that might bring them power. There are data banks and libraries where thousands of theologians have been perusing the argument. There are volumes of books written in a multitude of languages. All of this is claimed to be wrapped up in arts and music, where today’s man seems content with the beat or something to hang on the wall to bring the color of the room and the sofa together. Brown inspires you to be curious to the extent that it could be mysterious or even ridiculous. For instance I have always made “pet projects” out of my rose bushes. This year not only did a mysterious rose bush crop up three feet away from the other two creating a trinity, but no rose came to bloom this summer. That is until I read this book. I am thinking of calling in the main character of the book to help me interpret this. I have a fung-shua compass and a magnetic compass and I still get nothing. I guess the prime meridian will have to stay in London awhile longer.

After enduring three hundred pages of Catholic bashing Brown redeems himself by disclosing the real culprit behind the crime scene leaving the church exonerated. Brown also leaves his own message that finds harmony with the Catholic Church. In his book he writes in the closing chapters: “It is the mystery of wonderment that serves our souls, not the Grail itself. The beauty of the Grail lies in the ethereal nature.” “The blind see what they want to see” And finally my most cherished goal he writes: “If you have learned nothing from me, please learn this….” “Forgiveness is Gods greatest gift.”

I was once debunked for speculating on the application of numbers without having a clue of what I was talking about. She was right; I didn’t. I was only speculating for friendly conversation. Of course that conversation never went anywhere with the scientific mind of my counterpart nor did the relationship. What I find amazing is that same scientific mind can attempt to apply this “mystery novel” presentation of coincidental and controversial interpretations of symbolism to attack the Catholic Church. She is blind to the idea that the arguments in the book and spawning from the book are two thousand years old and there is nothing new to alter the debate and declare victory. The book is entertaining in its presentation of facts and at the same time hypnotically deceptive; especially for those yearning to blind themselves with the compulsion of being right, being better, being on top. I am left with the phrase I once heard in a speech “that fanaticism is at the root of all conflict”. Had tolerance, another word for forgiveness, existed in that early relationship; fanatic insistence of being right would have given way to harmony.

I know, once again I came away from a book with a different reaction than the main stream. There has been religious conflict and social conflict since the invention of man. This book can cause harmony or discord. In my example above I can visualize first how easy it is for differences to erupt in interpersonal relationships and how hard it is for forgiveness comes to rescue the relationship. Imagining society being any better when it’s integral parts struggle leaves me at a loss. But I am left with this question: How often have you experienced difficulty in finding the keys to tolerance or forgiveness as your breakthrough to a better life? When I go to the museum, I’ll be looking for that answer.

Great Book, I recommend it with a light heart.

March of Folly

2009-07-25T18:30:00.003-04:00

March of Folly

By Barbara Tuchman

I am sure you are familiar with the accusation on journalists where the editor says to the reporter here are the head lines go write the story and surround them with facts. The opening paragraph of this book introduces the headline thesis and then goes on to tell you how the story is about to unfold. I like that in an author. She goes on to provide a beautiful back drop in history as a collection of events where the common theme is a march of folly, that being irrational decisions made by leaders that goes against the better interest of their constituencies. The book is entertaining and a great summary of certain historical subjects, but her thesis is fraught, errors, omissions and with the same folly she thwarts upon leaders of state. She became wooden headed in her own argument.

In her introductory chapter she provides a general overview of moments in history that she could have chosen from. In her summary of WWI she discusses opportunities to have negotiated peace that were missed. She cites a German surrender when in fact an armistice was signed. This was indeed the Germans saying they were willing to negotiate a peace, only to be stabbed in the back. She also alludes to the Moor’s conquering of Spain. She claims that Spain was taken by Africans who happen to be Muslims as opposed to Muslims using African manpower to conquer Span. She claims that Muslims contributed to Western civilization as opposed to conquered Westerners moving this forward. While I will not attempt to take a side in the case of the Moors, I point to the mere fact that Wikipedia has frozen the entries on the subject because of the contentious disagreement on the authors version. With these gross errors in framing her thesis I became a suspect reader.

She chose to speak on Troy, The Renaissance Popes, and The American Revolution from the British perspective, and Vietnam. Upon completion of the book I could not find a solid rationale for knitting these over others, to make her case. In further degradation of her case within each case I find merit in the suspicion I spoke of earlier. While I am not equipped to refute her historical research, in this review I only take an argument for the defense and use her rules of engagement in a post posthumous debate with any to take up her torch. Her rules are to judge the decisions made within the context of the time of the decision making and in context of what the decision makers knew. The consistent thread I found was that Barbara Tuchman provided evidence within her own history that acquits her defendants. Additionally, while she deluges the reader with the history she constructs; she leaves gaps, or errant inferences to construct her argument. In the case of Vietnam she closes with a paragraph citing an actual quote in history, while apparently true it disgraces anyone who gave their last full measure to that cause.

With the Trojan-Greek war after reading one thousand pages of the Iliad and the Odyssey I found it remarkable that of all the folly found with the Greeks in terms of why leaders take their people to war, I take issue with Tuchman’s focus on the Trojan Horse leaving so much pertinent detail on the table. She may have discussed a tactical error, but she overlooked all strategy and philosophy in going to war. I also take issue with her attempt to use a story that has deep mythological interlude to it over so many other possibilities. She uses intellectual puzzling to make a case that it doesn’t matter if the story is true or myth and by mere referencing numerous authors of fame there is merit in the rationale she claims. I am not buying it as authors, prone to the novel when writing history are not leaders and therefore she selects an unqualified test group.

My specific issues with her first argument go as follows: By referencing discoveries in archeological digs, it could be true…if it could be proven that the remains a horse is not a battering ram. She totally overlooks how long it would take to get the Horse moved from the beech to inside the city walls and the prospect of survival or the discovery of smell of human excrement is not discussed. She suggests that mythological rational along a line of passion in a material argument, which is clearly a character of folly. And all the while what does the tactical mistake of the Horse have to do with the Trojan rationale for the war in the first place. She overlooks rational thought that Greece needed a superficial cause to unite their States as a possibility, a rationale that exactly what worked for Bismarck’s when he took Alsace –Loraine. She draws religion in to discussion and equates the Greek gods and our One God as the same. Greek gods were highly symbolic, with man made rationale while One God is spiritual in nature, where man corrupts it with a passion for power. The contrast throws a huge log into the spokes of her analogy. She attempts to contrast the rationale in terms of fate and free will. Fate is your free will when you recognize reality for what it is, which is not to be confused with leaps in science whose fate is to recognized nature and construct it to enhance our living condition in this world. So now the train of thought in support of her argument has lost too many wheels to support the weight of its argument as we round first base headed for second.

Tuchman’s second example is the Renaissance Popes. You have to be somewhat knowledgeable about Western Civilization in the post Roman Empire, or the Holy Roman Empire in order to find it plausible that the example actually fits her argument. For those with a fingernails grasp of what they learned in “Western Civ”, would remember that first the Papal States, insignificant as they were in terms of territory and power where ruled by kings and influenced by the Church. Second by the time the renaissance period dawned, the Church had endured 85 years where the papal curia sat in France and where heavily influenced by the rulers France. So this reader becomes at least highly suspicious of her ability to win a case in court, albeit the history is rich with detail not found in the average history book. So rich that you are sure you are reading a academic text book instead of hearing oral arguments from the Supreme Court of Historians.

I summarize the beginning of her Renaissance Pope argument as follows: At about the time Columbus discovered America – the Renaissance – which is to say the period of values of this world replaced those of the here after – was in full flower in Italy. This is a tug at a thread she left with Troy with its noose around the church. The agenda of too many academia nuts starts to show itself. She then follows with an assessment that the Popes folly was of perversity, perhaps the most consequential in Western history, if measured by its results in centuries of ensuing hostility and fratricidal war. It was a war where the King of France demanded that a Pope, so full of vices, so abominable in the eyes of the world must be removed, in order that a new pope be elected. Just such action, initiated by the Cardinals and resting on the support of the King of France, had caused the schism of recent memory, and nothing in Christian history had done the Church such irretrievable harm. What actually read is that entangled with a perverse lifestyle, prominent of the times, was an entanglement of the Papacy and the Monarchies to the extent that distinguishing the two becomes a cats-cradle.

Tuchman abides by another rule in her thesis which to show there was an alternative in the decision making of the rulers that could have taken place. With the Popes, in the political sphere, the alternative would have been a consistent institutional policy consistently pursued. If the popes had directed their energies to that end instead of dissipating their efforts in the petty paths of private greed, they could have maneuvered the hostilities of the secular powers in the interests of the Papal States. She forgets two things, first is the Spiritual agenda of the Catholic Church, weighed against course in perversity. But one cannot ignore the breakdown in her argument on alternative when she provides a pagan-christen dichotomy as follows: “meanwhile a new faith, nationalism, and a new challenge in rise of national churches were already undercutting Roman rule in the 15th century. To the extent pagan rulers fell in love with pagan antiquity, Italians of the ruling class felt less reverence for Christianity, which as Machiavelli wrote in The Discourses’, makes the “supreme felicity to consist in humility, abnegation and contempt of things human,” whereas pagan religion found the chief good in “grandeur of the solid, strength of the body and all qualities that make men redoubtable”.” Her alternative, given the church and the monarch of that time are indistinguishable breaks down in her own disclosure of history. As an attorney for the defense, using only the briefs provided by the prosecutor, while there is an over abundance of evidence to perversity, the argument for folly, that takes their people to war is fraught with enough conflict to acquit as you sort out “who the people” really are.
Tuchman moves on to the British version of the American Revolutionary war. Another of Tuchman’s rules in her thesis is to judge the leaders by the standards of their times. This rule is at least compromised as she sets the standards of the latter have of the 18th century where 200 families, including the Royal Family rule England, they all went to the same schools and learned the same line of thought and held the same ignorance to compete. This situation becomes exasperated when they have a king who inherited a throne at an incompetent age of 21. Cynical as he was fatherless and raised in conflict, low in character, whimsical in decision making as he fond himself appointing one faction then another and finally with no comprehension of the world and his colonies state of affairs brings a question of character or qualification and certainly not a question of folly in the a leader’s decision making pertinent to the continuance of the colonies.

With the overall foundation of Tuchman’s third example in deep trouble, she spends a tremendous amount of ink writing on the administrators, of the time making not irrational decisions, but decisions blind to the voice of Americans. There was an overarching need to recover economy to pay for the French seven years war causing a Royal Imposition of taxes, am imposition on trade, an Encampment of officers in homes and businesses to collect tax and tariff which are all logical decisions to maintain their Colony. One must have to remember, there was mutual lack of respect towards the colonial contribution to the French Indian war and a Colonial distrust of England’s need to stand up an army. There was an undercurrent of separation already afoot. It was the first step to ending the paradigm of colonialism, which until after Vietnam, her forth argument, you could hardly judge the British harshly using Barbara Tuchman’s guidelines.

In rounding third and headed for home Tuchman drags America once again through the pains of Vietnam. Written in 1984, four years in to Reagan’s road to rediscover American pride, this author had her head buried into an agenda that was overrun by history in the making. She missed the boat. There is a lot I found to criticize her accounting of the Vietnam trauma on the world. Was there folly? Of course there was. Did she capture it accurately? She came close. Did she frame it properly, not a chance. Did she circle up with her thesis,? I think she got lost in the rhetoric of the 70’s as she beat a solo drum of folly.

Again the damning evidence is in her detailed accounting of history that begins in 1919 and ends in 1975. Just stop and try to imagine how much world history that took place that may have overrun any decision taken by any American leader. If you are not up on history think back on the Depression, WWII, Korea, China, the Cold War that directly confronted the leaders that brought us into the Vietnam war. To think that any train of folly may have been derailed by superseding events is not very hard to do. And that is Tuchman’s grand mistake. So I call it a double play as she is tagged out at second and then again at the plate as she insults Americans who gave their last full measure.

In summary our involvement or the beginning of her case for folly begins with Woodrow Wilson as he denied Ho Chi Minh and his people the right to self determination which sent him off on a visit with Lenin in the new USSR. The Bolshevik phenomena captured everyone’s attention as early as 1900 and totally distracted Wilson from recognizing that the folly in colonialism that was only budding in 1776 was now in full flower on its last day. Hence the French once again find a way to perpetuate the oppression and extortion of people who are not French. While Roosevelt who was fully sympathetic with the Vietnamese in 1945, he was preoccupied with closing out WWII, The Red Threat from the USSR and his own death. Truman in his stead was equally concerned with the Red Threat as we first lost China to it and then North Korea. It was a real deal of the times and carried its day as an overriding factor to aid the French in their colonialism, not to perpetuate colonialism but the continued rampage of the falling dominos, that were falling as Czechoslovakia, Hungry, and Cuba also fell before Kennedy committed combat troops in 1962. To accuse our leaders of not being keen to the dominos theory is not looking at the bigger picture.

So while America is not innocent of making mistakes of folly, I must point to where I agree with her in part where folly was detrimental to the will of her people. She reports that credibility emerged in the Berlin crisis of that summer of 1961 when, after a harsh intimidating meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, Kennedy said to James Reston, “now we have a problem in making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place. Under Kennedy, increased activity required more than a training command. In February 1962 a full field command under the acronym MACV superseded MAAG with a Three-star general named Paul D. Harkins…If a date is needed for the beginning of the American war in Vietnam, the establishment of Mac-Vee as it became known, will serve. Being caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Kennedy evidently stung, lied at a news conference in February 1962, “we have not sent combat troops there – in the generally understood sense of the word. We have increased out training mission and our logistics support….” And this was ‘as frank as I can be” consistent that unfailing refuge, “our security needs in the area.” To this she writes ‘the United States is now involved in an undeclared war in South Vietnam,” wrote James Reston on the same day. “this is well known to the Russians, the Chinese Communists and everyone else concerned except the American people.” Kennedy was no wooden head; he was aware of the negatives and bothered by them, but made no adjustments, nor did any of his chiefs of staff.

Kennedy’s death left Johnson with a smoking gun that he mismanaged would be an understatement. Johnson faced a presidential election of 1964. Because his bellicose opponent was Barry Goldwater, he had to appear as the peace candidate. He took up the chant about “their” war; “ We are not going to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves. We do not want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys. When six months later after he was elected, when American boys were sent into combat with no dramatic change of circumstance, these phrases were easily recalled, beginning the erosion of Johnsons credibility. The underlying need, given the rapid falling of the South, was to redress the military balance so that the United States should not negotiate from weakness. He was stuck between the tactics of fighting Kennedy’s undeclared war in conjunction with his campaign promises and the military decisions that were at hand, well documented in the Pentagon Papers, but missed by this author.

There was an alternative in 1962 that Tuchman missed, which was to tell the truth to the nation and the world and sell them on the reasons to go to war. On their own merit in 1962 that was plausible considering how fearful Americans of the color red. In hindsight to claim that the domino theory was an argument of folly is not winnable for either side. What we do know is that the relationship between the USSR and China fell in to a disaster. Meanwhile Kissinger and Nixon played ping-pong with the Chinese and relations warmed there. Also Chairman Mao’s death set China of in to a new direction. All accounts while very visible post 1962 or even 65 to the casual person of 35 years of age or older, Tuchman missed them in 1984. Why is that? They were events in history that would refute here thesis, and therefore the whole story need not be told by Tuchman. She told only what supported her argument and held her consistent with the rules of her argument. G.H. Bush and Colin Powell learned from that lesson and produced dramatic and opposite results in 1991, where it is plausible the same could have been achieved in 1962, making the argument not one of folly to go to war, but folly in the strategy in how to take a country to war.

In wrapping this up, I find Tuchman excellent in capturing intriguing detail in history. The history alone was entertaining. I concede that one book cannot capture it all when at that level. And so to apply an agenda to the history and omit critical surface events while burying the reader with detail, is an oft found flaw in academia that you must be on guard for. Tuchman is a renowned author of history, and therefore even within the system you must be mindful to keep your own bibliography of detail as you may be sold down the river. Where I find my highest degree of criticism in Tuchman’s effort here is when she writes: “The new political order in Vietnam as approximately what it would have been if America had never intervened, except for being far more vengeful and cruel. Perhaps the greatest folly was Hanoi’s – to have fought so steadfastly for thirty years for a cause that became a brutal tyranny when it was won.” And then three pages later she writes: The longest war had come to an end. Faintly from a distance of 200 years might have been heard Chatham’s summary of a nation’s self-betrayal: “by the arts of imposition, by its own credulity, through the means of false hope, false pride and promised advantages of the most romantic and improbable nature.” A contemporary summing it up was voiced by a Congressman from Michigan, Donald Riegle. In talking to a couple from his constituency who had lost a son in Vietnam, he faced the stark recognition that he could find no words to justify the boy’s death. “There was no way I could say that what had happened was in their interest or in the nation’s interest or in anyone’s interest.” All along the interest of the Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnamese people was the same freedom our soldiers fought for in WWI and was requested in the settlement of the peace in 1919. Connecting the historical dots was a betrayal to those fighting to preserve freedom for all men, the same freedom won in 1776 but lost in 1975.

I closed the book in total dismay. Not about the argument to or not to wage war as philosophically any path towards war should be labeled folly. Also keep in mind that is not the same argument to defend freedom, whether it is ours or someone else's. To sell out on America and choose Vietnam in this argument/thesis, was only to sell a book.

I have 10 pages of bibliography notes for those interested. Simply request and ye shall receive.

Crimea

2009-06-29T09:21:00.001-04:00

Crimea
by Trevor Royle

The prime players are Russia, Turkey, Britain, France. The issue is world power, or at least a strategic piece of the world's power puzzle. At issue in disguise were the holy prizes, masked in Russia's need to save '' the Christians '' in a Muslim ruled Turkey. It was a land within the Ottoman Empire in decline. ( a sick old man was the phrase of the time). With the battlefield looking like it should be Turkey, the Russian Crimean peninsula and actually the city of Sevastopol becomes the scene of the siege. There was an air of arrogance and possibly hubris amongst the European powers specifically amongst the people at large. Hubris spilled over into the leadership of each country as they were actually giving considerable thought to their strategic interest. England had concerns over an encroachment of influence immediately on their Indian colony. Russia was in search of a warm water port in the Mediterranean. France…well its not quite clear what she wanted outside of an influence in the Middle East as other than the Christian prizes there were no outside strategic interests. The one possible rationale for the French may have been the mood of the French where a convincing victory would remove the 1815 international shackles.

The Affair at Sinope is history’s lesson in poetic justice. Russia took advantage of their naval supremacy over Turkey. In proactive reaction to ward off the deployment of additional Turkish troops in Maldivian front, Russian ships sank the Turkish ships while still in harbor. They annihilated the fleet with a first in the use of solid shells. The burning fleet caught the harbor on fire. Turkey’s loss of 2000 soldiers and as many sailors. It gave the impression of a massacre to the rest of the world. Up to this point the world leaders were not anxious to war with Russia. That all changed as England and France took notice.

So one can look at the power strategic of military victory versus the power of the free press and ask which is most effective in terms of winning the long lasting minds of men. In particular the London Times worked the English people into lather over the ordeal that otherwise giving the speed and quality of information in 1855, could have gone unnoticed. The book does not delve into the reasons why. The reason I select hubris over arrogance is the aristocracy of the English would actually take knoll top picnics giving them clear vista over battlefields where thousands would die in a day.

You could also look at the leadership, but only from a perspective of the shortsightedness of their strategic vision. While arrogance may have played a minor part the book makes it painfully clear how ignorant the leaders were to how unprepared England and Russia were for the war. Only France, who by coincidence of recently having been involved in wars in North Africa had an army with a working practice on the battlefield. England had not seen war in almost 50 years so they let their armies, not yet institutions, go fallow. Russia did not have access to the same technological advancements as those of Western Europe. All belligerents involved had not yet learned the lesson of coordinating the military with the leaders. When you put poor vision in conjunction with a lathered up people, you have license to exercise a military power that may not have legitimate moral standing. Given the news still coming out of the Balkins and the Ottoman Empire, all this chemistry of a European and World society of man has yet to find stability.

The news turned from that of spawning war to that of severe criticism of the British government’s execution of the war. The armies went into the war theater unprepared where even in victory, there were heavy losses attributed to non-combat scenarios. At the first sounding of difficulty the English people became un-nerved at wars prospect. Poor, inaccurate, and untimely communication led to many interpretations of an event where not just knowledge, but timing of that knowledge was essential for a clear picture. And only an unmerciful God knew. With regard to the imminent attack on Sevastopol, while the British were on reconnaissance the Russians already new British intensions, they were reading the Times. I am most intrigued at most with the people’s views before, during, and after this battle. Arrogance -to- Blame. Arrogance in We - to - Blame in You. (any one but me )

The Crimean war gave significant ground to test the rapid advancements in technology coming from the western born industrial revolution. The naval attack on Odessa marked the last time a British war ship, the Arethusa would fight a sea battle fully under sail. The Russian introduced to mankind a new military weapon of under water mines in the harbor of Kronstdat in the Gulf of Finland. Other technologies include telegraph, balloons, tunneling; steam powered train, sulfurous fumes, missiles, periscope, and the Minie Rifle.

Behind the lines medical advancements along with an elevated awareness to the loss of life and limb gave room for the introduction of battlefield rescue and behind the line hospitals in war. Ladies with Lamps brings Florence Nightingale to a sorely exposed medical service. The press, for the first time in British history, brought home the horror of war. The controversy was politicized at a social class level. While the French were supreme in medical service, all the Christian contingencies in the war appealed to the new awareness of war enough to advance medical technology, while the Turks did absolutely nothing.

With regard to diplomacy there were channels between the leaders and press, between the leaders themselves, between the leaders and the Admirals and Generals, and finally between the participants. On the Battlefield the European combatants distained the Turks in many way, most notable for me was to read: “In fighting along side Turks, the French distained the Turkish ritual of beheading their fallen foe, so much that they did not want to fight along side them.” Missed Opportunities, during and immediately after the battle of Alma the first battle on the Crimean peninsula, first poor field reconnaissance resulting in disagreements by field command. Second was conflicting direction from Allied leaders lead to a battle victory but not a victory of what was to become the Crimean War.

The logistics leading up to the siege and actual of Battle of Sevastopol, found the French always waiting on the English and impatience drew a rivalry in who’s in charge. At Balaklava the Cavalryman’s Battle represents more of poor planning in a war that was hastily rushed in to. The Russians were mostly organized, however with a character of complacency. The allies found battle strategy undermined by poor communication across battalions within armies and generals of each army. On the French/British side Egos' were the prime protagonist. On page 272 you read: “That was the interpretation of the order but, from his position above the cavalry, Raglan wished them to move forward to take any of attacking the enemy. Instead he was treated to the sight of the Light Brigade dismounted and taking their ease in the morning sun. His inpatients were exacerbated by the tardy arrival of the infantry.” Myself I have to struggle to imagine, knowing I am going into combat, and taking a preverbal '' coffee break ''

Diplomacy, as we know it in the 20th century post 1917, amongst the leaders found to be lacking in every case in Crimea. It was only too evident that Napoleon III thumbed his nose at peace talks that were ripe for all when he had not convincingly beat the Russians. The English and the French had changed their tunes. Just prior to the battle of Sevastopol, it became apparent that even with an allied victory, a war could not be won. Even the United States came close to joining in the war. Nathaniel Hawthorne, had been instrumental in stopping an illegal shipment through a merchant called Field.....(This was quite a concession. Hawthorne had already admitted his preferences:’ I hate England; though I love some Englishmen, and like them generally, in fact'') this was in the course of diplomacy against England. It is clear, had we engaged, it would have been on the side of Russia. In the end Austria’s Ferdinand played the part of broker in a war of exhausted belligerents that did not see their way to a clear treaty. It is discussed that in 1877, twelve years later, the events and causes of the Crimean War were being repeated already. This time. Disraeli chose diplomacy over war. With Bismarck as broker, a peace treaty was drawn that laid down all manner of problems, which would re-emerge 36 years later in WWI. While not discussed in this book, I know from reading Bismarck that the protagonist of WWI was not Bismarck work, but rather the deviation from his work by the Kaiser. In 1914 Disraeli and Bismarck were gone but the same issues of Turkish {Islamic ) oppression of Christians and Russian expansion were catalyst where a reckless Germany lit the fuse. In all three wars the issues, the sides taken by the belligerents, and the peace treaties did not square up. The impending factor was the arrogant mood of hubris of the people, including the leaders, in conjunction with a fear of losing control of world power; a power that translated to psyche and life style of its people.

With regard to the moral cause for war, any war, it always seems to get lost in the shuffle. In the case of the Crimean War, one which I now call World War One, The Great Elche, Lord Stratford to the Sultan lays into a formal letter a call to an end of Islamic oppression and corruption. In doing so there would be no cause for international involvement, war. Ironically, the forth treaty point-of peace was Joint European guarantees of Rights for Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In Turkey, they said, How could Stratford in behalf of the Allies declared war on Russia because this Power was encroaching upon the independence of the Sultan by demanding to interfere in spiritual affairs of the Orthodoxies and how can he now demand a concession which they declared themselves, more than once, both verbally and in writing, to be inconsistent with the Sultans sovereign rights and independence? General Stratford: noted not only did the then leader Mahomet Ali lead an obnoxious personal life.... notorious for corruption and branded with criminality...he had been found guilty of murdering his Christian mistress and, at Stratford’s insistence, sacked from public life-but official Turkish appointment of him in the first place showed a contempt for British attempts to introduce reforms in court. What was the point of bolstering the Ottoman Empire by taking its side against Russia asked Stratford, if its rulers were in default to British demands that changes be made in its style of government? Ali’s successor Abd-el-Mejit agreed to a wide range of measures to protect Christian rights and all non-Muslims in his Empire, including the abolition of the death penalty for apostasy. This commitment was included in the peace settlement. I must make a note having traveled to Saudi Arabia, that when the aircraft crosses over into Saudi territory the captain comes on the public address and reads to the passengers key Islamic laws. Included in this is the abolition of Christianity, which he reads is punishable by death. When I heard that I rose from my business class seat to use the restroom. When I looked back all the women who were previously wearing some very skin bearing outfits were all in black ropes. It was alarming at least.

You could then ask, what was won. Russia's aim was a warm water port through a Russian solution to the Eastern Question. Nicholas succeeded, somewhat in 1855. The 1914 tzar/Chairman continued the success somewhat. I find it ironic that a man more evil than Hitler conned three of the Great Leaders of the free world to grant Nicholas' wish in signing a treaty in Yalta, on the tip of the Crimean Peninsula; went un-noticed!!! This gave Moscow 45 more years of warm water access. Only now as I write this review, sitting next to a woman from Crimea on an aircraft traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit, do I fully appreciate that the Crimea is now Ukraine and not Russia. What was lost or never really won; apparently free will amongst all man. Included with this reality is a fear that we are apt to do it all again.

So I ask in this time of immediate gratification and living in the here and now, what defines now? Is it this moment or could the study of history expand our worldview of now in a way that allows us at a larger social level, to learn from our lessons in history, an expanded now, and not touch the hot stove. Not to let the newspapers draw us to a level of consciousness that allows leaders to go unchecked, or worse yet be protagonist in their waging of a war. That airplane ride as much as this book makes clear to me that world peace may require a military that does not fire a shot. Is this a bit naive? Possibly…likely. When you consider it took the complete destruction of Germany and Japan to change their ways in defense of a free world, in a snap shot of a broader now; is that what it takes to bring the Eastern Question, a world that is not free to an answer?

Perhaps another solution is the appreciation that freedom is infolded in the world of free enterprise and democracy, the American experiment, is the government of choice to ensure a check on our leaders, and a free expression of its people. Perhaps the expansion in information technologies will help get a broader message to the people of the world. The Internet is a new twist in that articles not subject to editors biased messaging but rather bloggers where all information is openly and aggressively challenged. Keep in mind however North Korea struggles with electricity let alone infrastructure for the information rich web. Iran and China are demonstrably very capable of using that same web to monitor and control what is being viewed and said. Throwing that reality into the equation helps a person of the Western World appreciate an informational peace is not around the corner and is dependant on a certain “freedom of the press” Until then the poison of fear will poison us all.

I could have taken an intriguing view on the personal stories described in this book. They are equally valuable in understanding the travesty in war. I welcome all readers to have a good look at this book and fill in on items I may have missed.

The Origins of the First World War

2009-06-29T09:26:00.002-04:00

The Origins of the First World War
By James Joll

Poetic coincidence, I began reading this book while waiting for a plane in Geneva Switzerland, home of the European UN, in the country nestled between France and Germany. Also as bit of humor TJ lent me this book as a pass through from one of his friends who studied it for a class. I mused at what he took note of versus what I marked as noteworthy. We had to have taken away two different verdicts. This is the third in my series of books where I am purposefully looking for answers to the cause of war. The first two, Rise and fall Of the Third Reich and Paris 1919, only threw clues and inferences. Also know I have a library of read material related to the subject but such material was not necessarily read to answer this single question. I was hoping, from the author’s credentials as college professor and historian, to get something more absolute from this one. While I gained a lot of insight and can now start to draw my own conclusions I hate to say it but I am leaning towards the view of the French, which is always to be fearful of the German propensity for dominion. I am leaning with reservation because the French have yet to reach a level of national conscience that demonstrates peace for the right reason. This review will brush over the top of James Joll’s work and I will make an attempt to connect dots and draw conclusions. Keep in mind I am on to reading on Bismarck and then the Crimean War, so I reserve the liberty to modify conclusions written herin.

This book addresses seven different overarching factors starting with the July crisis in 1914 that may have attributed to the cause of WWI. Of the seven factors the mood of 1914 strikes me as the most intriguing. The mood involves the dynamics between the people and their leaders. The most essential aspect of the relationship is the timing of an action, which may be the result of decisions made long before the action. Power politics versus humanity with a civilized world order looming in the balance. While all the countries involved in WWI experienced these dynamics, Germany, albeit with a considerable peace movement in its midst, appears to have demonstrated the most tangible aptitude towards war.

Along the lines of a manipulated mood, one interesting dynamic the author includes is socialism-v-capitalism. What makes this intriguing is the author demonstrates that it is not the theory of the two philosophies but rather the way each may be applied. History clearly shows that free market, as a medium for freely negotiated division of labor, is an accelerator towards a peaceful society. Socialism has demonstrated the same when you look at Scandinavia. To this day the differences have not come close to instigating an international conflict. Only corruption and power politics internally and internationally can be found as a culprit.

In 1914 the novel idea socialism seemed to challenge the sense of internal power among the leaders where creating international conflict helped bring a sense of nationalism that would be perceived by the constituents as dependant on their leadership. This dynamic did not directly cause the war, but it gave leaders a motive to cultivate the approval to go to war. In the German case, the cultivation of the approval is most prominent. The first reason is the country was only 40 years old with many states questioning their unity. In Germany with the mechanics of their government the military was king. Rather than a civil war killing each other they opted for a war against their neighbors. Today in the European Union, there are many states questioning the purpose and fairness of a new Union, with Germany at center stage once again.

With regard to the mobilization of the war machine in Germany, the feeling of power in conjunction with the limitations in aptitude of one person(s) pulling the levers appears to have been a dynamic of the breakout of the war, but not the cause. To qualify this their was purposeful deception in justifying decisions for war but more so the direct mobilization of military machines were run amuck. Cause and effect was not clearly understood or communicated among the leaders involved. Connecting the dots of the diplomatic cause to the military effect, given that military action as the last instrument of diplomacy, finds the irretrievable orders of mobilization to war irreconcilable with the profit-loss aspects of a military result. Because this is an aspect of the war, I find it difficult to call it the protagonist of the war.

The protagonist to The Great War as history sees it appears to be clearly placed with Germany. In their unification, they found both as a people and in their leadership the desire to expand. At the same time they were internally conflicted which caused leadership to find international conflict a solution to bolstering a unified German mind. The legacies of Bismarck, Nietzche, and Treitschke over 40 years through the education in their schools, the German youth were a brainwashed a people apt to salute anything with a uniform. Those uniforms told them that they deserve more. The Kaiser, with an agenda for more pushed Austria to military action with Serbia. The Kaiser knew a conflict would draw in Russia. The Kaiser knew his plan would require the neutralization of France. The Kaiser miscalculated is English in-laws. Aside from his low level of mental acuity we question his motive.

In defense of the other belligerents, Austria-Hungary’s state of disintegration on its own may have taken a more passive position to a perceived attempt to disrupt the transition of Habsburg power from its current king to its prince in waiting. Russia had its interests in a warm water port guised in its protection of Slavic people, but was not in a position having just been defeated by Japan to go to war. France and England over years of disarmament were just not ready for war. Germany was going a different direction having built up its navy to rival England, and bolstered is army through a conscription level higher than its neighbors. Germany saw both Russia and England as rivals that they needed an upper hand on. The shot heard around the world was all the Kaiser needed to launch a military plan that caused general war. Could this have been prevented?

Balance of Power did not work to gain a world peace and eventually gave way to a United Nations, which obviously is not working, as there have been over 65 wars across national boarders since its inception. We also know building coalitions forces have its limitations as business and political agendas often conflict. It seems greed for money and power corrupt whomever sits at the helm of any type of organization. We know that boycotts and sanctions do not work as world consensus or for that matter consensus at any level is impossible to maintain. What will work? I have said before that it seems that when two or more people ban together for a common cause involving scarcity of some thing, there will be another group ready to fight for their share. Who should be the arbitrator of such conflict and can you scale this arbitration to a world level?

What is missing is Conscience…collective conscience… the power of one singular mind for mankind…the willingness to extend your being beyond your physical self. At the core is You/Us. If you have a conflicted conscience it would follow that your society has a conflicted conscience. Germany certainly displayed how a group of people can make their body temples a false alter through which they perceive the world. They sought for more…the god of more. They had collective conscience going in the right direction, but were merely focused on the State, their State and that is where they became delusional. But lets be fair, Americans in 2007 do it too. Cast a hue of shame on us for collectively lobbying our congressmen for banning the sale of key resources to international entities (China & Dubai) that we fear that they may get more than we get.

So lets turn the coin over and hit the fast forward button. Why does Iran fear the West? Read my past reviews, first they want something today that they once had which is recognition as a world power. They now fear others because those countries want something Persians have. (oil and/or warm water). They feared USSR because of their experience of a Russian agenda for more. (warm water port) They feared the British because of their same experience through bogus business deals. (oil) Iran, believe it or not, prefer to work with and through the United States for their rightful place on the world stage as right now only the United Sates through its diplomacy shine a light on that need. This phenomenon was also observed in my reading of 1919. Yet we fear them (Muslims} because we are convinced they are out to take away our way of life. I consider it merely to be a subplot rooted in Imam rhetoric, albeit rooted in the Quran, a fear that is snatched up by people on both sides of the equation living in fear. In every case there is a fear of one group of people taking away an object even if that object is an idea (ideal) from another group of people.

What if we did away with the groups of people? Sounds too much like communism. What if we did away with the objects? Sounds too much like Jesus. Oddly enough communism banned the teachings of Jesus. What was he teaching? Jesus was teaching that we are all one. When you make a slight on another you are making a slight upon yourself. When you make a gift for another you are making a gift for yourself. When you are giving up a material thing for another, you are gaining a material thing for yourself. When you live at the sake of another you are slighting that other man and thus slighting yourself. We are all one of one singular mind and that is to love (allow another to exist just as he/she is) and be happy with that reality (accept it). The average bear does not see or perhaps does not want to see it that way because he is not at one with himself. There is no singularity of the mind that would enable him to transcend his body temple. Therefore, he spends his energy consuming more things to make his body, family, village, city, nation, more comfortable.

Therefore groups of people build temples, shrines, or monuments that while intended to unite people, they miss all people, ending up with a group of people and therefore have unacceptable separate realities full of conflict, whether intended in its origin or not. Historically we find it to be a part of human nature to behave this way individually and as nations. We have failed to understand that the basic tenant of conflict is the failure to recognize that the human race is all one, the world is a billion piece jigsaw puzzle, where one damaged or missing piece renders the whole puzzle worthless. To break through, can we suspend with the idea of temples, as they are symbols of our separateness? Can we get rid of symbols as they unintentionally classify, which is a proponent of the process of division? These very questions suggest we do away with religion, government, and science, as we know them. They can be seen as opponents to each other and to mankind when applied in the wrong spirit of mind. Daunting!!!!

In the case of WWI it is easy to pass the buck on to Germany. They had motive, preconceived intent, and the ability. There people never saw the devastation on their side of the boarder in that war allowing Hitler to light another fuse. It took the their annihilation in WWII to finally eradicate their compulsion of war like behavior as a nation. But to slight them is to slight the whole human race. Whilst we maintain a continued vigilance on Germany and Japan, we should be mindful of our own thinking as well. Our option as history would propose… annihilation

Not sure I have said anything new, but will leave it here for now. I am on to finishing, Bismarck, Crimean, and then on to techno solutions.

End notes
The Old Alliance System

1. p. 56: The maintenance of Austria-Hungry as a Great Power became a major foreign policy goal of Germany, both on diplomatic grounds, since Austria was seen as Germany’s only ally, and because any internal crisis in Austro-Hungry might have repercussions in Germany.
2. p. 57: In the years between the Bosnian crisis and the outbreak of the First World War, four things were forcing a reassessment and tightening up of the alliance system in Europe. The upheavals in Turkey which encouraged Russian hopes of compensating for their humiliation in the Far East by gains in the Balkans, …Austrians must act vigorously against Serbia to prevent the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy…the German naval building was a threat to Britain’s imperial interest,…German belief they must take action in order to ensure that the world balance of power was in their favor, … the hopes of the French, using the alliance with Russia to obtain the return of Alsace and Lorraine.
3. p. 63: on the period before 1914: Although the Germans had given the Austrians some diplomatic support at certain points in crisis, the Balkan quarrels had not escalated into European war because the Germans were not prepared to give their ally free hand against Serbia.
4. p. 65: The realization by the Germans that Austria-Hungry was her only reliable ally and that she must be supported at all costs in any policies which Austrians thought essential for survival of the Habsburg State, was an important motive for the German decisions of July 1914; and these decisions have been seen in terms of the Austrian belief that Germany had not supported her sufficiently in the previous years.
5. p. 66: The existence of the alliance system above all conditions expectations laid about the form of a war would take if it broke out, and about who were likely to be friends and enemies. These expectations laid down broad lines of strategic planning, so that general staffs were taking decisions, which often committed them to irreversible military actions if war threatened.

Militarism, Armaments and Strategy

6. p. 70: by 1912 the German authorities were so worried about the Social Democrats won a third of the votes in the Reichstag, they had serious doubts about increasing the size of their army. …the government succeeded in1913 in carrying a three year law through parliament, the anti-militarist movement was strong enough for any government to take into account the mood of the conscripts before starting a war.
7. p. 71 in a town hall conflict a soldiers telegram “ Town Hall occupied by the military. We urgently desire information as to the reasons in order to reassure the excited citizens.” Satirists might laugh at this episode, but it was a sign of the readiness of Germans to accept without question the orders of anyone in a military uniform.
8. p. 72 While the general acceptance of military values by large sections of the German public may have contributed to the mood which made war possible and to the enthusiasm with which the outbreak of war was greeted, the most important aspect of the role of the German army in the coming war was its freedom from civilian political control
9. p. 77 And Winston Churchill, who became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, as result of changes in the cabinet….: I must explicitly repudiate the suggestion that Great Britain can ever allow another naval power to approach her so nearly as to deflect or to restrict her political action by purely naval pressure.” The German government was in fact hoping for just that and wanted political concessions in exchange for naval disarmament.
10. p. 79 The structure of German society gave a special role to the army and produced a special respect for military values. The naval policies of the Kaiser and Tripitz aroused British foreign antagonism and began a naval race which had important social and economic effects as well as producing a radical change in British foreign policy.
11. p. 88 The King withdrew from, politics and Alexander became Prince Regent, while Pasic announced dissolution of parliament and new elections for 1 August. Thus, because of tension between the army and the civilian government, Serbia was in the midst of a major political crisis at the moment of the assignation of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
12. p. 90: Traditions of terrorism and conspiracy going back to the years of Turkish rule contributed an element of instability in both domestic and foreign policy (Serbian)…. Yet in the summer of 1914, when the Serbian army had not yet recovered from efforts in the Balkan wars, was hardly the moment for Serbia to provoke such a war; the evidence does not suggest that either the Serb government or the army command wanted to do so.
13. p. 91: The pace was set by Germany trying, for a variety of reasons, to shift world balance of power in her favor even if it involved a risk of war.

The Primacy of Domestic Politics

14. p. 109: notably that of Germany as we shall see, foreign policy was sometimes used as a way of providing a focus for national feelings so as to distract attention away from divisions and tensions of German society
15. p. 111: The Austro- Hungarian government believed that the establishment of some sort of control over Serbia was essential for the survival of their state.
16. p.111: The Liberal government had been in power in England since 1905 and there were many among supporters who held to tradition of …Gladstone, and believed that the balance of power was a dangerous concept, that expenditure on armaments was both wasteful and wicked and that Britain’s policy should be to maintain the freedom of trade and to keep herself free of foreign entanglements.
17. p. 115: If we look for responsibility for the First World War in the political and constitutional arrangements of the belligerent states, then the structure of the British government can be held responsible for Grey’s reluctance openly to commit Britain to support France and Russia before he was absolutely convinced he could carry his party with him.
18. p. 117: if a war was to come, it would have to be overran issue which would appear to the French public as involving a direct threat to France. For this reason the French government appeared to the Russians to be unreliable allies.
19. p. 117: French Prime Minister Poincare was convinced the he could produce a mood of national unity as was prepared to use his presidential prerogatives as far as they could possibly be stretched in order to do so. Domestic politics were to be subordinated to foreign policy.
20. p. 120: It was by then already clear to Poincare that the strength of anti-militarism had been exaggerated and that mobilization would proceed without interference from socialist or syndicalists.
21. p. 124: The Tsar himself was sometimes influenced by similar ideas for the reconstruction of central Europe. He told a rather bewildered British ambassador in April 1913 that he believed the disintegration of the Austrian Empire was only a matter of time.
22. p. 130: with regard to Germany, There is evidence that, at least from the 1890s, members of imperial government believed a vigorous foreign policy and encouragement of an aggressive nationalist spirit would be one way of overcoming the particularist sentiments in the individual states and producing a mood of national unity comparable to that of 1870.
23. p. 131: Bulow had successfully fought Reichstag elections of 1907 with slogans which combined nationalism, colonialism, and anti-socialism.. However the supporters of the view that it was concern for (German) domestic polititics that determined the conduct of German foreign policy would argue that this was more than just a matter of using foreign political issues for the immediate purpose of winning a particular election, and that foreign policy was deliberately used as a means of manipulating public opinion so as to create a sense of solidarity among German people and overcome the social and political divisions which were seen as a threat to every existence of the German Empire. The attraction of colonial Empire, a large fleet and an active policy would serve both as a basis for rallying the loyal elements around the Kaiser and government and as a means of countering the threat of a growing socialist movement.
24. p. 132: It is unlikely that German naval building would have been pursued so enthusiastically without the Kaiser’s personal commitment to the creation of a German fleet. This was no doubt partly the result of his own psychology – his emotional need to show himself the equal of his British relatives, and his country equal to England, which he both loved and hated.
25. P. 139: Between 1912 and the outbeak of the war, much nationalist propaganda was explicitly linking calls for preparation for war with the hope that a war might put an end to social democracy. ... While other members of the German government and high command believed that there was little point in postponing a war which they considered inevitable. Bethmann, with his eyes on the internal situation, was concerned that a war if it cam should appear to be one in which Germany was attacked by Russia. … From the time of Engals and Marx onwards, socialists had always believed that war against Russia, the most reactionary power in Europe would be justified, however they might criticize militarism at home.

The International Economy

26. p. 161: The international bankers were in a paradoxical position, symbolic perhaps of the whole capitalist system in Europe before 1914. Pm one hand, through their close collaboration with governments, they encouraged by their investment policy the consolidation of alliances and the growth of colonial rivalries. On the other hand the benefited by the flow of international trade and had an interest in uninterrupted international tension.
27. p. 164: The British share of world trade was falling…they had older industries. From a purely economic view of the United States was at least as dangerous a rival a Germany yet there was not talks of growing antagonism between the two. Sir Edward Grey in 1906 “ The economic rivalry (and all that) do not give much offence to our people, and they admire her steady industry and genius for organization. But the do resent mischief making. They suspect the Emperor of aggressive plans of Welpolitik, and they see that Germany is forcing the pace of armaments in order to dominate Europe and is thereby laying a horrible burden of wasteful expenditure upon all the other powers.
28. p. 168: Certainly there were industrialist and military men who hoped the war once begun would end with a peace that would extend their markets or safeguard their strategic position ( Field Marshal Hindenburg was to justify his demands for large annexations from Russia with the words “I need them for maneuvering of my left wing in the next war”)… Bethman approved a program of extensive annexations in the west to be followed in the pushing back of the Russian frontier and ending Russian control over non Russian [people … these gains that Germany went to war and that alone seemed to provide a way out of economic difficulties and contradictions so widely apparent in the spring of 1914.

Imperial Rivalries

29. p. 176 During the 1890s the main imperial rivalries had been between Britain ND France in Africa and Britain and
30. p. 176: Russia in the Far East. Britain and France had been close to war in 1898 over their claims to the upper Nile.
31. p. 181: For Britain in 1914 the threat to the empire which Germany appeared to represent was not a threat to any particular colony – as we shall see, right down to the outbreak of war there was always room for agreement between the two countries on specific colonial questions.
32. p. 181/182: Welpolitik or imperialism in this very general sense – and this was one of the reasons why it could serve as a unifying force for many different groups in German society – seemed to give purpose and a new mission to German state.
33. p. 188: The Turkish government ware increasingly concerned that their obvious weakness, after their defeats in Tripoli and Balkan wars made them vulnerable to a threat of partition, and they became convinced that they had more to fear from Russia than from Germany.
34. p. 181: Nevertheless the case of Turkey – like that of China a decade earlier – and the complex story of Anglo-German co-operation and rivalry there suggest that here was an area in which imperialist rivalries among European Great Powers were contributing to the instability which made the outbreak possible.
35. p. 191: Giolitti states: Tripolitania is a province of the Ottoman Empire, and Ottoman Empire is a European great power. The integrity of what remains of the Ottoman Empire is one of the principles on which equilibrium an peace is based… Can it be in the interests of Italy to shatter one of the cornerstones of the old edifice? And what if after we have attacked Turkey, the Balkans begin to stir? And what if a Balkin war provokes a clash between the two power blocs and a European war? Can it be that we can shoulder the responsibility of putting a match to the powder?
36. p. 192: Certainly Italy’s imperialist war was one of the sparks lighting what one historian has called the long fuse linking the outbreak of the First Wiorld War to remote origins in the Balkins.
37. p. 192: The outbreak of war in 1914 wa not caused by immediate imperialist rivalries; and Germany’s aspirations for colonial territory might well have been achieved by agreement with Britain if the Germans had been prepared to abate their claims to naval hegemony. Nevertheless weak independent states such as Morocco and Ottoman were a temptation for the imperialist.
38. p 195: Imperialist thinking had always accepted the risk of war and regarded armed struggle as an essential part of imperial extension, even though tin fact imperialist was had hitherto for the most part been limited in scope. By 1914 this intensified the crisis in which German ambitions, French grievances, Russian expansionism, British anxieties and Austrian fears lead to decisions that war was inevitable.

The Mood of 1914

39. p. 199: But the mood in which peoples of Europe accepted and in some cases welcomed the idea of war was not just the result of the way in which their governments had justified their immediate political decisions. It was founded on the accumulation of national traditions and attitudes which had formed beliefs about the nature of the state and authority, reinforced by the curriculum in schools over the past decades and the kind of language in which politicians and journalists had discussed international relations.
40. p. 203: at the Tsar’s initial peace conferences in 1899 and 1907, the Kaiser declared: I’ll go along with the on conference comedy but I’ll keep my dagger at my side during the waltz.
41. p. 204 Most members of the peace movement were anxious to stress that their attempts to reform their system of international relations and to reduce armaments did not mean they lacked patriotism… “ We cannot continue criticism of policy which has led to this war as we did in the case of South Africa, for our safety is at stake. We can none of now think of anything but this one object”.
42. p. 204: Among socialist, “The working man has no country” the Communist Manifesto had proclaimed in 1848, “National differences and antagonisms are daily more and more vanishing owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, the freedom of commerce, the world market, the corresponding thereto.
43. p. 204: The internal regime of a stat was opposing Russia was of little importance: Turkey, for example as in the Crimean War was on the side of history because, as Engals put it a few years later: “A subjectively reactionary force can in foreign policy fulfill an objectively revolutionary mission.
44. p. 208: in France the revolutionary syndicalists and some socialists were calling for general strike in the event of mobilization… the French departments were busy revising the lists of people who were to be arrested in the event of mobilization.
45. p. 210: in Germany, they never forgot the twelve years under Bismarck’s snit-socialist law which had made many of the usual activities of political party impossible and were terrified that similar restrictions might be imposed again. …Bebel in fact accepted the socialist’s impotence in the face of German state and the Prussian military caste…
46. p. 211: In short the governments were very successful in convincing their citizens that they were the victims of aggression and in appealing to immediate feelings of patriotism and self-preservation which proved stronger than any internationalist convictions.
47. p. 217. When the war broke out, the British at least were encouraged by their newspapers, propagandists and religious leaders to attribute the war specifically to the influence of two German writers, the philosopher Fredrick Nietzche and the historian Heinrich von Treitschke.
48. p. 218: The moment the State proclaims “Your State and the existence of your State are now at stake” selfishness disappears and party hatred is silenced…In this consists the grandeur of war, that trivial things are entirely lost sight of in the great ideal of the State.
49. p. 223: Baden-Powell enabling the British Empire to survive: “We must all be bricks in the wall of that great enterprise – the British Empire – and we must be careful that we do not let our differences of opinion on politics and other questions grow so strong as to divide us.”

A Peace to End All Peace

2009-06-29T09:27:00.002-04:00

A Peace to End All Peace
by David Frokman

This book could have easily been titled “What If” or even better yet “Only If” as it describes at world leader level in detail not only intentions that were miss understood, but also entangled with poor timing of superseding events. If you had ever heard disparaging comments on Churchill as the prime instigator, this book helps you visualize that he was indeed a prime mover, surrounded by a cacophony of leaders on the rise and fall, as we were all twisted by a press leading their peoples into war and a peace that has yet to be achieved. Other prime mover instigators are The Mark Sykes the co author of the infamous Sykes - Picot Agreement between England and France to partition the Ottoman Empire. Infamous do to through his naivete, as it turns out. Also to the cast of British arrogance was Lord Kitchener’s march towards folly in the Middle Eastern debacle. And finally the granddaddy of them all was the British PM Lloyd George, who pulled the strings of many.

This book is clearly from a British perspective as it describes the art of getting the bureaucratic politics right, the chief endeavor of the book. It was clearly akin to the work of Picasso. The chief story plot in the framework of history is the Great Game which was to shield Britain's road to India from the motives of Russia and then France. It was a game where Russia plays a Central Role in the beginning through deception, the middle through folly, and the end through deception. If written by a Russian author it would be only slightly twisted through logical story telling that the British made all their strategic decision from a standpoint of paranoia.

As a late comer to World War One an American can say that Wilson, lost in his own theories of sovereign destiny, was duped by all sides in the conflict and the peace process. I mention this to help the American reader appreciate history's cause and effect and learn you must make a paradigm shift to the perspective of WWI to learn a critical lesson pertinent to our involvement in the Middle East. The book provides a worthy plot in a panoramic view worth the time to read you find nascent Modern Middle East politics entwined with the politics of the Great Powers in a time where the paradigm of a Palestinian State was lost, and still is. In the brokering of Palestinian land Syria was granted to the House of Hussein, and not the Palestinians. This huge gap in fate is only the collective total of what is still an enigma today which is peace. Leaders of that time left today’s world leaders, still blind to that oversight and now buried in time, trying to divide a small piece of unproductive land in Israel when in fact the fruitful land of Arab Syria is rightfully Palestinian. Even the author of this book, a historian uncovers the folly, but does not recognize what is right before his eyes. A paradigm shift in history is still at large.

The first British domino after the Duke Ferdinand was assassinated in Serbia drawing Russia and Germany at odds in a land where Great Britain was beholden as essential to the Great Game. It was only an excuse to go to a pending war to settle brewing international intrigue. Keep in mind this is only 55 years after the Crimean War over the very similar world order. To ward off such a folly; if only the world knew of Churchill’s intentions regarding Turkey, much like his arm waving in the 1930's. If only England knew anything at all about the inner movements of the Ottoman Empire's rising new leaders, and a missed opportunity to bring the Turks in on the side of the Western Allies. If only British admirals at sea actually knew that in their first attack on the Dardanelles, the Turks were out of bullets and evacuating the city, and a simple sail in to the harbor was all that was required to take The Ottoman Empire out of the war. If only.… WWI would have been reduced to a mere conflict. But rather the folly of deception and intrigue between Russia, and England, as the Great Game for the passage to India found new wrinkles of deceptive quagmire that would spin mankind into further world disorder. The deal, missed deal, and counter dealing between the West and the Middle Eastern factions would never have allowed to bloom into the man eating orchid that it had.

Delving into the first layer the reader learns that the partners that went in to WWI as allies came out some as adversaries and some as reluctant partners. Of course the agendas of the alliances were of equally folly as the reasons for their break ups. In every case the rationale could not be substantiated by any argument of self interest. Russia effectively changed sides in the peace process and found alignment with Germany. France and Britain lost their way over Syria. In the process of each country’s effort to out maneuver their partner in a political dance with their new dance partner in their face amidst dance partners among the Muslim survivors who had not learned how to dance to a sovereign tune. All that was missing was a “Square Dance Caller’. This found France with a mandate over a reluctant people and Britain over a vast disparate people that it could not afford to rule.

Where Britain had an opportunity to reach her goal of an empire that ran up the East coast of Africa, across the Middle East and in to India, her deceit in politics domestically and internationally led to the squandering of a peace founded in the footings of democratic rule. This book draws an ironic parallel to that of the American Colonists of the folly in colonial management of far away lands. The difference is is found in the American rue where their subjects who aware of the democratic process and were once amicable with the British Parliament and Crown. In the case of the Middle East mandates that went to Britain, they had no clue of parliamentary procedure and could only judge Britain on the early promises that they could not keep, because they were financial and politically, both domestically and internationally, exhausted.

This book provides detailed account of my summary. The reader gets to agonize over the near misses of peace. The chance for world order seemed always around the corner with ill timed or misplaced communications that would set world leaders off in to a direction totally against their lost goals and objectives. In the end you are as exhausted from frustration as you learn the belligerents of the war and the antagonists of the peace, there were no winners to be found. The following are synopsis’ of a few near misses and of intrigue.

1. The British government was unaware of Turkish diplomatic activity of CUP ( young Turks) and did not realize that the Porte was urgently seeking a Great Power Alliance rather than with Germany.

2. Admiral De Robeck's withdrawal from a Sea – land battle that the Turks had already retreated from combined with the army who failed to attack an enemy who had run out of ammunition. For Winston Churchill, who was only hours away from victory, was to become the torment of his life. It was more than a personal triumph that had slipped through his fingers. It was also his last chance to save the world in which he had grown up: to win a war while the familiar, traditional Europe of traditional established monarchies and empires still survived.

3. al-Faruqi a rogue Arab emissary under no authority form Hussein found himself negotiating the Damascus Protocol drawing up boarders of a partitioned Ottoman Empire with Britain. Language combined with British exuberance, hindered accuracy of the lines...But the geographical references made by McMahon for Britain were hazy. Was reference made for example to the city of Damascus, the environs of Damascus, or the province of Damascus? Did "districts" mean wilayahs (environs) or vilayets (provences)? Was it al-Faryuqi who spoke of districts, or was it McMahon or Clayton? By districts did the British mean towns? The significance of the Aleppo-Homs-Hama-Damascus demand had been bitterly debated ever since. For decades afterward s partisans of an Arab Palestine argued that if those four geographical terms were properly understood, boarders would be different. British Cairo had promised that Palestine would be Arab; while partisans of a Jewish Palestine argued the reverse. In a sense the debate was pointless; McMahon deliberately used phrases so devious as to commit himself to nothing at all. In fact the cities in question were merely four stops on a French railway, connecting Constantinople power to the Hejaz.

4. Whether or not they constituted a majority in the city- and the then current Encyclopedia Britannica indicated that they did not- the Jews were economically preponderant, Baghdad, along with Jerusalem, was one of the two Jewish cities of Asia, and a thousand years before had become the seat of if Diaspora- the head of Jewish religion in the Eastern Diaspora- and this the Capitol of Oriental Judaism. Jews in large numbers lived in the Mesopotamian provinces of Basra and Baghdad since the time of captivity by Babylonians about 600 BC and this settled in the country a thousand years before the coming of Arabs in 634 AD. Recognition of this could have found a Jewish State in Baghdad.

5. Weizman (Jewish leader to Palestine, was introduced the Feisal. He wrote, He is a leader! He is quite intelligent and very honest man, handsome as a picture! He is not interested in Palestine, but on the other hand he wants the while of Northern Syria and Damascus.. Grist contemptuous of the Palestinian Arab whole he doesn't even regard as Arab.

6. The Syrian National party of 1920 did insist on full immediate independence for Syria and was also prepared to recognize a Jewish National home in Palestine. At the same time an Arab delegation from Palestine confronted the British military governor with a resolution opposing Zionism and petitioning part of an independent Syria.

7. When the Palestinian – Jewish question came up the map of the time held that Palestine included what is now Jordan and part of Syria. By 1923 what was once Palestinian, became “token booby prize gifts” to Saudi kings who were not awarded Saudi Arabia and the Jews were left with a barren land to win 35 years and another World War later by comparison called Israel. Today we find ourselves further subdividing the small strip of land called Israel into two separate states on of which already has internal strife leading to further fractionating of Palestinian people.

8. Brought out in parallel events were the Bolshevik excursions of intrigue into Afghanistan and India including what is now Pakistan. This in conjunction with their return to the remains of the Ottoman Empire confounded British strategy to maintain their newly established supremacy of the Great Game. There was a keen fear of Bolshevism among all western powers long before the Totalitarian Communism fear took root. It was in the context of Jewish borne conspiracy that the second Russian Revolution was seen by British officials as the latest manifestations of a bigger conspiracy. Jews were prominent among the Bolshevik leaders; so the Bolshevik seizure of power was viewed by many within British government as not merely as German inspired but as Jewish directed. In the West Bolshevism was a threat to the order of rule by Captains & Kings” more-so that a threat to the liberties of the individual man. One can clearly see that the Jews had to win Israel, despite England’s attempts to "help them along".

In conclusion this strictly British view of the events the of 1915 to 1923 laid the frame work for continued hostilities from the Mediterranean Ocean to the Pacific Ocean open to further settlement by the last of political means…wars. It is clear that at the time the attempted colonial state, while it may have momentarily taken advantage of the local people deserving of self determination, there existed a temporary sense of law and order. The British pull back for what ever reason left one sixth of our world population to figure out how to organize a civilized form of government in a world that at the time was fully vested in nation building through self determination and democratic process. These people only knew government through edicts of corrupt Caliphs through the process of suzerainty. India, a non Muslim country figured it out as they actually maintained the quality aspects of the ruler they later threw out. A lesson learned.

So this leaves a question on Iraq and Afghanistan . Will the United States along with its half hearted world partners repeat the mistake made by the British 86 years ago? Will our efforts to plant the seeds of self determination, beginning at the will of the people take root without the nurturing akin to what France gave to the United States in 1776, or what United States provided to Japan and Germany in the aftermath of WWII? Or will the vacuum left in a premature pullback be a perpetuation of a region in continual conflict? Taking the unfortunate reality of rogue leaders out of the equation to maintain the scope of this book: If history can be of value, the lessons learned are for our world leaders of today to get past the agendas of attack and fear, and on to the recognition of the values found in world peace?

The number one obstacle to learning the truth about ourselves is fear founded in belief in scarcity that perpetuates greed and power. To over come that fear we must first have trust in ourselves and then in our neighbors. In a world of trust comes a world of knowing, a world of intelligence. It was the that lack of intelligence that led to the folly of wars producing more human destruction than any other period in history. This book exposes the need to re-prioritize that lesson learned. A must read.

The Templars

2009-10-12T19:22:00.003-04:00

The Templars
By Piers Paul Read

If you are looking for proof that the Templars and the succeeding secret society of the Free Masons have something over on the Catholic Church, this book is not for you. If you want a thorough academic glimpse of a period of history that still reaches in to today, read this book. The author does a nice job putting the history in the context of the times and not only building a bridge to a current times paradigm, but he also crosses that bridge through the use of quotes from historians from intermediate eras along the way. What makes this book a prize is its collegiate delivery of the history with no appeal of hype to those looking to bash the Catholic Church by making martyrs of the Knights of the Temple. While it may have been the agenda for King Philip of France, this is one French trait that is put to rest.

As a fact finder, one would find more interest in the mechanics and strategy of civil governments on a world stage post collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Western Civilization and European colonialism than who hid the Lost Sea Scrolls. More intriguing than any hype about the Templars is reading how the Church became a central influence over King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Baron, Duke, Knight, and serf of philosophy and hence a defacto government including financing of all causes espoused by said philosophy. What made the read intriguing was the sorting out of the back and forth chess match of politics between kings and popes where the Knights Templar and the average man, of any era, gets either caught in the cross fire or lost in the fog. The book in the process of history conveys first the selling and financing of crusades. In that process money and power overshadow what may have been honorable ideals where church and state collude to dismantle the Templars, the very arm that brought them both. In the end the Templars have every right to take a vengeance out on first the King of France and second the Catholic Church as a reluctant accomplice. For some reason Piers Paul Read leaves hyperbole surrounding the history of Christ and his family, and any Templar vengeance to the likes of Dan Brown.

The Pitch: From the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s first razzia, the Christians’ perception was that wars against Islam were waged either in defense of Christendom or to liberate and re-conquer lands that were rightfully theirs. The selling of the first crusades began with Bernard of Clairvaux, an appointee of the King of France. Pope Urban had a voice through Bernard. But in the rise to a decision to crusade the pope did not simply dream up the idea of crusading as a case had to be made. In the Latin Church, Alexius approached Pope Urban: His Ambassadors admitted to the Council at Piacenza and the Council fathers listened to their eloquent depiction of the suffering of their fellow Christians in the East.

In the chicken and egg quandary, the cause now properly sold to the Church ‘s highest authority, Pope Urban had a strong ally in France’s King Phillip where within his ranks was a charismatic preacher from Picardy known as Peter the Hermit who claimed to have had a letter from Heaven authorizing the crusade. So we have a collision course of tyranny, authority from God directly, and the Pope secondarily, and an ambitious King taking it to the people. The French nobles gathered in Vezelay, as had been arranged. Already the knowledge that Bernard was to preach had drawn admirers from all over France. At the core of his message was that a sojourn to the Holy Land was a once in a life time penance that all Christians should make. Sojourn, as it escalated up the ranks of the gentry and then the nobles morphed into a crusade, which went back down the social ladder compelling knights, sentinels, and servants to follow their king. When he had finished his address, so many French were ready to take the Cross that Bernard had to cut his habit into strips of cloth.

While sticking to the facts with a collegiate discipline the author spends time applying the sequence of event upon canvases of character building. Of the people in general, the church held a penitentiary obligation over the heads of their parishioners to trek and or crusade to the Holy Land, and you were guilty until you trekked. It is difficult, in the late twentieth century, when a monk is seen as an oddity on the margins of society, to understand how so many belonging to their country’s elite should have chosen a life of self-abnegation. Without necessarily doubting the sincerity of each one’s conviction that the choice for a scion of a noble house, or even the minor gentry, was then and was to remain for some time, between fighting and praying, warfare and ministry, the scarlet and black. Bernard’s power did not stem simply from influential connections: in a world where so many preached but so few practiced the Christian virtues, his piety and asceticism qualified him to act as the conscience of Christendom, constantly chastising the rich and powerful and championing the poor. Having the backing of King Philip of France only gave muscle to his message. To some modern historians, living in a period when most are indifferent to what awaits them after death, Bernard comes across as a self-righteous zealot – someone who ‘saw the world with the eye of a fanatic’ and had a disquieting tendency to take it for granted that his contemporaries were evil-doers who needed to repent. However, to Bernard, surrounded by secular brutality and clerical corruption, and utterly convinced of the reality of Hell, it was impossible to do too much to save the imperiled soul until the invention of the crusade.

Funding: With the politics of crusades, whoever really did make the final decision to crusade it had to be sold to t he people so that if could be funded. Albeit it was not always the case kings could ill afford to leave their people in a stir over an unpopular cause when he himself is embroiled in that far away cause. Leaving a Court and ministry behind that would not be tempted into a coup involved intrigue that is modestly covered in this book. The history is in the book, however because this author has little agenda towards intrigue you the reader must knit the facts together and make a case.

The funding of every crusade was essential to the politics of the crusade itself. The kings would look for funding first from their taxes and then through borrowing from the Church who saw their revenues from tithing who would lend at 10% interest and typically do so if the loan were backed by the Templars. These crusades and subsequent wars incurred enormous expense beyond what was initially envisioned, and the phrase a war that will be paid for by our children becomes prevalent where for example adding to the liability upon the people that Phillip had inherited from his father’s war against Aragon was around 1.5 million livres tournois. Every expedient available to the monarch was used to raise funds. Feudal obligations were exploited to the limit, and force used to extract taxes from the towns. While the author doesn’t brand the politics totalitarian, from a kings point of view it had every appearance to be as such when it came to collecting money, save the grace of the church who coerced the people into cooperation upon the crucible of guilt.

Political intrigue: What did Philip inherit you may ask: King Louis IX ‘s zeal for justice, and his scrupulous attention to the needs of the poor established his saintly reputation and an unparallel prestige, but it was taking of the Cross that set the seal of kingship: ‘crusading still held its place as the highest expression of the chivalrous ideas of the aristocracy in the west. Once the vow had been made, Louis prepared for the crusade with the same efficiency that he had shown in subduing his rebellious vassals and reorganizing the administration of France. His first objective was to raise money to fund his expedition overseas. This added a twentieth tax on the resources of the Church and subventions from the cities. And this alone was not enough for Louis did not foresee the costs of holding his winnings.

Paralleling the politics of the king and his people, the politics of all kings each individually with the Pope singularly is made clear where the Church may have sold the idea of crusading, it was the Kings and their subjects who individually made the decision to crusade. The Kings strategy included any war upon any select Muslim army and the employment of any Order including the Knights Templar to accomplish their goals. Given that the Pope had supreme authority over military orders, it shows some restraint that there was only one instance where Popes directly employed the service of any “Order” in their wars: that being in 1267 Pope Clement IV asked for Hosptaller help against the Germans in Sicily. Clearly, whether they were in the service of the popes or kings, individual knights belonging to their military orders were expected to take up arms to protect their master’s interest. That one case aside because it was through the church that taxes were collected, and it was through the Templars that funds were secured, the arrangement found the Pope, Kings, and Templars in a triangle of intrigue. The former two students of philosophy and higher learning and the latter a student of high minded honor and chivalry. The intrigue continues for close to 300 years until you read of King Philips’ disposal of the Templars in the early 1300’s and its not until the American and French revolutions that you see a bold separation of Church and State where the second shoe drops.

Appearance are not always what they seem to be: While it appears to be all about the money, not simply to launch off into a crusade but then to sustain the crusade and then support the conquered lands against re-conquest by Muslims or by rival Christian Kings led to schemes of power bestowed upon the Templars mostly by default. Honest tax collecting alone could not stand up to such goals. In the Kingdom of Aragon for example, the kings were constantly borrowing money from the Temple and in France the Order often had difficulty in meeting the royal demands to defend the lands for which their funds are underwritten. While the Church institutions were readier to lend money to the Crown if the Temple secured the loan it appeared as though the Templars were one up over both Church and State. While power is implied, the actuality of interest bearing profit did not always follow suit. In Syria and Palestine, too, the Templars’ wealth and power increased because the nobility of Outremer/Jerusalem, whose fiefs were now confined to enclaves around costal cities, could not afford to garrison their castles and so handed them over to military orders, including the Templars. In the same way that modern charities build up investments, the Templars used their funds not just to pursue the war against the Sacacens but also to extend their own estates in the East. But one must remember the expense to fortify the liberties for the people demanded by said clientele.

The appearance of cash and its accompanying power was deceiving, rising to the top of the heap of deception was King Philip of France. Despite the evidence that the Temple often had cash in hand, their running costs were considerable: in the Latin states they garrisoned and maintained at least fifty-three castles or fortified staging posts ranging from great fortresses like Castle Pilgrim to small watch towers on pilgrim routes. Though the Temple’s wealth had led to some envy, their annual income from landed property did not exceed 4,800 livers, not enough to inspire strong feelings of jealousy or a general dislike, with the exception of King Philip who was really in a power struggle with Pope Clement. James of Molay , the head of the order who at the time of French inquisition of the early 1300s had been warmly received by King Edward I when he visited England in 1294 was caught in the middle. He did not see it coming. The politics first between Philip and Pope Clement, and then the coalesced politics of neighboring kings of Europe who fell in line left the Molay and his Templar’s as the ‘odd man out’.

Due Process? While it is often called an inquisition the legal proceedings described in the book gave much to the transcendence of Jewish to Roman law as it survived through to the 14 century. Due process did exist in a primitive sense or should I say in the same way as we experience it today. The following dominoes had to fall in order for the Templars to meet their demise. First, founded to root heresy in Languedoc, and staffed by the friars of the Order of Preachers founded by Dominic Guzman, since 1234 a canonized saint, the Inquisition in France had become an instrument of coercion in the hands of the state. The chief Inquisitor, William of Paris, was King Philip’s confessor and given the King’s piety, was no doubt privy to his plans. On Sunday after the Templar’s arrest, it was Dominican preachers who first explained the reasons for the arrests at a public meeting in the King’s garden, appearing along side the officers of the King. Who was to argue?

King Philip using political maneuvering that I have come to know as typically French, put Pope Clement on the defense as a way to coerce his cooperation in the foiling of the Templars. When the trial eventually opened Clement himself defended the record of Boniface VIII, which was at the core of King Philips intrigue, before advocates of the French King, recalling his piety, his service to the Church and the many manifestations of his orthodox faith. After this, he allowed the trial to continue but, thanks to his knowledge of Roman law, was able to spin things out, either by calling for written depositions or in December 1310, by suspending the proceedings on the grounds that he was suffering one of the reoccurring bouts of his illness, thus leaving a complete distraction to evidence of Clements’ collusion with Philip against the Templars. In the end Clement only managed to slow Philip down as he found it easier to collude with the King that the head of the Knights Templar, who was not versed in politics, than to exonerate them.

While Hospitallers and the Masonic orders engaged the services of legal counsel, the Knights Templar ‘seem to have made little effort to recruit lawyers or to raise up legal experts from within their own ranks’ despite the vigilance with which the head protected their rights an immunities….James Molay later regretted his omission. Through ignorant chivalry where no prove of any allegations could be found in due process of a trial , so guilt was garnered through torture. Said Peter of Balongna of the torture of the Templar Knights to confess upon the allegations; ‘Torture, removed any freedom of mind, which is what every good man ought to have’ ‘It deprived them of memory, knowledge and understanding’ and therefore anything said under torture should be discounted, hence my earlier ascertain of a French totalitarian state which stood in varying degrees as such until 1892. What Philip won was his power back as he was persuaded by his brother, Charles of Valois, and his chief minister, Enguerrand of Marginy, that capitulating to Pope Clement on the question of the Templar’s property was a price worth paying to secure the definitive dissolution of the Order.

The evidence: King Philip IV of France was not making things up entirely. The Templar Knight left a trail of questionable activity that enabled the ‘French connection’ and conviction. in 1143; Of the seventy-three clauses in the Rule approved by the council of Troyes for the Knights of the Temple, around thirty are based on the rule of the Benedict of Nursia. Bernard and the Council fathers seemed more anxious to make monks out of knights than knights out of monks. Hence there was always an exclusive private mystery hanging over their day to day activities. When one thinks of the Knights Templar against the setting of the average educated person one must not get confused with the stories of King Arthur. The men of the order were of all sorts as it would require an Order to be completely self sustaining. They were not a band of merry chivalrous men banging mugs of mead on the table and reading scripture from the Dead Sea scrolls while shuffling the assets within their 401K accounts.

The Knights founder, Hugh of Payns proposed the incorporation of a community of knights that would follow the Rule of religious order but devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims, The Rule they had in mind was Augustine of Hippo, followed by the cannons of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Within that Order, living very Spartan lives the members of whom were not all knights, formed a close bond. They followed rigid rituals in daily life habits that may have drawn question, however the rituals were merely aimed at healthy eating and grooming separate from what may have been an imperfect world. Not intermixing with the common folks, women folk, it was easy to perceive that perhaps they were homosexual or at least homosexual activity was taking place. If it was, it was in no way a part of any Templar policy or sanction. If, therefore, one can avoid the distortions of late-twentieth century prejudice, one can be fairly certain that there was no institutionalized sodomy in the Temple as alleged by King Philip; and at the same the truth which has emerged from recent research is that the crusader frequently sold or mortgaged all his worldly wealth in hope of a purely spiritual reward. Unlike the Muslim jihad, the crusader commitment was always voluntary.
The conspiracy…or not.

Myth and history: There are 300 plus pages in this book and nothing is brought to the fore on the Mary Magdalene or the Lost Dead Sea Scroll conspiracy. There is a tremendous amount of dialogue surrounding the anti Christ and homosexual brought out by King Philip of France, home of the suggested burial of Mary Magdalene, only to be confessed to through torture. Was the Templars’ wealth extraneous in any one persons mind is a question answered only by King Philips’ condemnation of them in a power grab. Only time allowed for the culprits escape from this world where reputations live only in history books of all genres.

King Philips’ speculation did not end with the eighteenth century; in fact it has never been more feverish than it is today, creating, in words of Malcolm Barber, Britain’s foremost Templar historian, ‘a very active little industry, profitable to scientists, art historians, journalists, publishers, and television pundits alike’. Starting with esoteric claims of the Freemasons, the Templars are claimed to have been the guardians of the Holy Grail which in turn the chalice to have been used by Christ in the Last Supper, the blood line of the Merovingian kings descended from the union of Christ with Mary Magdalene, or simply the Templars’ most precious relic the Shroud of Turin.

Intriguing though such speculation may be, they betray by their use of language the lack of a plausible historical foundation: ‘the answer would seem to lie…’; ‘it seems very likely that’…’it seems certain that’…After some research, writes Andrew Sinclair in his book The Discovery of the Grail, these fantasists put forward a hypothesis. Was Christ or the Grail buried under a mountain in the south of France? Did Jesus marry Magdalene and provide the blood line of the Merovingian” Within a few pages, the assertion becomes the actual, the idea is changed into the proof… Or as Peter Partner succinctly puts it in relation to the Templars, Templarism…was a belief manufactured by charlatans for their dupes. It is this book that finally sheds light on the real culprit of the unjust case against both the Catholic Church and the Templar Knights. The first of many intrigues of French…imperialism?

I Am A Strange Loop

2008-06-09T14:17:00.003-04:00

I Am A Strange Loop
By Michael Hofstadter

How real is X to you...the moment you start taking X for granted, then it would seem you would consider X's reality highly dubious.

This, a book of analogies and metaphors, presents a plethora of academic notions in a down to earth way, spinning science subjects such as physics, mathematics at the logical level, chemistry, psychology, humanities, and a touch of theology, to describe the human experience, which Hofstadter calls a Strange loop. He brings in a lot of his humble personality and subtle sense of humor to help the reader feel like his best friend is telling you about a crazy dream he had the night before. In keeping with the spirit of the book I recognize that every reaction or review would carry the bias of the reviewer’s life experience, whether that be one of science, business, art, sports, spiritual, or just a plain ordinary person…most of us. I am going with the human experience henceforth. With regard to the human experience Hofstadter suggests that in order to perceive our universe, you must have a soul, described in the book as that with the capability to interpret the symbols of the universe.

From small to large, while there is a DNA make up that begins things, Hofstadter puts forward the notion, backed with enough thought to be the foundation of a thesis, but not enough to make a boring academic read, that DNA must be capable eventually through development in chemical communication of powering enough energy to a.) Interpret symbols, b.) Share these symbols with other beings, and c.) Care about the other being. Please understand not I did not state the possibility of a soul to be strictly the domain human beings. Hofstadter, in no way suggests the human being as the center of thought but in many ways implies that souls are not dependent on the human form. This is clearly in sync with Emerson, and Jesus to name a couple souls, but is scientifically based in the 21st century.

What you come to more fully appreciate as a result of reading this book is not ABC as I described in the above paragraph, but CBA in that a soul cares about others, if for no other reason than because what symbols you project, are the symbols you receive. In other words the definition of You resides within the essence of You; a strange loop when looked at it from almost every scientific vantage point. These ideas, while they come into my life from a totally different direction, coincide with to the teaching in Unity’s Course In Miracles, where coincidences are noteworthy, or maybe a strange loop.

In my first reaction to the book I draw a question. Is the quest for power merely the expression to be immortal, to live on through the expressed patterns of your mind, the liaison and ambassador of your soul, by touching the souls of the multitudes? Is this the treasure beyond the deepest chest of gold? Hofstadter begins his answer to this by describing famous people who have left legacies behind. For example he uses Johan Sebastian Bach’s music; not just his music that was heard in the present but in his sheet music notes, patterns of his soul, composed to live in the lives/souls of many others for centuries to come. The notes are experienced again and again, not just buy the performers but the listeners producing moods and reactions that then manifest themselves with a life of their own to be transmitted through other souls. He recognizes that with each “knowledge transfer” there is a degree of separation, but the life pattern of Bach lives on in the mind of man well beyond the expiration of his body.

Using physics metaphor Hofstadter makes up a cranium to illustrate the expansion and more importantly the reduction of thought as a person interprets reality. In the Craniem box there are large balls and there are real small beads sized balls all moving and vibrating in the box. The beads size balls represents reality at microscopic DNA/molecule/atomic level. That is how things are!! Given that the human brain cannot interpret this with any level of survivable efficiency, it begins the process of categorization or distilling small sims (the beads) into larger simballs reducing a multitude of input into a symbolic (large ball) interpretation of reality. We at human level live life at the symbolic "large ball" level, which in society one must clearly appreciate that misunderstood symbols can be very apt at twisting the story in the way things really are. Hofstadter calls this Epiphenomenon, which can be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.

After Hofstadter busts your brain with a short foray in Principia Mathamatecia and logical equations only to prove that it is purely logical to define yourself using variables within your self, (Goedel), he spends the last half of the book bringing physics and logic to simple human. He begins this by applying his personal experience in the loss of his wife. His bereavement was not for his loss but for what his deceased wife is missing. He describes the entwinement of souls as the experience he had with his wife as the reason he can contemplate that she (her patterns/symbols) in fact do live on at least through him. The term he discusses is Entwinement where dualism in consciousness is at work. Where Hofstadter settles on right/left brain at a scientific level, I would prefer brain/soul and wonder why Hofstadter cannot do so in the book.

Hofstadter accepts the notion of soul mates as though very plausible but more occult in nature as opposed to science, so he cannot support it. He suggests, “If souls are patterns then “I” can exist outside (separate from) a body. I think Hofstadter’s only hang-up is his sole experience in life is through academia. When Hofstadter writes: There are shallower aspects of a person and their dependant aspects, and the deeper aspects are what imbue the shallower ones with genuine meaning. If our souls have a deep resemblance, then our beliefs will be the same, and we will intuitively resonate with each other.” I am convinced academia is his only hang up with regard to this subject.

On the heels of this personal subject Hofstadter explores the “I” or the “I’ness” experience. He springs into it with a quote from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. '' Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs. Why? Why was it that in case of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved and commit suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rises that must be fulfilled after death? Because it is as though the one who is left stays for a time on stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is leave, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living?'' In his discussion on this excerpt he says not only do we find us individually an “I” (one person-one soul or caged bird) but as social beings a dependency to live on in each brain contains multiple strange loops of one another. We are all One. I think Jesus was quoted as saying that and John Lennon wrote a song on and in the same spirit.

To make his ideas really stick Hofstadter speaks on Love. To summarize: “in death of a body, though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word love cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”, the mere deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you; the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind in humanity.” In this, one should find sufficient meaning to make the next choice and every succeeding choice one with an elevated conscience. I was recently challenged with the question; why would I care if my spirit lives on, I want to be here now. After writing this review my answer to this person is; if you could find comfort in a way to live beyond death or outside your body, you would first transcend the fear of death and then fear itself. With this transcendence you would live your "here and now" in a much more satisfying way.

I Am In A Strange Loop
By Paul Murphy

THE DANCE OF SYMBOLS IN YOUR BRAIN...to spot the gist
The dance of I and we flow with the grist
To symbol’s tune on the grand universe's ballroom floor
Time made in eons of mankind locked behind a door
Or seconds of fleeting thought the footsteps in unison
Exchanged at a glance in love of which there is no comparison
Whispering breaths of intimacy in a spirit of feelium
Waltzing souls of universal One
We, under halo of midnight's son

Condi –v- Hillary

2009-03-31T11:20:00.009-04:00

Condi –v- Hillary
By Dick Morris

This book is the brainchild in every way of Bill Clinton’s political strategist, Dick Morris. His agenda is clear. Dick Morris takes it for granted in 2005 that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and the only person within the Republican Party that can stand up to her is Condolezza Rice. He spends time in the book making and remaking the profile for Hillary Clinton. She is a political animal that will pander for votes and say or not say what needs to be said strictly for the purpose of achieving the highest office in the United States of America. Condolezza’s on the other hand was at the time our sitting Secretary of State with a robust agenda, and no time, or desire for the same goal.

Morris’ agenda is to generate a public ground swell to persuade her to take the challenge. Morris missed on both accounts. While Hillary Clinton did leave her post as a New York Senator to pursue the White House and fell short, Condolezza Rice upheld her responsibility as our Secretary of State and did not put her hat in the ring. Morris spent a bit of time creating the political backdrop for the hoped for race. He also spent a bit of time on the strategy that he assumes Clinton would take and then the countermeasures that he would recommend for Rice. To that end Morris is not the political strategist to the first African-American female president and remains an author.

The nuggets I captured however are the comparisons of the two women, the former and current Secretaries of State. These comparisons are useful today for many. Foreign leaders may need a quick comparison of dossiers, to prepare for a change in tone and style as there is a changing of the guard in our State Department. The general public will benefit when listening to the news sound bites that once came from Rice and will now be heard from Clinton.

When reading the book with expectation of keeping score for a United States President I found myself using a very different score card than I would if scoring for a Secretary of State. Making that translation finds me somewhat objective, for the first time, of Clinton and somewhat critical of Rice. It’s easy to be objective of someone with no appreciative track record on the subject. While it would appear easier to be objective with a person who’s whole career is based on foreign policy, there are a lot more data points that could cause one to be more critical. It is my hope that my translating Morris’ comparisons here will cause my readers to formulate their own opinions and then compare them to the conclusions I arrive at. My conclusion is comes after eh list of comparisons. So to be fair, please do not speed read to the end without allowing time to formulate your own opinion. Sharing them on this site may be enlightening for all.

The following are paraphrases from Dick Morris’ book Condi Vs Hillary where there is a purposeful comparison of the two women. Out of context of the book, there is an appearance of redundancy where the reader of the review does not benefit from the detail in context of the situation where the comparison was made. If you need to go get the book. I invite you to take in my work here and comment with your own contrasts and opinions.

Success and the Coat-tails of Success

1. Hillary: Though a bright and talented graduate at Yale Law School, Hillary had failed her D.C. bar exam and would have a hard time landing a top position in Washington. Women lawyers were not yet in strong demand, and a bar a failure would have been a major strike against her. An easy alternative was Arkansas, where se had passed the bar the previous year and had since been admitted to practice law. Her decision to move to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and accept a teaching position in a clinic handling criminal law – a subject in which she had never before shown any interest – changed her destiny and paired her future with Bill Clinton’s. When he was elected governor. She was named the Rose Law Firms first woman partner. When he was elected president, she ultimately evolved into a Senate candidate from New York.

Condi: Condi was never married and her success has never been a matter of hitching her wagon to the political fortunes of any powerful man. Instead, she advanced strictly on her own merits. She began her career by excelling as an academic and specializing in foreign affairs. Eventually she brought that that expertise to a family of presidents. But it was always Condi’s own accomplishments that made her a prominent figure. When she was still in her twenties, she was elevated to the Stanford University faculty. She came to Washington during the administration of President George H. Bush because she had impressed the National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who met her at Stanford. After her White House experience, she so impressed the incoming president of Stanford that he asked her to be the provost…Through Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, she met then governor George W. Bush , and prepared him for the foreign policy issues. The younger Bush was so impressed by Condi’s abilities that he appointed her National Security Advisor and then secretary of state.

Experience

2. Hillary: came to the White House as a wife, with no experience in government, no portfolio, no administrative experience.

Condi: Rice entered the White House as a high-level expert, charged with guiding America through the delicate process of German reunification, the dismantling of the Soviet’s satellite empire in Eastern Europe, and the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union itself. Condi: while in the White House quietly advanced and enhanced her reputation in the field of national security and Soviet relations with a keen understanding of how to make the system work. She was a success.

Activism

3. Hillary: While in the White House created chaotic bureaucracy just to draft her health care bill, which happen to run more than a thousand pages. She alienated Congress – even in her own party- as well as health professionals and the press. The collapse of her reform plan was a colossal personal and professional failure on her first national public stage. But that doesn’t stop her. Hillary never stops thinking about tomorrow. Each day is devoted to plotting, scheming, preparing and positioning to advance further toward her goal.

Condi: Her style has been described as “diplomatic activism” Every day she is seen in center stage all over the globe promoting democracy by lecturing and cajoling our allies and standing tall against our adversaries. She is a creature of today.

Personal agenda

4. Hillary: is a plodder; she approaches the presidential race like a long to-do list.

Condi: is woman on a mission, but one with substantive purpose, not a personal agenda.

Riding on Coattails

5. Hillary: uses the media to bolster her image as a player in foreign affairs and defense policy, and then never points out her lack of credentials. She recently acquired a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee has given her a platform, but so far has not been influential on any important matters…At best, she merely exploits relationships her husband forged with foreign leaders while he was president. While on international trips with her husband she was given the separate first lady’s tour of schools and hospitals, she did not participate in any matters of state during her husband’s presidency and has no real experience or expertise in foreign affairs.

Condi: See previous note

Recognition

6. Hillary: wants to be recognized by big-money donors, the national media, the political establishment, and ultimately, the voters themselves in her quest for power. Hillary believes that the best path to greatness is through politics, elections debating advertising, attacking, rhetoric, and maneuvering. She campaigns. Hillary is always telling people just how good she is. Hillary has one mentor, Bill Clinton.

Condi: has always banked on her ability to win admiration from important people to propel her. Rice’s career suggests the she put her stock in excellent performance instead upward. She auditions. She believes in attracting mentors and letting people notice her abilities by themselves. Condi has many mentors Czech refugee Professor Josef Korbel (Madeleine Albright’s father), National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, Secretary of State George Schultz, and two presidents named Bush.

Promotions

7. Hillary: works day and night to achieve greatness. She demands to be promoted.

Condi: had had greatness thrust upon her, usually by men in positions of authority and power who are dazzled by her performance. It is they who seek to advance Condi.

Early Awards

8. Hillary: won no major awards in college. But she used canny timing and political smarts to achieve recognition at her graduation anyway. Having been elected president of Wellesly student government, she demanded that a student – herself - be permitted to address the graduates at the ceremony to protest the Viet Nam War and societal values. Her speech put her on the national map.

Condi: At the University of Denver, Condolezza Rice won every imaginable award. Graduating with a BA in political science, the nineteen-year-old prodigy was the most honored member of her graduating class. Admitted to the honor society Phi Beta Kappa, she won the outstanding Senior Woman Award, which the university said was the highest honor granted to a female member of the senior class whose personal scholarship, responsibilities, achievements, and contributions to the University throughout her University career deserve recognition.

Two Approaches to Greatness

9. Hillary: At the Rodham house, Hillary was under no stress for disciplined self-improvement with no sense of great obstacles to overcome.. Hillary’s own reports suggest that her childhood involved little of the structured nurturing and strict goal setting that Rice saw. Hillary writes the she grew up in a cautious, conformist era in American History and says her high school days resembled that of Grease or Happy Days. Where Rice pursued piano, flute, skating and French Hillary was playful. Rather than lessons and practice, she was just hanging out. Her elementary accomplishments mount to being elected co captain of the safety patrol. She lost her run for student council against boys and as a consolation; she was elected president of the local fan club for Fabian, a teen idol.
Hillary came of age in the context of a movement – the anti war student activism of the 1960s. In her memoir she sees herself from the start of adulthood as an agent of social change, an activist in a political world, always a part of a group, a phalanx committed to rearranging the world.

Like Hillary, the Democratic Party and its surrogate bodies deal with groups, seeking to enhance their cohesion and a feeling of commonality. The message was clear: We must hang together and move up or down this unit. The environment is tailor-made for Hillary Clinton, who learned to speak, act, and think as a group. She is a pack animal, at her best when she is a spokesperson for others, especially when attacking the group’s enemies.

Condi: Rice has a way of attracting attention and approval with her talents. Her first performance at the age of four years old was at a tea in Birmingham, at a “tea for the new teachers” where she was reportately able to read music notes before she could read letters. She was an accomplished pianist at an early age.

Her foreign policy interests date from her days as an undergraduate student at the University of Denver, where she was enthralled by Professor Josef Korbel. Rice began as she puts it to fall I love with foreign affairs. Korbel inspired her to become a professor, choosing academia over a career in law. Rice received her masters at Notre Dame and then a PhD at the University of Denver where she won a fellowship to Study at Stanford’s Center for International Security.

When Rice met Brent Scowcroft at a seminar in Washington she challenged him on his views. Brent said “this is somebody I need to get to know. It’s an intimidating subject. Here ‘s a young girl, and she is not at all intimidated.”

Rice was born of privileged professional elderly parents and was surrounded by a large community of structured support in Birmingham. She excelled in a culture of racism and stood up to it beyond the levels of her parents at every turn. She came of age rejecting group identification and insisting on her ability, as an individual, to rise above the limits her race imposed on her. In her startling rise to the top, she seems to belie the need for group cohesion or ethnic group advocacy. And, in this spirit, she identifies most profoundly with he core belief of the Republican Party: That it is the individual who matters, regardless of circumstance, geography, race, sex, or even poverty.

Their records

10. Hillary: Where Hillary’s record starts in 2000, that’s it 2000!; She passed fifteen symbolic bills, such as naming the courthouse after Thurgood Marshall and five substantive bills such as pay for city projects in response to 911. However she was particularly active in co-sponsoring bills, typically those of Republicans, to co-sponsor a bill you must simply sign ones name to it and attending a press conference – a free ride. She has been a knee-jerk supporter of bills that may gain her public visibility. Despite Hillary’s voluble pledge to fight for Israel in the Senate as she represented the state with the largest Jewish population, not a single piece of legislation, resolution, amendment or even expression of the sense of the Senate in the entire period of 2001 to 2004 even mentioned the name Israel. Yet Israel went through perilous times in those four years.

To review Hillary Clinton’s legislative proposals – most of which have not passed is also to grasp what a big spender she is. Hillary’s record as a far cry from the fiscal conservative she pretends to be as she wags her finger at the Bush deficit and demands financial restraint. In fact, as the National Taxpayers Union noted, “she has topped the Senate by sponsoring or co-sponsoring 174 spending bills.”

Hillary will deceive the public to create an image of herself as a person of real human qualities. She went on national television to tell a story of how she was a more than a New York Senator and that she was a concerned mother. She told the national audience that her daughter Chelsea was jogging around the trade center when the 911 tragedy happened. Chelsea was three miles away staring at the TV in awe like the rest of the world. She was in no danger and her mother had nothing to be concerned about.

When it came to discovery of the cost of the damage she rode Senator Chuck Schumer’s coat tail around the city and then to Washington to garner $20M from Bush. Hillary invited journalist for a chat in the aftermath where she told them that it was not Chuck Schumer but herself that was responsible for the $20M.

Condi: Under President George H. Bush Rice was right in the middle of the superpower relationship with Russia. She prepared the president for four summit meeting with Gorbachev. She traveled with Bush to Poland and Germany to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall. She participated in the first summit meeting, the Seasick Summit on 16 foot seas in the Mediterranean Sea. Bush introduced her to Gorbachev saying “ this is Condolezza Rice, she tells me everything there is to know. Gorbachev replied, “I hope you know a lot.”
In those negotiations the neo conservatives of Washington did not want to get along with the Soviets they wanted to change it. But Rice, Bush, and Secretary of State Baker were reluctant to get too far ahead of the reforms in the Soviet Union lest they undermine Gorbachev. As Rice puts it “ When you have so much power, you have to be careful not to get in the way of historical events that are going your way. Too heavy of a hand might have provoked a countermeasure.”

Rice saw the reunification of Germany as the most important issue in this entire period…because that is where the Cold War began and that was the only place that the Cold War could end. They struggled with the balance of arms reductions talks and the complete dismantling of the Soviet Union. Rice felt that “there was a race to ending the Cold war while Gorbachev was still in power. It was a very delicate balance, a very short window of opportunity, because the Soviet Union had to be strong enough to sign away its four-powers agreement, but not strong enough to stop the reunification…I always try to remind people that some year and a half, fifteen months after we managed to unify Germany, the Soviet Union broke apart, so the timing could not have been better.

Rice and Yeltsin; Rice didn’t like Boris “he struck me as mercurial and difficult” she said. Nicholas Lemann observed that when you are dealing with Condolezza Rice and you are messy and undisciplined, you’ve got two strikes against you. When she brought Yeltsin to the White House they brought him to the basement door for a low profile entrance. Yeltsin folded his arms in the back seat of the car and said I’m not going in unless we meet in the Oval Office. After they glared at each other in silence Rice said. “Well we may as well go back to your hotel” Yeltsin backed down and the meeting went on as planned to the Russian’s delight.

Style

11. Hillary: Clinton’s style in confrontations are quite personal and unusually tied with her demand for political fealty with everyone she works with. No decision is made without politics injecting themselves into the equation. In the White House when it came to making cuts in her staff it was to eliminate anyone who was not loyal to her

Condi: After she left Stanford Condi reflected “Maybe I was too much of a hard-as. Maybe if I had to do it over, I’d be a little gentler. But Condi’s hammer was coated in velvet. She was charming, very gracious, but she can really come down on you when she has to. There is no hint of favoritism in Rice’s style. At Stanford when she made budget cuts she was all business.

Affirmative action

12. Hillary: On the merits, President Clinton said that he agreed that it would be better to base affirmative action on criteria other that race and gender, But Hillary convinced him that politics would not permit such a deviation from the party line.

Condi: She walked a narrow line she felt was right, backing opportunity by supporting affirmative action in hiring of the faculty but insisting on standards by opposing the awarding of tenure based on racial or gender criteria.

Education

13. Hillary: wrote a best selling book, It Takes a Village, urging a mentoring approach to raising and educating the young. She wrote of the importance of finding role models for children so they can become sober and responsible citizens.

Condi: Condi actually lived what Hillary wrote about. Condi was a professional educator, Hillary was not. Condi’s record is not just one of advocacy, but also of action.

At their respective pinnacle

14. Hillary:… if Hillary has a pinnacle, Dick Morris did not write about it.

Condi: In the Bush/Condi relationship with Condi as his National Security Advisor it was a partnership with Condi bringing an academic grounding, the perspective of history, and a dose of real politik. Bush contributed his unwavering grasp of good and evil, his values-oriented approach to international issue. As Nicholas Lemann puts it: Rather than her simply guiding him through the unfamiliar world abroad, it looks as if something more complicated and interesting were going on: he’s actually influencing her, and she seems to be performing for him in immensely useful service of transforming shorthand impulses into developed stated policy.

In a sense, Bush and Rice had both come a long way from their starting points on foreign policy based on the balance of power. Together they formed a consensus based on a Wilsonian world view, base on universal values and a commitment to freedom and democracy.

Post 911 Condolezza began to speak of a balance of power that favors freedom an interesting merger of the language of geopolitical strategy and the objectives of a morally based foreign policy. In the war on terror, she began the policy that to win the war on terror we must win the war on ideas. Terror she told a group “thrives in the airless space where new ideas, new hopes and new aspirations are forbidden. Terror lives when freedom dies. True peace will come only when the world is safer, better and freer.”Condi’s definition of freedom “I’ve watched over the last year and a half how people want to have human dignity worldwide.. Your hear of Asian values of Middle Eastern values and how that means people can’t really to democracy or they’ll never have democracy because they have no history of it and so forth. I remember the stories before the liberation of Afghanistan that the nation wouldn’t get it that they were all warlords and it would be chaos, then we got the pictures of people dancing in the streets of Kabul just because they now could listen to music or send girls to school.”

Two Women Two Paths

15. Hillary: at age 19 she was in her freshman year at Wellesley. When Hillary was thirty two, her husband was serving as governor of Arkansas and Hillary was promoted to partner in the politically connected Rose Law Firm, the mot prestigious in the state. At age 35 Hillary was settling in to life as Arkansas’ first lady. At age forty-six Hillary became America’s first lady. Her first task? A disastrous health care reform bill, which sullied Clinton’s first two years in office and led directly to her party’s humiliating loss of both houses of Congress.

Condi: at age 19 she was graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Denver. In her twenties with no husband to latch on to Rice earned her PhD and a post graduate fellowship and was appointed to associate professor of political science at Stanford. At thirty five Condi began her service on the National Security Council as the president major expert on the Soviet Union. At forty-seven Condi was appointed National Security Advisor to President Bush

One –v- Two Messages

16. Hillary: Hillary is outspoken on terrorism issues and has volubly condemned the Syrian presence in Lebanon. But she also criticized Ibraham al-Jaafri, the new prime minister – the first since free elections were held – expressing “concern” over his Shiite background and possible ties to Iran. Here again she put her foot in her mouth: Most observers have gone out of their way to underscore al Jaafari’s nationalist animosity to his coreligionists in Iran against whom Iran waged war in the 1980”s.

Condi: Rice started her career as an apostle of the balance of power philosophy. The Bush camp circa 1999- 2000 was populated by the voices of “neorealism” In the New Republic, Jacob Heilbrunn quotes a senior advisor to the Bush campaign as saying “as power diffuses around the world, America’s position relative to others will inevitably erode…The proper goal for American policy…is to encourage a multi polarity characterized by cooperation and concert rather than competition and conflict” Heilbrunn also quotes the Bush as saying that “order is more fundamental than justice”. But Rice prevailed over those dour and pessimistic voices and helped President Bush to a new, values oriented optimism about America’s global role. A Wilsonian universal values philosophy. In 2002 Rice began to merge the two philosophies by speaking of the balance of power that favors freedom.

When I finished the book my gut told me that perhaps a pliable personality with no moral compass would make a good Secretary of State. Then as time raced forward and events merged with my finally completing this review I find the danger is she would be representing a president that is still campaigning... not for office of United States president but the Worlds Premier. So far on foreign diplomacy Clinton has shocked the world with statements like “we will not let China’s record on human rights get in the way of our discussions” are back stopped by a president who is willing to over turn anything that currently stands, starting with terrorism. Apparently by not saying the word the world can sweep it under the carpet. After going back through my notes I find In Hillary a woman that would impress a specific world leader that she will say what needs to be said to pander a cooperative stance that may not necessarily be in the best interest of the United States. While that sounds good at first glance, that world leader would be forewarned that the Secretary of State has a position that is blowing in the wind.

Contrarily the World leaders were experiencing a person that was professionally firm with a moral message that had a backbone. When she spoke World Leaders would be able to take her words, agreeable or not, as genuine. So let me restate them again here as I cannot improve on them: Condolezza began to speak of a balance of power that favors freedom an interesting merger of the language of geopolitical strategy and the objectives of a morally based foreign policy. In the war on terror, she began the policy that to win the war on terror we must win the war on ideas. Terror she told a group “thrives in the airless space where new ideas, new hopes and new aspirations are forbidden. Terror lives when freedom dies. True peace will come only when the world is safer, better and freer.” That foreign policy is about to be lost in the agenda’s of two people bent on power recognition for themselves.

The New Chinese Empire

2009-03-31T11:15:00.001-04:00

The New Chinese Empire
by Ross Terrill

This is a must read book for those who have any notions that China is the oldest country of our world. For those who hold a belief that China as it stands today has been around for 2,500 years, or holds the most consistent line of government, and most importantly is therefore not imperialistic: read this book.

Terrell takes up a few basic themes in the book. First he elaborates of the dynasties of China. Dynastic China while it took it's beginning 2,500 years ago; each dynasty represents a change in rule. While the change in rule indeed represents a change in government, this change would typically also bring in a change in the boarder of an expanding China. Whether, having been conquered of having conquered, the result meant an expansion and solidification of the Sino/Chinese culture. While the Han people dominate Chinese populous and this brings the Confucius strain of thought, there are numerous other people from the periphery who now are considered Chinese. To draw from Jarrod Dianonds Gun, Germs and Steel this would simply appear at a natural evolution of civilization. Yet along with Confucism comes the other side of Chinese rule which is very autocratic. In the case of China, the evolution may have been more by force than natural selection. Against this historical background, Terrell connects the history with the present in order to predict where China may end up in the 21st century.

China is a state where corrupt fiscal policy is out of sync with its politics. While, dysfunctional fiscal systems funnel money to the elite few, the masses in regions on the periphery with a past not vested in a Han Tang culture find two reasons to call for reform. Yet in communistic China, as in Imperialistic China their voice for reform is like a fallen tree in the woods. With no one to listen, the reform has only one path which may predict a revolt. It is important to remember China has 2,500 years of experience in this area, so hope is not high from a historic point of view.

In the examination of the Dynasties we find a few facts that would suggest a well rooted behavioral pattern that would likely continue The question, can China escape it's imperialistic past begins to be answered in observing the post dynastic China which oddly enough began in 1911. The Qin dynasty fell under its own weight. Jaing Kei Shek took the reign with an attempt at democracy , then lost it militarily to Mao and now we see China’s current leaders holding on to imperialistic roots. In the question, will the weight of these roots work in favor or against the capitalistic culture of the west is speculated in eight different scenarios. While the author conveys an attempt to be objective, his bias is towards Imperialism. "China's present is claimed to be pretentious, aggrieved, and fearful in the face of today’s international issues. The PRC is caught between the compromises and mutual interdependent international existence and unilateral condescending, ideological pronounciamentos of an imperials state" is what the author really thinks

Does America Need a Foreign Policy

2009-03-31T11:08:00.001-04:00

Does America Need a Foreign Policy
By Henry Kissinger

While he does not take history to his typical intimate detail, this book is a valuable history lesson with a specific connection to a recommendation of American foreign policy. While I was expecting his recommendation to be finite in nature, I was somewhat let down, yet history and our current world order as he describes precludes such a narrow mind.

Europe

It is a popular concept in the western world, that sovereignty is derived through a democratic process whereby the people elect leaders who proscribe common law to abide by. Kissinger points out that the Westphalia agreement in post 30 Years War, where regions of land actually were bound by a specific demarcation line, lay the beginning of this popular belief. We have evolved from Kingdoms and Fiefdoms to a world largely dominated by a democratic process. Whether this is merely a transitional phase or the ultimate end is examined in the book. He does fall short in this book in proper examination of China. That review is forth coming.

In taking a historical look at America’s relationship with the various regions of the world, one can conclude that many of today’s nations either a.) Do not fall into this definition, or b.) Fall into this definition as a result of a settlement of a war. Kissinger takes the time to examine the difference between a nation and state, and the application of Wilsonian imposition of human rights versus national interest. Where is the balance in the answers? Again, Kissinger resorts to history in drawing his conclusion. Yet he takes a stand early on is stating that “So long as post Cold Was generation of national leaders is embarrassed to elaborate an un-apologetic concept of enlightened national interest, it will achieve progressive paralysis, not moral elevation. Certainly, to be truly American, any concept of national interest must flow from the country’s democratic tradition…”

Asia

The geopolitical challenge of every Asian nation is not so much how to conquer neighbors as how to prevent those neighbors from combining against it. Kissinger includes China in this assessment; there is historical evidence to challenge him on this accord. Kissinger recommends America to play the role of an independent broker and or arbiter of issues, yet remain implacable when the balance of power causes a threat to American interest.

In China, Kissinger recognizes the vast cultural difference in foreign policy and relates his personal experience on this point. While he describes the American emissaries effort beginning in 1971 as transitory he only scratches the surface of the reason for China’s impression of the US. He does make a cultural observation that I am personally familiar with and that is that the Chinese think in terms of stages of process that has no precise culmination, while Americans think in terms of concrete solutions to specify problems. The Chinese are averse to appearing supplicant they prefer an appearance of patience and aloofness. They do not rely on personal relations as a lubricant to agreement. They view Americans who hold such reliance as erratic and somewhat frivolous.

Kissinger describes the future of Taiwan as a wild card. While he recognizes Taiwan’s Nationalist Party and its goal to seek “One China on it’s terms, he does not describe the recent democratization of Taiwan whereby the Nationalist Party has been over shadowed by a freely elected government who’s vision is ambivalent towards a One China with either mainland or island bias. He describes diplomatic correspondence an international intrigue, yet fails to examine the historical and current internal psyche of the Chinese leaders. China is imperialistic as witnessed in Tibetan, and Mongolia for starters. China has a loose interpretation of boarders. China views the world has that that is Chinese and that that is subservient to China, in measured terms. While Kissenger recommends restraint on the part of Taiwan not to enflame the relations between China and the United States, I have found evidence that kowtowing to China is a slippery slope toward Chinese Imperialism.

Middle East

The challenge de jour of course is Palestine. How and where to define it. Kissenger sites a conversation he had with a member of Arafat’s regime sited Jaffa as his home not the West Bank. Arabs see Israel as a threat, back by the United States. Unfortunately, the ultimate solution for the Arab world is the abolishment of Israel as it exists in “Palestine.” Ironically, many Israelis I have met with while in Israel, just as-soon be given land in Iowa. When you drive around Tel Aviv the common architecture are malls, strip malls and every franchise store found in America. You would think you were in east East LA.

Kissinger clearly indicts the Clinton diplomacy as a failure in peace negotiations. He sites the Oslo peace accord as technically Norwegian, yet underpinned by the United States policy and then under minded by Clinton’s in ability to keep Saddam in the box, which according to Madeline Albright was the declared aim of American policy. The PLO failed to live up to any of the terms of Oslo. Meanwhile the Arabs while unified in military order against Israel, were coming apart in political unity. Clinton/Christopher failure to recognize this had led to a crescendo in global affairs. Clinton’s ambition to be the broker of peace during his term was quickly leveraged by all sides. Thus rendering the United States exposed to diplomatic blackmail and a victim of the conflict. He called the Camp David meetings as meetings of the deaf. I am sure in judging Kissinger’s’ overall sentiment towards the Clinton behavior on a world stage that the vision of a two term presidency would represent a view that international diplomacy begins with internal policy and the voice of the people as a instrument of national security against the forces from within.

Kissinger writes a nine step plan towards the Middle East situation. Central to these steps is recognition that allegiances with any European country would draw special interests of such that may be in conflict with American policy. While Europe craves public sentiment, there lay underneath a hidden national agenda. Basing policy around individual Arab nations runs the same risk for various reasons; depending on the strategic, economic, political, and security position of each country. In each case we find the United States going alone as the world policeman.

With regard to diplomacy and war being the final element of such, Kissinger points out that reluctance to war, brings as demonstrated in Viet Nam, the other sides tendency to circumvent positions not deemed beneficial. Not fighting wars to unconditional surrender has lead to compromised ends in Korea, Viet Nam, the Gulf War resulting in continued loss of life or at minimum loss of liberty and quality of life on all sides. With Iraq and Afghanistan behind us militarily, Kissinger puts Iran in a light of caution. Rather than rush into the breach, Kissinger proposes to press for an improvement in relations with linkage to Iran’s willingness to depart from exporting terrorism to the world. Parallel steps must be taken as unilateral confessions has only proved to strengthen Iran’s tendency to fall back to terrorist ways. Step one would absolutely be the abolishment terrorism exports.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Is a boarder of national interest??… of course. With regard to Nation States, such as Russia, an American policy must be comprised with a sense of respectful inclusiveness. Yet America must fully express that their concerns of balance of power does not end with the Cold War, and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations is a compromise of national interest to all nations. While this book was written pre 9-11, I find it most apropos, to steel a word from the French, that Kissinger was concerned. With regard to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD); Kissinger writes that “Whatever tenuous plausibility of MAD theory may have had in the two power world,” Richelieu’s balance “evaporates when eight nations have tested nuclear weapons and many regimes are working feverishly in the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction… IF one of these weapons destroys an American or European city by accident or design, how would democratic leaders explain to their public their refusal- not inability, but refusal – to protect them against even limited missile attacks? In this vein Kissinger strikes an emotional vote on the balance towards a defense of a nation’s interest, first being security.

While Kissinger recommends the deterrence of weapons of mass destruction, he suggests that with proliferation already in progress we should “not tilt against the windmills”. We should link other countries capabilities to their global agenda. Those agendas who pose a threat to the United States should be met with appropriate response. With regard to Iraq, my recent trip to Europe post Iraq War finds Europe in agreement with American and British led action. With regard to Nation States such as India a close relationship is warranted for common economic as well as other basic human rights issues.

Globalization

Kissinger describes the gap between the economics and the political world as the Achilles heal of the process of globalization. He sites that 20 percent of the world will be part of the international system; the rest will be left behind. This inverse parado exposes The United States as the leader to world resentment. There is the reality that economic growth requires reform and that reform requires political structure with transparent and an independent judicial system. Therefore in my opinion American statesmanship, and the concerns raised in George Soro’s book “The Crisis of Global Capitalism” must be given due attention. (review not written yet)

Closure

I did take notes when Kissinger began drawing contrasts to Jacksonians, Rooseveltonians and finally Wilsonian’s. He does a nice job demonstrating how the personalities of our leaders can be reflected in our public sentiment in the same way our children reflects the values of our parents. The interesting twist comes from the George Keenan’s “Domino” theories within the Cold War era and the roles each of the presidential personalities played in our public opinion. In applying the domino theory, Kissinger shapes an argument from nationalism vested in the era of Splendid Isolation, the National Security vested in TRex, and finally Wilson’s liberty of man. In the discourse it is interesting to note the hawk to dove and vice-versa of each of the left or right political parties. In summary the Viet Nam debate is portrayed as Jacksonian with no category for “limited war”. The Wilsonian’s had concluded there was a moral flaw in our rationale for war. Neither side were willing to support a gradual extrication designed to preserve American credibility in a Cold War environment where security still very much depended on American word. As we somehow managed to escape the trauma of Viet Nam, America today still finds the world hanging on it’s every word; both of the leaders and the people. It is the American people that elect these leaders. So I hold out the question, does the president reflect the voice of the people or are we simply followers. I would like to think there are enough to us paying attention.

The book closes with the concession that America, alone or with Europe is not in a position to right every wrong. A parallel argument is drawn using a corollary between Wilsonian policy and Jacksonian policy of our past.

Diplomacy

2009-03-31T11:12:00.000-04:00

I got this book some time ago largely to just put on my bookshelf. After years sitting there, I read it because I have read a lot about Richard Nixon, but never anything by him. So sum up the book, it provides a prescription with statistical and analytical supporting argument for the way forward in world politics as the one remaining superpower. I did not realize what I was going to read about until I started reading and now must place it right next to Kissinger’s book on the same subject. While both men are despised by many from the political left, I believe their worldviews are required reading to formulate balanced views. When I contrast both books I find Nixon focused on the world of finance and business and Kissenger focused on politics and power. Both have a common denominator, which is national security.

Nixon begins his worldviews much like Kissenger with Europe. But Nixon brings Russia into the mix much more prominently. In doing so he provides a lot of data to support his argument that Gorbechov was a half-wit when measured up for the job he undertook. He paints a picture with numeric data on economics to demonstrate Gorbechov’s basic misunderstanding of fundamental economics. With regard to the oppressive measures he imposed upon his people and his neighbors while at the same time promoting glastnost, and prestroika shows the conflicted side of Gorbechov. Gorbechov’s policy and actions are painted as a contradiction in terms on both economic and human liberties fronts. After reading the chapter on Russia, I came away with yet another example of the Nobel Peace prize being a Swedish lark.

Nixon saw the rest of Europe with a few minor concerns. He shares a fear of Empire Europe and a Eastern Block that would be subject to civil war. His fear of an EU albeit muted seems to have come to fruition just as he visualized. In my opinion, today’s EU has many national conflicts that leave the idea of Fortress Europe unlikely and at the same time an EU, lead by the power hungry French and Germans, that is prone to tell the United States to go home. That is until some civil conflict requires us to return and help resolve the conflict militarily, as in Yugoslavia. Keep in mind the French and Germans have yet to prove themselves as a prime mover to mediate an international dispute to a peaceful end.

As Nixon moves to Asia, he leads with Japan. Here you discover his propensity to lead the world through economic policy and sound business practice. As opposed to the impression he left in his role of the inherited Viet Nam fiasco. He recognizes Japan’s entanglement of government and business, but is clearly critical of those in the united States who seek protectionism. In moving to China you get a glimpse of Nixon’s 1968 vision on China. The reader gets though only a glimpse of the details of the 1972 “opening of the door” Having read Kissinger’s memoirs years ago, it is refreshing to hear the views of the protagonist who actually signed off on three years of back channel diplomacy. In reading Nixon’s motives I come away with a much deeper appreciation for this accomplishment and its consequence. The billions of people in China and the millions of Americans that now experience prosperity as a result have not thanked Nixon enough for his vision and persistence to get an important job done.

As Nixon moved to the Middle East I reminded myself to compare his prescription to peace to all that I have read on the subject (11 books to date and many periodicals and essays) Keeping in mind that Nixon wrote this in 1991, and in retrospect from the book I found his advice worth it’s salt to which both Clinton and Bush ignored. He provided a formula for which he picked four countries to “turn up the volume” in terms of diplomatic and economic relations. The four countries he chose had to meet the same criteria for which Bush is trying to achieve in Iraq.

The idea in mind for Nixon was to advocate Democracy and Free (fair) Trade on numerous fronts to gain enough momentum that it would take hold through out the Middle East. It is fair to say that the public would criticize Clinton for doing too little and Bush having done too much. I would critique Clinton for being too focused and way too late on Israel. The obvious critique of Bush is he is too narrowly focused on Iraq.

Where both leaders failed is they turned a blind eye to Israel’s blatant reneging on peace agreements that the United States brokered through numerous administrations with little if any repercussions. Nixon, the economist that he was by trade and education, does a nice job presenting statistics that show an alarming rate of economic support to Israel that pales its support to the rest of the world in total. Ironically though Nixon made it clear that no American President has or ever will turn its back on Israel. Metaphorically we have a spoiled rotten kid and the rest of the family violently complaining. Nixon’s plan was to spread the wealth. Clinton ignored this all together. Bush’s focus on Iraq has burdened efforts with the four countries included in Nixon’s formula.

It’s too bad that our news media since Watergate has such an overwhelming influence on our public opinion. It seems to take time for history to bear out the fruits of our leaders efforts. When you look at the results of opening the door with China, a simultaneous adversary, you must applaud his accomplishment. He did close out the war in Viet Nam, and freed us from the gold standard. Yet was tarnished by a break-in of which now the Deep Throat finally comes clean. Sure he was a paranoid leader, and you may criticize him on any of his methods as your reading causes you to choose. But to not read his well formulated thoughts would be a huge mistake. You do not have to like a man or his deeds to learn from him. In Nixon there is a brilliant mind and this book gives the reader only a glimpse.

Sieze the Moment

2009-03-31T11:10:00.001-04:00

Zoroastrians

2009-02-27T12:05:00.004-05:00

Zoroastrians
By Mary Boyce

This is a book about what is said to be the forefather of our great religions, founded by the prophet Zoroaster in very early civilized man. It would be commonly associated with fire worshipers as you would find sacred fires as places of worship. In simple form the fire was to the early man where you gathered for warmth, cooking and where humanity came together. While today the fire may be a symbol of the faith, in its beginning it was much more a practice to bring people together. Zoroaster believed there was a separation of good and evil at creation. How subsequent tenants of this concept transitioned from lessons around a fire to a doctrine still practiced 4000 years later begins with song. Have you ever had a song stuck in your head and you couldn’t get it out? Well it was the Prophet Zoroaster who brought what is believed to be the world’s first religion to humanity through song. In a land where writing had yet to be invented, Zoroaster would have his priests commit to memory the Gatha in song, later to be written down.

This book is an academic account of the tenants of Zoroastrianism from is roots through all its evolutionary changes. With a sense of an archeological dig, the reader becomes aware of not only how the world affected Zoroastrianism but also how this ancient faith in turn influenced the Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions. This religion is still alive in corners of the world with strong holds in Tehran, Iran and Bombay,India. In a chronological format the author begins with an overview of the tenets of Zoroaster in the beginning and then pulls them through history capturing the ebb and flow of humanity, giving the reader a sense of before, after and most important the present day pictures of life as a Zoroastrian. I found myself focused on the travesty brought on to this religion by Islam and therefore spend a bit of time dwelling on its relevant bearing on us today.

In the early sections of the book the reader will be introduced to many new terms which may slow down the reading process with words that have no resemblance of English. That is because they are not even close to English sounding words. However spending time to get the cadence and meaning fluent in your mind will make the rest of the book more enjoyable and meaningful. Of the many, I’ve included at the end of this review terms that are critical in terms of understanding and enjoying the book.

If one were to distill all the coda into a practical statement on the merits of Zoroastrianism you could say that Wisdom to see things as they actually are, where Justice is the result of making choices in alignment with reality, and Lying being the fraudulent representation of reality. However history and humanity collude to blur this message. The 21st Century view of Zoroaster’s original tenant must be viewed through a kollidescope and thus provides reasons for debate. You could begin with the lack of the written word, using only the treasures of archeology as only clues to the testament of what was preached left in the symbols found in art. You must also contend with the evolving languages brought on by conquest, dominion and merging of one ruler over another. The effects are found in conquest and merging of cultures where a King could impose an interpretation of preceding doctrine thus imposing a schism in Zoroastrianism similar to what is found between Protestants, Catholics, and Lutherans in our western world.

Since Zoroaster came before the split of the Indo-Iranian culture many of the tenants developed in the beginning had a significant influence over the beliefs, doctrine, and practices, of both the Hindu and the Buddhist people. Against the backdrop of geography and time, we all know that within one language the story takes on at least different colors and many times evokes completely new paths of thought. The next few paragraphs are dedicated to the train to modern day Zoroastrianism. Avestan was the language Zoroaster used in the beginning. This is found in his original Gathas as they were written down long after his death. Pahlavi was the language in the time of the Persian Kings. Sanskrit, albeit equally as old as or older than Pahlavi is the language of India, found it was in prominent doctrine through immigration. The Indo-Iranian split occurred well before Islam, however when Islam forced Zoroastrianism to take refuge tin Bombay, translation from both Avestan and Pahlavi to Sanskrit took on a prominent influence in how we see the Zoroastrian Doctrine today.

With regard to critical deviations from its origins one could look at the Zurvanite split as the most prominent. This occurred under the Achaemenians times of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. The Avestan word ‘zurvan’ means ‘time’ and in a few of the younger Avesta it was used as the name of a minor divinity, hypostatizing time. The usage appears to be a very limited concession to Zurvanites who had come to believe that Time, Zurvan, did not merely provide the framework for events but was actually in control of them, hence a sentient being. While this would be considered heresy to Zoroastrians it ended up under the rule of the King of kings as being a sect of Zoroastrianism. Simply stated by Zurvanite’s through the authority of the King of kings, Ahura Mazda created both good and evil, which is contrary to Zoroaster who said he created all things good, and what wasn’t created by Ahura Mazda was evil. One could easily draw the one –v- many parallel story in the division of Eastern Orthodox and Western Christianity.

The Manichaeism deviation took root under the Sasanian kings with the introduction of a man named Mani who was reared under the Semitic influence brought a pessimistic view on life. Since he gained favor of the King of kings he was given license to twist existing Zoroastrian text to give authority to his views. Again the original Zoroaster priest found heresy in his preaching.

The Mazdakite deviation was brought on an ascetic pessimism where the Sasanian kings found common property to include the women of pheasants as slaves for the royalty. This fractured the families practicing the original tenets of Zoroaster as well strained the loyalty the people held towards their king and his religion. As timing would have it, it was against this back drop that Islam raged through Persia.

In 636 (AD) the Muslim Arabs, driven by poverty and religious fervor, had begun to attack the rich lands bordering their deserts. They overran the Byzantine province of Syria, and soon afterwards crossed onto Mesopotamia and met the Iranian imperial Army at Qadisiya. This conquest utterly different from that of Alexander, was carried out in the spirit of Surah 9.29 of the Quran:”Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and his Messengers have forbidden – such men as practice not the religion of truth, being people of the book – until they pay tribute (dhimmi) out of hand and have been humbled” The dhimmi (Zoroastrian who will not convert) has to stand while paying and the officer who receives it sits. The dhimmi has to be made to feel that he is inferior when he pays a strenuous tax.

Against this force of terror the doctrines of Islam in the beginning were attractively simple; and some of the most important – such as belief of heaven and hell, the end of the world, and the Day of Judgment – derived ultimately from Zoroastrianism and were disarmingly familiar. It made the choice of conversion over death or life in oppressed destitute an easy one. At a deeper level conversion meant change from a dualistic faith of justice/injustice and truth, with an accessible to reason, to one which demanded submission to an inscrutable, all-powerful God, whose decrees and purposes were regarded as beyond man’s understanding, rendering one’s access to God dependent on the Umma and a Caliph. Faced with the choice of death or paying tribute or adopting Islam found many adopters yet they had to find a way to make it work for them as Persians which gave birth to Shi ite.

The Shi ite movement grew steadily strong through the eighth century, fostered by propagandists for the house of Abbas, rivals of the Umayyads; and in the end there was open rebellion which led to Abbasid victory in 750. Ex-Zoroastrian converts an generatio once removed denied access to their original faith and language molded Islam to their liking while still being held to the ultimate mandate to convert which helped convert many more people who could now cross over and regain their sense of power. While strains of Zoroaster can be found in Shi ite Islam there exists a fundamental difference in their character, where a Zoroastrian may be found as a person with a positive and constructive outlook on life the opposite may be found in a She ite.

The triumph of Islam over Zoroastrian Persia led to a variation in the Zoroastrian practice where the inhabitants of Pars, thus adopting the name Parsis in Iran sought refuge in what we now know as Bombay. These religious refugees of India thrived in their own right yet still saw minor changes in their doctrine as the result of interpreting Pahlavi to Sanskrit and the comingling of Hidu and Zoroaster people. Over time as the Christians’ encroached on Parsis people prompting more change where as the Irani people stuck under the yoke of Islam in Iran held more closely to the original Avesta in Iran. There are exponentially more Parsis today than there are Iranis.

Today you can find Zoroastrian fires that have been tended for over two thousand years. Many scholars continue to piece the puzzle together causing a continual threat to the original message of Zoroaster. His original simple message was based in reality, “behold the way things are as sacred”. It is founded in truth and justice. It was simple yet humanity, specifically forces beyond themselves, made many attempts to make it dogmatically complicated. By contrast one can observe in Judaism and Christianity went to great length to impose a complicated message of right and wrong. I am no expert on Hindu or Buddhism, however I can say as found in this book more evidence that Islam is a religion of anything but the truth. As a by-standing participant in today’s terroristic acts on free men, I found a very ominous parallel between the times of 636 Persia and today’s western world. Most people are not even aware of Zoroastrianism. Many people think it is now as has always been , a small dark cult lost somewhere in this world. But contrarily it was the religion of the King of kings for over a thousand years for a multitude majority of people, annihilated in the short span of 70 years. Islam’s greed, borne in a sense of superiority equal to that of Hitler’s Aryan Race syndrome, and is now knocking at our door. Former president Bush recognized this. Our current President appears about to let them in.

Terms:
• Ahura Mazda – Ormzad, lord of wisdom who Zoroaster saw as God
• Gathas are the hymns composed by Zoroaster which contain the basic doctrine that was committed to memory by his followers
• Zend Avesta the sacred book of Zoroastrianism
• Vendidad is a book read at night of the Avesta containing the code against demons.
• Dakhma – is the funeral practice of placing the dead body on a high platform for the vultures to eat the flesh. When there were only bones they would be collected and placed in an ossuary. This was out of respect for the earth as they believed the body would contaminate the pure earth.
• Spenta - is an adjective which characterizes the good creation, possessing power to aid.
• The Doctrine of Three Times – Creation, Mixture, Separation – makes history in a sense cyclical, with the world restored in the third time to the perfection it possessed in the first one. Meanwhile all the sorrows and strivings of the present time of Mixture as part of the battle against Angra Mainyu (evil). Thus Zoroaster not only saw a noble purpose for humanity, but also offered men a reasoned explanation for what they have to endure in this life.
• Yasna – is the act of worship. It is the main Zoroastrian service
• 7 Amahragpands – the seven creations are the first being Ahura Mazda and the six lesser beings forming the heptad with Ahura Mazda himself the six are:
o Vohu Manah – Good Purpose
o Asha Vahishta – Best Righteousness
o Spenta Armaitiurvatat - Holy Devotion
o Khshathra Vairya – Desirable Dominion
o Haurvatat – Health
o Ameretat – Long Life
• Saoshyant – is the one who will bring benefit; and it is he who will lead humanity in the last battle against evil. (saviour)

Shahnameh

2009-02-27T11:55:00.001-05:00

Shahnameh
By Aboloasem Ferdowsi

This book is about the lineage of Persian Kayanid Kings and the Persian House of Sasson. With that lineage comes an evolving philosophy of man’s thought from the perspective of justice and injustice. It begins in a mythological setting and then over time evolves into a story that may have taken place in the time when Persia was great, concluding with the triumph of Islam over Persia. Through out the mythological portion of the book the author explores the concepts of what is observable reality (good, god) and contrasts that with unobservable conjecture or sorcery magic. While the lineage progresses through many kings, it is when you read of King Ardesher that you sense you are reading ancient history rather than myth. The subtle clue would be when Ferdowsi describes the king writing a letter in Palhavi, an ancient language. It is here that Ferdowsi begins the practice of dedicating whole chapters to one king’s reign. Every king has a vizier and a champion. Through these intermediaries the thought process borne in conversation brings the king to order just or unjust deeds reveals the prevailing philosophy.

The lineage of Kayanid Kings of the House of Sasson begins with quick summaries of names from the family Kayumars beginning with Siamak who is killed by a black demon, and then Hushag’s victory, where the Kayumars pursue and kill the black demon. This fast moving chronology leaves Hushag to inherit the crown, as he is the one with the royal farr and the presence of a tall cypress tree who can think with clarity, all prerequisite to inheriting the throne. The primary way in which the Persian kingdom expanded was through a sitting King doling out frontier land to his sons. In the beginning one son received Yemen, which would be today’s Middle East. Another received land in India, which would be today’s Afghanistan, and Pakistan and the third Turan, which would be today’s Turkmenistan. Feraydun’s reign was the first to go into a bit more detail. The author does this so that he can introduce the concept of a dark magic that clouds the mind of one who feels cheated. A cheated mind draws on vengeance. The brothers that were ruling Turan and India felt they did not get the favored Persia and plotted to and did kill the son who received Yemen. King Feraydon through his champion Zal who is blessed by the Zoroastrian Angel Smiorgh avenges the evil acts of his other two sons.

The early kings of Persia had much in common with early Arab kings and hence the family tree found relatives of mixed royal blood and the two peoples were very close, while rule still came from Persia. As Persia expanded its reach into India, China, and Turkmenistan they too came under the influence of Persia’s King of Kings. All gains of kingdoms came either through war, marriage or the giving of a daughter. As the family cypress tree branched the lineage of kings became difficult to track.

To garner the philosophy conveyed in this book, the reader need only to pay attention to the dialogue between warriors, or between a king and his vizier. In a reign of a king that expands or contracts finds in each battle the combatants making declarations towards the other as to why he shall prevail in the contest. For an example one of the notable champions, Rostam declares to Gorgin ''when passion overcomes wisdom no one escapes its clutches; but the wise man who overcomes passion will be a renowned lion.” A central tenant to the Zoroastrian doctrine is wisdom of which in this context Ferdowsi makes no reference to faith or doctrine as he had already weaved into the message.

In a different battle between Rostam and Esfandyar, later in the book Ferdowsi provides further dialogue that represents the notion that one man is a piece of a puzzle put together by the power of the revolving heavens giving a rationale to the concept of fate. Both Rostam and Esfandyar found honor in death, hence there was no fear, the number one obstacle to learning. Their minds and messages are clear. They were both Persian warriors the former a champion of past kings living in Arab land the latter the champion of the current Persian king. They took a sense of chivalry into every battle. In the parley dialogue you find Rostam saying:

“A noble warrior whose audacity
Lights up the world and brings him victory
Laughs at both good and evil, since he knows
Both come from God, whom no one can oppose.”

With a chapter mixed of prose and verse, which is often the case, at the conclusion of the battle you find Esfandyar’s last words to Rostam were:

All that has happened, happened as Fate willed.
Not you, your arrow, or the Smigorgh killed
Me here: Goshtap’s my father’s, enmity
Made you the means by which to murder me.
He ordered me back to Sistan, to turn
It to a wilderness, to slay and burn,
To suffer war’s travails: while he alone
Enjoyed the glory of his crown and throne.
I ask you to accept my son, to raise
Him in Sistan, to teach him manhood ways:
He is a wise and willing youth: from you
He’ll learn the skills of war, what he must do
At courtly banquets when the wine goes around,
How to negotiate or stand his ground,
Hunting, the game of polo – everything
That suits the education of a king
As for Jamasp*, may his accursed name
Perish, and may he waste away in shame.

*Visiar and astrologer to King Goshtap

In the context of the chapter and the book as a whole the reader comes to appreciate the Zoroastrian religion from a distance, which is woven into the warp of the story without ever introducing it as the overarching religion of influence on Persian’s, binding man to the fate of the revolving heavens. Ferdowsi speaks as this can be the only option, and for the 1,500 years it was apparently so.

Where a king’s rule is passed on through inheritance there is always a lesson the predecessor conveys to his son the new king. With the passing on of authority the young prince is first instructed in the rule of wisdom. The following is an example of the things a king would tell is prince in the passing of the throne:

“Live your life in happiness and consider fate...while one is brought up with luxury and the other is thrown bewildering and despairing into a dark pit, another is lifted from the pit and raised to a throne...The world is has no shame in doing this; it is prompt to hand out both pleasure and pain and has no need for us and our doings. Such is the way of the world that guides us to both good and evil. There are three things that cures all ills; wealth, effort, chivalrous men...the forth is that we praise God.”

It is important that readers of this review appreciate that God is the immeasurable reality of the heavens, that the stars are many but that god is one and that all are powerless beneath this law. God is not rendered a personal identity. He who does not respect this basic tenant is not worthy to be a king. The universe gives and takes equally.

As the book comes closer and closer to the current time, it was written in the 10th century, Fedowsi prepares the reader for the demise of the Sasson Kings by first presenting a king who has turned on his people and second by that king not having a son to inherit the throne. So how the Persians bought the fate through their actions is an important ingredient to their fall. It was left to fate that Islam would take her vengeance on Persia by not just reigning over them, but totally changing their way of life. Rostam, the king’s knight writes a letter to his brother that appears somewhat prophetic, or did Ferdowsi already witness the potential damage of Islam? I close this review with the portions of his letter that describes Ferdowsi’s speculation of what will happen and leave the parts that describe his feelings about his future to readers willing to delve into the book.

My thoughts on the book have me quite curious about the Zoroastrian faith. It is the precursor to our current major religions. Every time Zoroaster is brought up in the book it is a though there were no other faith. What you do read about though is the difference between good and evil or justice and injustice, which is a fundamental tenant of Zoroastrian doctrine. You read that the universe treats all man the same. It also exposes the flaws in man guided by the laws of Zoroaster. Its not the doctrine, but rather the man’s inability to fend off the magical powers of Ahrima*. And finally as Zoroastrians are compared to Muslim’s Ferdowsi casts a dark shadow over the latter and comes relatively close in his predictions as to outcomes of an Islamic Dynasty. Two things compelled me to read this book. First was the August 2008 issue of National Geographic. Second are my good friends during the time I lived in New York, Amir and Mondana who are Iranians in exile. Amir would always say to me. “Paul Iran is not Arab, we are not even Muslim at our roots. All Iran wants is to have their place as a world power at peace in the world.” He said most Iranians feel this way and we should not be misled by the current regime. This book certainly corroborates Amir’s words.

* ahrima is the Zoroastrian corollary to the Christian devil

A wise man will be saddened when he learns
Of how the moving sphere of heavens turns:
Caught in the evil clutch of Ahriman,
I am the time’s most sad and sinful man;
This house will lose all trace of sovereignty
Of royal glory, and of victory.
The sun looks down from its exalted sphere
And sees the day of our defeat draw near:
Both Mars and Venus now oppose our cause
And no man can evade the heaven’s laws.
Saturn and Mercury divide the sky –
Mercury rules the house of Gemini:
Ahead of us lie war and endless strife
Such that my failing heart despairs of life.
I see what has to be, and choose the way
Of silence since there is no more to say:
But for the Persians I will weep, and for
The House of Sasan ruined by this war:
Alas for their great crown and throne, for all
The royal splendor destined now to fall,
To be fragmented be the Arab’s might;
The stars decree for us defeat and flight.
Four hundred years will pass in which our name
Will be forgotten and devoid of fame.

But when the pulpit’s equal to the throne
And Abu Bakr’s and Omar;s names are known
Our long travails will be as naught, and all
The glory we have known will fade and fall.
The stars are with the Arabs, and you’ll see
No crown or throne, no royal sovereignty
Long says will pass, until the worthless fool
Will lead his followers and presume to rule:
They’ll dress in black, their headdress will be made
Of twisted lengths of silk or black brocade.
There’ll be no golden boots or banners then
Our crowns and thrones will not be seen again.
Some will rejoice, while others live in fear
Justice and charity will disappear,
At night , the time to hide away and sleep,
Men’s eyes will glitter to make others weep;
Strangers will rule us then, and with their might
They’ll plunder us and turn our days to night.

They will not care for just or righteous me,
Debit and fraudulence will flourish then.
Warriors will go on foot, while puffed up pride
And empty boasts will arm themselves and ride;
The peasantry will suffer from neglect,
Lineage and skill will garner no respect,
Men will be mutual thieves and have no shame,
Curses and blessings will be thought the same,
What is hidden will be worse than what is known,
And stony-hearted kings will seize the throne.
No man will trust his son, and equally
No son will trust his father’s honesty –
A misbegotten slave will rule the earth,
Greatness and lineage will have no worth,
No one will keep his word, and men will find
The tongue as filled with evil as the mind.
Then Persians, Turks, and Arabs, side by side
Will live together, mingled far and wide –
The three will blur, as if they were the same;
Their languages will be a trivial game.
Men will conceal their wealth, but when they’ve died,
Their foes will pilfer everything they hide.
Men will pretend they’re holy, or they’re wise,
To make a livelihood by telling lies.
Sorrow and anguish, bitterness and pain
Will be as happiness was in the reign
Of Bahram Gur – mankind’s accustomed fate:
There will be no feasts, no festivals of state,
No pleasures, no musicians none of these:
But there’ll be lies and traps and treacheries.
Sour milk will be our food, and course cloth our dress,
And greed for money will breed our bitterness
Between the generations: men will cheat
Each other while they calmly counterfeit
Religious faith. The winter and the spring
Will pass mankind unmarked, no one will bring
The wine to celebrate such moments then
Instead they’ll spill the blood of fellow man,

The Battle For God

2009-02-27T11:52:00.001-05:00

The Battle For God
by Karen Armstrong

The book takes a historical look at the struggle of three religions to maintain a religious way of life in the modern world beginning in 1492. The author only focuses on Islam, Judaism, and Christianity as they are challenged by modernization, government, and internal conflicts within their own doctrine. The struggle takes the form in a constant conflict between logos and mythos. While science enabled society to come up with life’s explanation beginning with exploration of not only our geography, but all other sciences, religion has always looked to be the anchor in progress by justification with ultimate mythos explanation for that which science has not yet deciphered. Hence there is still today a strong hold on fundamentalism thought within all three groups.

Islam’s roots in the Koran took on many different interpretations within various regions of the Islamic world, basically because of it’s relationships with corresponding government regimes. The primary conflict is to what degree Islamic clergy, the mullah, involved themselves in government. By the Koran government should have it’s roots in the Islamic faith; yet there is constant struggle for just how to influence government. Government, would typically use the sentiment of the mullah and it’s followers to gain rule. Amidst this struggle modernization occurred for which the WEST were first at. Through domination of West over Islam, largely because of the evolution from agriculture to technology, disdain grew out of implementing western practice of science within the thought process of a Muslim mind set. Fundamentalism took the offensive in various countries and different times. They were consistently met with the same challenge: of retaining religious integrity once it entered into the world of the plural, rational and pragmatic thought.

With the exile of Muslims in Spain and the Inquisition, primarily to rid Spain of Muslims, Jews got the boot as well. Again they found themselves as a faith with no home. This time in a world exploding with scientific discovery. As they migrated to different parts of Europe, they story was the same. Typically they found themselves as second class citizens isolated in over crowded sectors of cities with limited rights and relegated to limited professions such as tailors. Again, leaders would rise to somehow rationalize their faith with their rulers in an attempt to integrate and become a part of the dominant culture. This could be achieved through spinning interpretations of the Torah to suite the need of the time. By the time Israel was founded there was also a divide between Fundamentalist and Zionist (spin doctors of the Torah).

Christianity also saw a real move to fundamentalism after the American revolution. The debates between Adams and Jefferson were stirred as well by common folks who saw the elite doctrines to look too much like what they fought against. As such there was an explosion in variation of Christian doctrine from Mormons, to Baptist and many points in between. In the end there were 10 times as many common folks practicing some form of Christianity by 1850. Yet all of these folks as well were met with the challenge of rationalizing their believes to that of scientific fact. The argument about separation of church and state carries on to this day in the likes of Falwell and Robertson. Their basic argument in their contest for power entails bargaining, and giving some ground to opponents which is difficult to square with religious visions which sees certain principals as in violable.

It is interesting that all three religions rejected moderninity, yet they were influenced by modern ideas. Which put them in a position to rationalize their faith to justify their existence. This appears to be an exercise in futility and a self destructing exercise that exposes the proper place for religion. In the end their interpretations of each of their prospective Holy Books not only put them at internal odds with each other, they find themselves in a difficult spot justifying their existence as an influence in government all together. However, fundamentalism is certainly in robust form today. Why is that? Where will it go? In the Fundamentalist quest to re-sacralize society their efforts have become aggressive, distorted, and advocates of hatred and anger. The basic message of this book is that for Fundamentalist to succeed, a more compassionate approach with a bias towards benevolence and tolerance towards their opposition and at the same time to properly address their fears and anxieties of extinction in a way that does not cause adverse movements. There seems to be a place for religion. It does provide the moral compass cardinal headings in life. Yet the means for getting there, where ever there is, appears to now be the purview of science.

Churchill’s Folly

2009-02-27T11:49:00.001-05:00

Churchill’s Folly
by Christopher Catherwood

This book is a history book spanning a short three-year period of time in the Middle East following WWI. The title suggests there is an agenda to foil the reputation of Sir Winston Churchill. It suggests that history should blame Winston Churchill for the boarders and subsequent 80 years of turmoil culminating to our situation in Iraq today. As Catherwood lets the pedals of his story unfold, the bloom of his story finds the British Prime minister pulling the strings rendering our poor Churchill a puppet of shortsighted policy. This is not to let Churchill entirely off the hook; as his prime agenda was British centric with sole aim to reduce British financial Mesopotamian exposure. This stands out as his Achilles Heel and there is a corollary lesson to be learned in today’s Iraq. It is a lesson that Senator Barak Obama is blind to and Senator McCain, gives his full appreciation. But let me ask you, which title would sell more books’ Lloyd George’s Folly, or Churchill’s Folly.

Catherwood creates a backdrop to the “folly” first by describing a snap shot of history of the Middle East beginning with the family Ur. I get no further than the 2nd page and I learn the word anachronism and the family Ur, the beginning lineage of Abraham began in Iraq, is in opposition to Michener’s book “The Source” where Ur began in Israel. You also learn that the Fertile Crescent is limited to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Israel has nothing to do with Fertile Land. By page 38 the reader is briefed on the history of the Middle East, which I found pretty concise. Added to the backdrop is a brief dossier on Churchill where the reader is then is introduced to Churchill’s fallibility. The son of a politician, he began as a liberal, and switched parties a few times in the early part of his career. Causes were more important to him than party. He is known to have had key failures leading to political exile. The first prominent one was Galapoli, which draws in Lloyd-George and haunts him throughout the book. I found it interesting to read in this book that in 1919 Britain was the largest Muslim power in the world. Finally Catherwood addresses what I call counter history where he disputes other historians including Sir Lawrence of Arabia.

Churchill was basically sent to the Middle East to settle on boarders for the area of land designated to Britain in 1919 as their sphere of influence (see my review on 1919). His mandate was to withdraw from the region with limited exposure. His challenges were first the Sykes-Picot Agreement when exposed appeared colonialist to the Arabs. Second was imperialism, as much with Feisal’s imperialism as British/French. Feisal was in import dictator. A case is made for the British to divert the alleged betrayal of the Arabs by the West on to Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Caliph rule in the new Turkey. While not the main focus of the book the Greek-Turkey and the Palestine situations were also included as distractions to Churchill’s decisions in Iraq.

The appointment of Feisal as ruler of Iraq set in motion a minority rule of Sunni over Shia. The irony in today’s problems as portrayed in this book is there were ''democratically '' appointed Sunni Caliphs and Shia were not. Catherwood suggests installing a democracy goes against the majority within the boarders yet to be settled on. Outside the book however we find Iran is also ruled from a democratic foundation, albeit heavily influenced by Shia Umma. The reader learns that local leaders Naqib and Sayyid had aspirations to rule Iraq and this would have been in the interest of Iraqi’s. However this would have gone against the promises made to the Arabs that spawned from the British – France Sykes-Picot Agreement and perpetuated through the agenda Sir Lawrence of Arabia.

Pressure on Churchill for withdrawal came from five directions. First was Churchill’s penchant for an appointment to be the Exchequer of Britain, hence his overbearing conservative fiscal focus. Second a case is made for Churchill to appease the people of Mesopotamia as Britain was stretched too thin after the war. This plus the social discord and fighting in Britain was much the same as today. Britain walked away from an unsolved problem that they perpetuated. In 70 years what has changed both internally in any World Power country and internationally amongst the World Powers? Will we ever learn?

The third force in Churchill’s folly was Lloyd George second-guessing the decision to fight Turkey in 1914-1915 in Iraq. Had we left Kurdistan to Turkey, imagine its oil wealth Turkey, a democratically ruled and Western leaning country would hold today. Imagine that oil wealth in a democratic nation striving as hard as they do to be a part of the E U. That is indeed what is hoped for today in Iraq. Forth, in 1914-15 the prevailing world strategy was centered around colonialism, hence the Suez Cannel, hence Egypt. Fifth it was Sir Allenby and Sir Lawrence that pushed Hashemite rule in 1915 and on through this book. These five cards happened to be the only hand Churchill could play. He came to realize he was playing a losing hand while he was playing it. Hence the title of the book, Folly, which is as unfair as conceded in the letter Lloyd-George wrote to Churchill after he dealt the cards.

With Churchill’s dealt hand he formed a commission referred to by historians including Catherwood as Forty Thieves. Catherwood portrays Churchill’s task of bringing a consensus in Cairo in what was cast as a fate accompli as dictated by 10 Downing Street. It was a fate accompli giving Iraqi rule to the Hashimites’, Abdullah and clan. Israel was brought into the mix as well as Kurdistan only to represent distraction to Churchill in this book. At that time there were ''the people'' and a cause, and a rationale in both regions; but their was no leader to take immediate control and provide economic relief to the money thrown at the collapsed Ottoman Empire.

Churchill’s consistent refrain in Cairo was money driven. He had aspirations to head up the Exchequer in London so he sought all ideas that got Britain out of Iraq ASAP. Other factors contributing to the folly of decisions made in Cairo were France’s need for Aslace-Lorainne, a strong consideration for inclusion of Kurds into Iraq was to accelerate a reduction of British forces in lieu of Kurds to fend off Turkey. I have to make a note in the irony of the Kurds being commissioned by Turkey to exterminate Armenia only to be later met with Britain using the Kurds against Turkey and finally the Kurds being left with no sovereignty. I guess crime and violence that comes with being a “hired gun” doesn’t pay.

It was also interesting to read when the Allies liberated Arabs from Turkish rule; they also entitled them to a new rule over Kurds and Mesopotamians. They complied with Wilson’s 14 Points and violated them at the same time. Churchill’s did contemplate but did not execute on withdrawal plans to Basra that would have put in to affect the same partitions in Iraq as what Joe Biden proposes today, excluding a sovereign Kurdistan. Is there a final justice to be found in this equation? Imagine a Western leaning Turkey with expanded boarders to include Iraq’s northern providence, southern Kurdistan. Turkey would have oil wealth, but would they welcome in the large voice of the Kurds? Would the international voice accept this? All of a sudden Biden’s idea, while worth a closer examination, has question marks.

What Catherwood suggests in conclusion is that the job done right would have Churchill looking for a legitimate leader in the eyes of the people with a keen sense for a national identity coalesced around a.) A united international cause, b.) A shared enemy, c.) Separation of church and state, d.) Democratic process, or e.) Revert back to Ottoman style of local government, which is essentially to teach western city government, f.) Teach world humanities, g.) Focus/unite on economy, h.) Re focus on people assets. From 1921 to 1958 the government changed hands 58 times. Today in 2008 we need to be complete and on purpose this time or we may just be that common enemy.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

2009-02-27T11:47:00.000-05:00

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam
By Robert Spencer

While I was in an airport traveling from here to there, a destination forgotten, I encountered and Egyptian man who overheard my disgruntled comment on the less than truthful press being blasted over the TV monitor to those waiting for their plane. As we boarded he approached me and said, “my friend I see you are disturbed by the views of your press.” He went on saying “ I am Egyptian and converted from Muslim to Christian, you Americans do not know the whole story of Islam therefore cannot understand the truth.” He recommended this book to me. The following is my review and reaction. I will begin by saying that if you are one to be easily upset by opposing views, this review and the book are not for you. It may be politically incorrect.

I believe the author’s intent was to cause a paradigm shift in the Western readers mind. He strikes an alarm bell as to why one should wake up from a sleepy passive acceptance of a force aimed at ones freedom. Our Western Civilization thrives in a Democracy where elected government and constitutional law prevail. Why do democratic governments not feel threatened by the possibility of actually being subjugated to Sharia Law of Islam? A democracy has the mechanism to institutionalize a separate church and state to a degree the people find acceptable. They secure this with a military that can fend off an invasion of ideals that would oppress their people.

However the political culture Islam proscribes is quite different. In Islam, Sharia Law provides a continuance of Islamic rule and dominance over your free will. The “laws of thought” that serve as the core of this dominance are found written in many places in the Qur’an (Koran). The Hadith (more Islamic documents) interpretations put into law that which is written in the Qu’ran. Why do Muslims insist on Sharia Law? Sharia Law secures a physical disciplinary consequence to those who go against what is written in the Qur’an, thereby providing a legal mechanism of population control that cannot be contested without a fight to the finish.

So you could then respond with the aged old cliché that religion is the root cause of all wars. The paradigm shift nestled in this book is that it is not the religious practices that the West should be concerned but rather the Sharia Law (which really by default is a religious practice) that comes with it. The author sets course on a brief history lesson to put the word Crusades in perspective suitable to allow a paradigm shift to occur. The Crusades: where they religions wars or were they really a fight for individual rights? So lets follow the author’s thinking as he sets the basis for the propagation of Islam and then wraps it in a brief historical review.

Islam’s call to war is quoted over 100 different places in the Qur’an in this book. It is then trumpeted by the modern interpretations taught in four leading schools on Islam where readings from the Hadith and Islam Law books, derivatives of the Koran galvanize a religion founded in war. The Hadith translates the ancient language of the Koran into a context that can be understood today. The book points out that Osama bin Laden’s readings after September 11, were from the Law Books on Islam calling for three options for non-Muslims.
i. Accept Islam (convert)
ii. Pay the jizya, the poll tax on non-Muslims, which is the cornerstone of an entire system of “Dhimmitude” is to humiliate non-Muslims.
iii. War with Muslims

The historical timeline of Islam finds Mohammad warring first with his kin in Arabia and then his successors carried it forward across Northern Africa, Spain and Eastern Europe from 639 through 1100. The Christians began their Crusade Wars, first called for by Pope Urban in the 11th Century and these lasted about 250 years. Yes it is again cliché to indict the Catholic Church for a call to action actions carried out by noble men of realms of the Western World. Not to say that the Church was without it’s own faults, the call for defense of Christianity was championed by noble men, among them from England, Richard the Lionhearted and from France, Godfrey of Bouillon. Not all battles were directly attributed to the Church nor do historians agree upon their descriptions. The Crusade Wars did not result in the colonization of lands or the building of any Empire under the flag of the Catholic Church or any Kingdom’s flag. But rather Muslims were allowed to live freely in the land won back by Christians. This is of course not the case in Muslim territory where Christians were subjected to cruel treatment called Dhimmitude; which for better understanding amongst us modern Westerners could be correlated to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. The Crusades came to an end when Western Europe became preoccupied with their own battles. The Muslim Turks took advantage of the situation and snatched much of Eastern Europe; we knew that land as the Ottoman Empire until 1918,

The book demonstrates that the Crusades were not a Christian conquest of Islam, but rather they were a series of battles to gain back Europe’s civil rights. And yes it was a brutal fight for freedom. So were our American Revolution and the Civil War. To apologize for this would be like apologizing to Hitler, Genghis Kahn, Sadam Hussein, Milosovich or any other brutal person who led the abuse and oppression of a society. The book indirectly poses this question: if I were put in a position to apologize, would I rather make an apology to this list of men than find myself apologizing to my children and family around me for not standing up to or waking up to the realities of disparate ideologies that could by design deny you the freedoms of choice.

So: to apply the lessons of the past to the modern world, why should the Western World be on guard against Islam? Sharia Law as it is levied by the authority of Mohammed and administered by the practitioners of the Islamic faith.
a. Islam is a religion of war. The Qur’an is a book of war, if a warrior wrote the Qur’an it is likely that his words promote dominance by force. The books sites many verse from the Qur’an as evidence to the affirmative.
b. Mohammad is a Prophet of War, Islam was spread by the sword right from the very beginning.
c. Islam promotes one to lie, steal, and kill. The Qur’an preaches a peaceful society amongst Muslims, but promotes jihad using and tactic of deceit to not just vanquish “non-believers but to mutilate them.” I write this reaction to make a point also made in the book where the Koran is clear that according to their Allah when a Muslim engages in war they don’t just kill their foe, but to mutilate them and parade them around in order to humiliate them. We saw this in Mogadishu and we are now seeing it in Iraq. This is what we in the West should have been prepared for. (example: the female aid worker who’s naked torso (minus limbs and head) was thrown into the street in Iraq)
d. Islam oppresses women
e. Islam is anti-Science
f. Islamic Unity, today’s jihads are orchestrated to return the world to Islamic rule much like the 700+ years they experienced from 600 to 1400

In the face of these realities Islamophobia has become a real word with ominous consequence. As I read the pages of this book and reflected back to the news clips where the visual was always the shot of bin Laden shooting an automatic weapon and the audio was a brief sound byte of a declaration of war on America. It seems the news glossed over the importance of those words and have since buried them. I say this because this book makes it two things clear: first, Islam’s doctrine is to wage war against non-Muslims and that means this doctrine could come from any country that stands fanatically behind the Koran. Second, unlike most Westerners (who are not well-studied on Islam), Muslims are well studied on the West as they view us through their Koran-based paradigm.

The most critical path we are on regarding Islamophobia; the author sites cases now in Western Courts putting freedom of speech is at risk. There are cases abroad where people who have spoken against Islam were tried and convicted for “hate crimes”. This is contrary to Muslim activity where they are allowed to “spin” terrorist activity to find justification. It is also contrary to Muslim activity were they can publicly assemble and shout words in affirmation to the likes of Osama bin Laden as was the case in Dearborn Michigan. Yes, our reaction to the human bombs against innocent people or the hanging of soldiers could always begin with shock of the morbid brutality of their actions. But then the educated mind would react to this not with a call to decease; but rational call to vanquish such hostile behavior. And to be clear I am not promoting killing, I am promoting the abolition of the behavior. When I contrast Abu Garab to the burning and hanging of Americans from a bridge, I peel back to the next layer of the onion to the people’s reaction. Our Christian dominated West reacted with apology and corrective action. The Muslims paraded in the streets. We should expect more of the same from them. And to the next layer this book goes against everything that is politically correct and brings out a comparative analysis of the teachings of each faith to explain why.

The author provides a solution that is spread across our government, the press, and we the people. The government must draw a harder line with other governments who promote Sharia Law, and the oppression of human rights. The author writes “If any moderate Islam project were to succeed, it will do so only by identifying elements in Islam that give rise to violence…” I would start with countries that allow madrassas and terrorist training camps. The press must start telling the whole truth as opposed to reporting only facts that support their views. We the people need to bone up on exactly what this “war on terror” is all about. The author writes, “This is not a war on terror. Terror is a tactic not an opponent. To wage a war on terror is like waging a war on bombs. Refusal to identify the enemy is extremely dangerous: It leaves those who refuse vulnerable to being blind sided.” The enemy is the teaching of Islam. Yes, “fundamentalist” are said to have hijacked a faith. But Islam is a faith where its origin and continued practice is in war. Rather than wage a war on weapons of mass destruction would “we the people” have allowed our current president, actually say it is good enough to wage a war on those countries that hold and promote the ideals of fundamental Islam. Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt could not take the country to war on ideals, so what makes Bush any different. The answer is magically “NO; because that would be intermixing church and state and using our military to do so. Only Lincoln was allowed to wage a war on disparate ideals. But could we rather wage a war on those that promote the ideals of Islam and the subsequent Sharia Law…”we the people” would have to first become as educated about our enemy as they are of us. We would have to learn how to separate Islam from Sharia Law and War.

This war we are currently engaged in that began when? …in 2003, 2001, 1991, 1967, 1943, 1400, it is a war that Mohammad began on the deserts between Mecca and Medina against his own people who at the time were non-Muslims. That conquest left much of Europe in the hands of Muslims, exposed to the brutal consequence of Sharia law. I have been to “Chop-Chop Square” as Westerners call it In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and yes they still have public stoning and the like. What is driven home in this book is that Islamic way of life well rooted in the bedrock of the Koran and is beyond belief and faith. It is a real call to war against anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim not practicing the words of the Koran

The author’s basic tenant is that the Qur’an and its complimentary Hadith are at the root of much of the dysfunctional social outcomes of Islam. One who is not familiar with these characteristics may find the book to be a militant call to arms. Given that the author dedicates only 270 pages to his two themes, combined with his casual vernacular, makes it a target for criticism. And as such you could say he has fueled the flames of a 1400-year conflict. However, first there is 1400 years of history leaving a trail that while Islamic society may give ground to individual freedom for periods of time, there comes a point that they violently snap back. Second, the doctrine of Islam is destructive to its own well-being. Third, it is Islamic doctrine that Muslims must dominate the world through any means.

Could it have been possible for President Bush or any American President to say in 2001 that this war is not a war on terror but a war on Islamic fundamentalist? Albeit the case, for political correctness he had to spin his call to war on the “Terrorists” “of any ilk” and then on Iraq (one of such ilk) with an eminent threat called weapons of mass destruction. He could have gone in a different direction when he said “you are either with us or your are against us”. That is where he (and we the people) went wrong. However, would history then put Bush along side Pope Urban as starting a religious war that has been in fact on-going, when all he was doing was proactively defending freedom. The author does leave you with a call to action. First, he is prodding you to wake up to reality. Second, whatever we do to defend ourselves, know what we are defending; our free(d) will.

Related web sites:
http://jihadwatch.org/
http://answering-islam.org.uk/
http://answering-islam.org.uk/Authors/Arlandson/top_ten_shar
ia.htm

Islamic Imperialism

2009-02-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

Islamic Imperialism
By Efram Karsh

I picked this book up in a lending library of the Unity Church in the people’s republic of Boulder. How a book from such a controversial author found its way there is beyond me. This book makes it very clear that our struggle is not about religious conflicts, but about the imperialist desires of the caliphate rulers of Muslim faith beginning with Muhammad. The author introduces his thesis with the following quotes:
· “ I was ordered to fight all men until they say “There is no god but Allah””
o Prophet Muhammad’s farewell address, March 632
· “ I shall cross the sea to their island to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah”
o Saladin, January 1189
· “We will export our revolution through out the world...until the calls there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” are echoed all over the world.”
o Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, 1979
· “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no God but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad,
o Osama bin Laden, November 2001

Karsh then describes the backdrop history to color in the events those statements spawned. Within the fine brush strokes of this history you discover that Islam has been warring more amongst themselves than they have with infidels. They often found alliances with infidels convenient in their quests to rule their own Muslim world. Case in point; both Iran and Iraq went to the United States to supply their war with each other. This was very common during the crusades. The history is full of egregious Islamic deception rooted in a selfish quest for power.

I have read many books on the diplomacy surrounding war and in particular Islamic rationale for war with the West. They are consistent with Muhammad in his farewell address on the surface. However underneath there is a selfish quest for power on the part of a Caliph gone mad. What this book does is clearly demonstrates that the calls to Allah are mere rhetorical diversions to their real ambitions. Karsh labels it imperialism. A topic of world history in most cases and unfortunately continues as news in our newspapers today.

Karsh concludes with a call for Islam’s recognition of the concepts of nation states as a recognition of an everlasting fate-accompli, within their own world as well as their outside world. While Karsh makes this call he misses the errors made by the World Powers of the time in 1919 who did not draw up the boarders of the many small Islamic states that actually existed in the form of a millet system within the umma. Each region would be ruled by a caliph, imam or some voice of Allah, in competition akin to a survival of the fittest Muslim drama. This persisted up through and under the theme of Ottoman suzerainty and for the first in time in 1919 since the 800’s, Islam was not considered a power of any sort. He briefly suggest that on a larger scale beyond the Middle East Muslims favor democratic process found in republic states, as an example that his call has proven itself successful elsewhere. Interestingly, in those regions there is not the same degree of an overwelming thirst for power from Islamic origin

To sum up Karsh’s message he characterizes the plight that Nasser took Egypt through in 20th century. It represents the character of every Muslim Imperialist described not only in this book, but many others I have read. It goes as follows:

“that an idolized person had appeared who wanted his will to have, throughout the Arab countries, a degree of holiness, greatness and power which not even God’s prophets possessed… He ha made us feel every possible means that in Egypt and even the whole Arab world there could be only found one intelligence, one single power that could be relied on; the only thing ahead would be ruin. Thus was Fascism, Hitlerism, and Nasserism; all of them stand on a single base, which is elimination of minds and wills other than the minds of the leader.”

I am going to leave it there. I cannot improve on that. I equally do not have a solution. As current events unfold, there is an imperialism syndrome in the world today. There is a lot of jockeying and positioning for what I see as an eminent WWIII, or otherwise put the Crimean war, “take four”. Islam poses more of an immediate threat to both Russia, and China. Yet, they are happy to let the worlds leading power take it on the chin on their behalf and then rub salt in the wound. If it were not the United States it would simply be a different country taking the brunt of conflict, as history has shown.

In the past the quest for power seems to have had no protagonist other than a thurst for power. There is a sense of scarcity, which is only now blamed on oil, which drives a need for dominion that perpetuates imperial thinking as our Western world has equally demonstrated. As folks look to blame our current administration for not winning the peace, I struggle to find where any one else has ever done that. Wilson had it right in ideals, but he and the rest of the world failed to figure how to execute upon them.

To take a spin off of the authors assertion “A prominent Muslim Brother, Qutb, held lofty ideals about the original years of pure Islam (622-61). He described the degeneration in Islam’s direction. But he like too many of his predecessors, beginning with Mohammad, translated his interpretation of man’s jahiliya into a jihad. To be fair Qutb viewed jahiliya, man ruling man in ignorance or absence of God consciousness, to exist both within Islam and beyond.” History's big picture shows he is right. We continue to recognize the problem, but our response is wrong. If we are on a path for peace (big IF) we seem to keep getting in our own way.

Foot notes from my reading

Islamic Imperialism

Fatimin clan gave Islam its first real imperial presence

P 70 It seems little known how strong the Islamic foot hold was in Rome (Italy) in the years just prior to the crusades

p69 With Islamic power and position between far east and Europe in conjunction with Jews excluded from farming they evolved as the worlds businessmen. The crusades recognized this and began their Diaspora. This rote was taken over by Italian cities of Venice and Amalfi

p. 75-76 The Crusades must be viewed as a two-sided war with two divided factions. With Christians their was a schism between Rome and Constantinople. With Islam there was a schism between Shiites and Sunni.

p.79 Both sides of the Crusade wars were utterly convinced of the superiority of their religion. But their actions were guided by far more earthly combination of territorial and material ambitions.

p.96 Tsarina Catherine’s aspirations to wipe out the Ottoman Empire were thwarted by the rise and threat of Napoleon

p. 107 The Ottoman were courted by both sides at the beginning of WWI. They chose Germany as a way to expand Islam into Russia. A decision made in both fear of Russia and conquest of Asia, which became the U. S.S.R.

p. 119-123 It is interesting to read that Iran learned to despise Russia and England as early 1700. At that time the Orient was at a crossroad. Russia wanted the Black Sea. England needed Iran as a buffer. The battle for the Middle East made rivals of England and Russia. As Napoleon had aspirations on India, France allied with Russia.

What is intriguing here is Britain’s Imperial aspirations in the region. Other than defense of India, only an Empire on an uncherished land was in the offering. Russia on the other hand did have material cause in the 1800's

The Arab Caesar, Egyptian President Nasser, abducted power by converting from castigating Arabs to revering a pan Arab UAR. While oil may have had a part in his motives, and expelling the Imperial British who sponsored Israel, the author makes it quite clear that Nasser had one self serving interest for power.

In this same chapter the author makes it real clear that their is no Muslim unity. He has painted a landscape of a millennium of internal Islamic power plays holding out that Nasser is just one more.

p. 178 While Hakims quote on the previous page represents a history of power mongering, all worth quoting, Hakim states: What made Nasser's blunders more galling, was his total hostility to the idea of accountability.

p. 183 To further illustrate a Muslim empire agenda, cloaked in Muslim anti-Semitic posturing, Saddam extorted Kuwait for its oil until it could not comply. Then he simply invaded.

p 184 Today empire builders of Muslim decent wrap themselves around anti Israel sentiment to gain a pan Arab favor. This backfired for Iraq which took the Palestinian allies down with them. Arabs saw Palestine as a trader. But It was Israel who threw the PLO, a bankrupt organization, a lifeline

215-216 A Muslim brother Qutb held lofty ideals about the original years of pure Islam (622-61). He described the degeneration in Islam’s direction. But he like too many of his predecessors, beginning with Mohammad, translated his interpretation of man (jahiliya) into a jihad.

To be fair Qutb viewed jahiliya, man ruling man in ignorance or absence of God consciousness, to exist both within Islam and beyond. History's big picture shows he is right.

Persian Puzzle

2009-02-27T11:42:00.000-05:00

Persian Puzzle
By Kenneth Pollack

I picked this book up chiefly because of recent news in Iran and secondarily because of an Iranian friend I had in New York. He often spoke of the rich Persian culture and spoke Farsi with his children. I have an Iranian tapestry in my hallway and eat Amir’s pistachios from Iran when I get them. True enough you read early on in the book about Darius, Xerxus, and Cyrus with an emphasis on Cyrus’ conquering of Babylon. In this conquest Cyrus frees the Jews and returns them to their homeland, Palestine. This point I find interesting as the primer landmark contradiction in the Persian/Iranian history; a history that only evolved to the name Iran at the insistence of Reza Shah Pahlavi in the 1920’s. This is a point in history that flies in the face of the current Iranian theocracy and supports one of the tenants of American sanctions on Iran for their sponsored terrorism, anti-peace in the Middle East and the “destruction” of Israel.

Pollack prepares a backdrop for which he lays room for the reader to contemplate many moral questions while reading the book. I found it interesting to read that Persia over history is a land fragmented by mountains and deserts with no significant navigatable rivers. Holding a band of people together to be the world’s first superpower was no small feat. A feat that today’s Iranians are still so proud of that it permeates in their civil consciousness. I saw this in my friends Amir and Mondona, and better appreciate this now.

Oddly enough the Arabian conquest brought Islam to Persia a religion that over shadowed Zoroastrianism and threw Persia into a state of civil unrest and contradiction ever since. The one hundred year period prior to our current political situation (1979 to present) is a story of repressive dictatorships over a new sovereign state. The first Shah who regained his family’s through a coup and internal unrest saw himself much in the liking to Mussolini, and Franco. Pollack associates this mentality to Kadafi, Arafat, and a few of Egypt’s recent leaders. Notice he separates these inept leaders from the terrorist of Hitler, Stalin and Hussein. The important similarity to all was while encumbered with internal instability in conjunction with a fear of foreign domination; these recent rulers absconded power and ruled their people poorly.

The irony of Iranian leadership of the 19th and 20th centuries is similar to that of Poland. There were regions of people with a desire to lead themselves but displayed no proven capability to do so. Reza Shah Pahlavi was only an example of a line of leaders who lived in fear of Russia and Great Britain. The imposition of either of two foreign powers was self-inflicted to a certain degree. Persia’s fear of Russia gave reason to draw Great Britain into their sphere of influence, yet it was Great Britain with the dominant tools to lead. With the imbalance in skills as they were, Great Britain took advantage of all business activity. The discovery of oil exacerbated the imbalance. The weak leaders whether the Shah or Prime Minister Mosaddeq, could not manage the divergent demands on internal policy.

After World War II Iran began to invite the Unites States in to counter balance their triad of problematic and conflicting issues. Like all poor leaders their focus on military led themselves to financial ruin on every other front. It is important to have read that the United States were reluctant participants brought in at the invitation of Iran, no matter what was perceived through the fog of the coups for a leader. Unfortunately with our preoccupation with the spread of Communism at the time, no matter who was in the White House, we did not live up to the expectations of Iran’s leaders or their people. Later our pre-occupation with Viet Nam caused the Johnson administration to lose sight of the call for internal reform that was heard and revered by the Kennedy administration.

The CIA participation in the stacked 1953 election (now called a coup by Iran and somehow tolerated by the United States) between Pahlavi and Mosaddeq gave all the justifiable appearances of our meddling in another countries affairs. And it was justified, a mistake by the Eisenhower administration. What is important to know says Pollack is our agenda was not about oil. The agenda was to bring someone into power that would stand up to the Soviets, which paradoxically was indeed an agenda of the Iranian people. To accuse the USA of propping up a puppet regime is somewhat misguided according to Pollack. The Shah was dependant on the United States initially for economic reasons and we supplied ample aid. Unfortunately, this money was redirected to the military while his people were oppressed. Over time the Shah thumbed his nose up to American calls for human rights. The Shahs new found oil wealth, thanks to American intervention over the British in behalf of Iran, allowed him this option and left American influence neutered. By the time Carter became aware and made a call for human rights, it was too late.

I found it very interesting that even Pollack describes the events of 1953 as a CIA directed stacked election and then goes on later in his book to name that event as a coup. In Pollack’s defense, after reading the events surrounding every election of the 20th century, one would conclude that the words election and coup in Iran are synonymous.
It is important to appreciate why Iran, the theocratic government hates the United States, and why Iran conducts its foreign affairs as though it can thumb its nose at the United States to the extent that it can wage terrorist war against us. With a xenophobic persona caused by fear of both the USSR and Britain, Iran’s request to the United o mediate and or counteract the situation was not executed with clarity. With a revolving door in leadership every four years in the White House, a consistent policy and or named responsible person could not be defined. During pre and near post WWII the revolving door in Iran was even less clear. Elections in Iran through this same period were closely parallel to coups. Upon this canvas, one can easily visualize a people’s propensity to take aim at the tallest participant as it stands above the smoke.

Once we got on that slippery slope the only course was and is down. While it was common practice to offer a choice of two evils and prompting voter disenfranchisement to the extent that the candidates would get assainated the CIA wrongly engaged in this in 1953. What the CIA did was bombard the Iranian people with election propaganda to get the Shah elected. THAT’S IT!!!. According to the author. After this election/coup, from Eisenhower through Ford, the United States largely turned a blind eye to the Shah’s shenanigans; largely due to our focus on anti communism threats elsewhere in the world. The Iranian people felt betrayed in two ways. First we did not give them the attention they asked for. Second, the Shah on his own accord and with no pressure from the United States oppressed his people. Not speaking out on human rights violations committed by the Shah was a slap in their face.

Iran has learned through the hostage taking in 1979 and through the 1980s that they could influence policy in America. Khomeni realized that his capital in the Embassy hostages was already spent. But he despised Carter for his double talk. Carter spoke strongly against human rights violations around the world and did nothing in Iran. When he allowed the Shah into the US for surgery it was an insult to Iran. Carter’s response incorporated a fundamental mistake in making it clear that the hostages were to come back alive, this is despite that every hostage taken swore an oath that the Unites States interests came first. (Implying first before their own lives). Khomeni leveraged this in negotiations and sucked everything he could out of the US and embarrassed us publicly with his booty. The only thing Reagan did to free the hostages was get sworn in to office. The very minute this took place the hostages were set free. Thus the author puts forth the theory that an Iran got even for what the CIA did in 1953. Khomeni learned another lesson, that the United States was weak and its people did not have the stomach for conflict. He took Reagan to task by taking hostages in Lebanon. While Reagan did not make the same mistake as Carter he made a different one. He negotiated with terrorist in the Iran Contra fiasco. It was not until 1991 that all the hostages were set free.

Reagan ’s continued reluctance to engage directly in the Iran Iraq war demonstrated to Iran American weakness or intolerance to war. It was clearly stated that Iran had intentions to march through Iraq and straight to Israel. Khomeni’s agenda was an Islamic World. Reagan’s agenda was a continued resistance through the support of other armies where American interests were involved. Our eventual involvement through our Naval escorts of Kuwaiti ships did nothing to show American strength and everything to show a continued American betrayal. Through the Clinton administration America’s continuance to tolerate terrorist activity emboldened Hezbollah and al Queida. Theocracy leadership with a whip to its people and a stick to its neighbors internationally became a theme.

With regard to Pollack’s assessments of all the administrations foreign policy, he found something to criticize in every administration with exception to Kennedy the G.H. Bush. I found it interesting that a consistent theme of criticism of both Carter and Reagan was not being firm enough with Iran over terrorism, Pollack only mentions the Bahran Towers, and gives plausible argument for the Clinton Administration not taking a firm hand against Iran. His argument being that after full disclosure from Saudi Arabia, that Iran organized the assault, a new Khatami government was in power. This contradicts the Madeline Albrights assessment that un-elected hands controlled Iran. Pollack later recommends that any act of terrorism would be responded to with force regardless of regime change, so he leaves the reader somewhat confused. Additionally the other incidents of terrorism against the United States during the Clinton administration were not addressed to the same degree as both Carter and Reagan. This in itself is a puzzle within a puzzle. Pollack paints a picture where Iran became use to American weakness in the face of terrorism, but asserts that Iran was not specifically involved, and then claims Iran spreads terrorism; a foggy area for this expert author.

The book title becomes relevant in describing Iran. It is a country conflicted by its leadership that does not appear to represent the voice of its people. In 1997, with 91% of the people voting, more that 70% of the vote was in favor of reform from the “hardline” mullahs, the Madeline Albright speech of 1999 to Iran in an effort for rapprochement contained two critical words, “un-elected hands”. Every other word in the speech was aimed at a rapprochement of the two countries. While the elected Khatami government did take notice of those two words, they were willing to overlook them. Kahamen’i, the new un-elected Supreme Leader assumed control in delivering a very negative reply to the Clinton administration. To quote Pollack “Indeed it is unfortunate that this was all that came from it, but by trying so hard to start a process of rapprochement with the Khatami government, the Clinton administration gave the George W Bush administration the perfect argument to demand a harder line on Iran from America’s allies.”

If Clinton’s stick were equal in size to his carrot, would he have handed George W. Bush a different set of cards? In fact Pollack was equally generous to G.W. Bush. He speaks of the strategies between Clinton and Bush as complementary being that Iran always took the carrot and left the United States with nothing but the stick, a stick that for many reasons detailed in the book can be used for nothing but waving in the air. Pollack suggest that Clinton handed Bush the stick. Pollack reiterates that over the course of our relationship with Iran, and particularly in the last 25 years, their negotiating style called for the United States to put all concessions on the table for which they take them and leave. However Pollack demonstrates many cases where Iran does respond to the stick.

In Pollack’s closing chapters he describes a three-part strategy to become good neighbors with Iran. He claims that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is the number one concern; because if successful Iran’s complete persona of xenophobia changes. (a root cause resolution dynamic not explored universally by the author) The first is through a “Grand Bargain” whereby each side lay down their concessions, detailed in the book. The second is through international diplomacy where all nations of the world lay out a new world protocol among nations, detailed in the book. And the third part being military might. Because this is three-part strategy is introduced only after Pollack makes a case for the failure of each strategy independently, you the reader must pay close attention to the intricate relations between all three and the “trip wires” that would transition from one policy to another. In the end you begin to see the edges of the Persian Puzzle. You may even have your colored pieces in their proper piles, but there is no way the puzzle get completed in this book. You also begin to appreciate a requirement for a tremendous staff in our State Department to piece this all together. In retrospect I found the details and criticism in the early going of the book to be much sharper. There is enough history provided to appreciate the general feeling of the common man that Iran holds anxieties towards America. There is also enough history provided to be sure that Iran has much to be responsible for in their anxiety about many things internally and externally, including The West. This gives true meaning to the saying only history will tell. I can only hope that Pollack will be around in 50 years so that at age 99 I will read his sequel.

Epilogue: I am always taken back by: those in America that unilaterally condemns “THIS ADMINISTRATION”; when I contrast it to the following quote in the book by Ayatollah Khomeni upon burying two prostitutes up to their chest and had them stoned to death by the public. Bear in mind there was not trial. He said, “ Criminals should not be tried. The trial of a criminal is against human rights. Human rights demand that we should have killed them in the first place.” It is similarly described in the book where the leftist student Revolutionaries physically, and physiologically abused many hostages and Ayatollah Khomeni gave his seal of approval to these acts. To the Ayatollah perceptions were more important than truth; a reality he can hold to without a free press and a fair judicial system.

This country does have a judicial process, free press and core values aimed at liberty. On the moral questions raised, it appears that making compromises to those opposing this freewill is counterproductive. It is time we all turn up the volume on the beacon on the hill and stand together for what we are for regardless of WHICH ADMINISTRATION. The situation in the Middle East is very complicated. Pollack is much more versed than myself and his views are highly regarded. But he does not have a clear answer a proven answer. So why would we blame him while serving under Clinton or any other American for not solving this puzzle? I believe this strategy is the key in Pollack’s book the he touches but fails to utilize this KEY to simplify is three-part strategy. Pollock glosses over it, but ever since the Czar of Russia recognized the will of the people were not behind Napoleon, he knew the French would retreat regardless of what happened on the battlefield. A beacon on the hill is for liberty and anti terrorism. Let it shine through our people and our press. But let us shine what unites us, rather than that which divides us.

The Last Great Revolution

2009-02-27T11:40:00.000-05:00

The Last Great Revolution
By Robin Wright

This book begins its message with in effect a status report of the Revolution that took place in Iran in 1979. It bases its report in the fundamental phases of a traditional revolution. This book suggests that the Iranian Revolution is now in its fourth and final phase. The author places this revolution is on the same plateau as the French and Russian revolutions as it represents the last major sect of life to reach out for liberty. That’s right; Khomeni was brought in to fill the void left by the deposed shah who was alleged to have violated the liberty of the Iranian man. It was not the intention of the Ayatollah or the revolutionist for the revolution to have the religions overtones that it had. The country has since experienced four political leaders, each who have experienced the forceful hand of the Islamic fundamentalist mullahs and dealt with them in different ways. Twenty years later the author tells of an experience where by when cornered by Iranian activists, they inquired more about whether Pink Floyd had a new album out, as opposed to the American political position. The revolution is in its fourth stage of revolution and it becomes time to evaluate if the whole journey was worthwhile. This book does a fabulous job making sense of what’s in the mind of the Iranian people. It allows you to share in the irony of their quest for liberty. The following is a summary of Iran’s past twenty years and a co-conclusion.

After a brief summary of the biography of a revolution and then a specific foray into this particular revolution, the book moves in to detailed examples of the Cleric imposition. This imposition is found not only in politics but also upon the famous modern philosophers of Persia. Abdul Karim Soroush who had emerged as one such person who was being acclaimed to carry the comparable philosophical weight to Germanys Martin Luther. Soroush promulgated debate within Iran both about its political future and the evolution of the Islam faith. After Iran survived the initial challenges of ten years of war and fundamental Islamic imposition, Soroush attempted to get Iran back to the initial intent of the revolution by addressing the questions that the Clerics could not answer. While the Clerics appointed Soroush to a position to realign all university studies to the Islamic faith, they would not tolerate his call to include the perspective of Western and Jewish ideals. The mullah position was generally stated that inclusion by freedom of speech only empowered the position of the West and Israel and was a slap in the face of Islam.

Aside from the political government body, Iran also has an assembly of 86 Experts (Fiqih) to influence that body. The people are supposedly learned and virtuous. These Clerics actually over-ride via "influence” all political decisions. In the election of 1998, a time when the Revolution was quite a bit tempered since 1979, the Clerics went to extreme measure to ensure that candidates for political office were from a narrow field. This resulted in a low turn out at the polls and a question mark about the concept of the Fiqih. The people embraced the concept of the Fiqih, but did not agree in the roll of the Fiqih or the Assembly of Experts. The Faqih has evolved to be just another dynasty as opposed to the Supreme "thinker" that was intended.

In Iran as different as things may be, there are similarities for instance from one family comes three cleric leaders; one from the left, one from the middle and one from the right. While they agree on family and religion, they dispute politics with rigor. Sounds like an American/Irish Catholic family to me. A fundamental argument is centered on whether any one person is above the law. For Iran this is the Faqih. For Americans this pertains to our President. And indeed in both countries this leader does have in, varied degrees and through different venue, immunity to the law.

With regard to the press in Iran and in particular the credibility it has with the people; it is of no surprise that the Iranian young people were devastated to hear that one of their airliner was shot down. They were convinced that the action was really of the Iranian government. They would not believe that the Americans actually shot down the airliner until they heard it on international radio BBC. In the midst of a cleric driven culture revolution in Iran during the 1990's western influence crept back in via the satellite dish. By the late 90's the political leaders were indeed of the mind to relax the cleric rule. Yet, still within this climate, on all social issues the government consulted the Fiqih. And the clerics, just when the people had a glimpse of free press, had the last word. They placed a ban in Western press again Hence as a matter of law, the clerics decide what music, books, movies, and theater you can partake in. “The rest of the story” is underground.

In the period of relaxation of the cleric rule though live sports from the States were allowed with a few second delay so that the broadcasting technicians could cut all shots of American women that would be improperly dressed. This means to say all American women. However, by the close of the 90's the clerics could stand not more and issued a fatwa condemning satellite dishes and VCR's which resulted in Basij militants barging into homes and destroying the condemned devices. Majid Qaderi, the director of Iran's Intellectual Development of Children says, " Barbie is a Trojan horse. Barbie’s an American woman who never wants to get pregnant an have babies. She never wants to look old and this contradicts our culture. Thus we replace Barbie with our version of Sara"

The current head of the Ministry of Culture and Islam, Ayatollah Mohajerani describes freedom slightly different than in the West. "Obviously we don't share the same definition of freedom. The main difference is that in the West, it's freedom from something, which means that obstacles must be removed in the way of individuals. But in religious terms, it is freedom for which means that freedom must be in service of the perfection and prosperity of human beings"

The Iranian movie industry gives reason to have hope amidst a sea of irony for Iran's people. It portrays a State whereby the pendulum of judgement in censorship swings with the mullah’s opinion more so than with the rules of Islam. What this really means is that there is a "due process" in place. It is those in power that dictate what is shown by interpreting what they see in a film. The moviemakers of Iran, like those here in the States, are somewhat radical in the eyes of their Cleric rulers.

Yet at the same time, films since the revolution examine the values of Iranian life. Each film director is allowed to see events through his/her own eyes and capture that vision. IF his/her eyes are Islamic then the move is about religion. Most movies are not religious yet Iranian films abide by the hejb (no kissing), largely because an Iranian director would prefer to portray love in an artful form rather than a graphic bedroom scene. Iranian films get awards at Cannes and other film festivals. They do indeed express the emotion of Iranian culture. The crossroad that Iran's movie industry finds itself has foreboding consequence in either direction. In the course of less censorship, Iranian filmmakers are free to express more. However, with that freedom comes the competitive giant from Hollywood. The expression of Iranian culture through film must face the forces of extinction from either the left or the right.

Leave it to the artist to again speak for the people. Directors, in my mind an artist, in Iran make a critical point in their message. To the outside world, the revolution and the theocracy born out of it were one and the same. The political upheaval aimed at ending autocratic rule and redistributing power was one thing, but the subsequent Islamic government that eventually replaced the monarchy - and then imposed its own restrictions - was quite another.

The women’s role in Iran has seen the same pendulum swing in the post revolution as all other cultural shifts in Iran. The initial onslaught of cleric rule and male dominance has given way to the need and therefore inclusion of women. The war with Iraq placed a real demand on women as a resource, which led to women in government and led to their louder voice. However prominent women’s leader say "We want our right but in an environment that is compatible with our beliefs. That means we don't believe we have to live in a Western system in order to share power. But we are not going to trust men in our own system to grant us our due." It is women of this caliber that are redefining Iran’s interpretation of the Koran. The Ayatollah Khomeni in fact evolved from a conservative view on women to more modern guidelines. This transformation manifested itself personally in the rules imposed upon his wife versus his the rules impose upon his daughter. The personal evolution was lost in translation by the mullahs of the early revolution. The new President Katahmi has recently moved the women’s issues back towards the center, in relative terms. Here is a point of contrast; an Iranian woman feels “the hejb doesn't limit me, it frees me to be a person judged not by beauty but by actions and thoughts.” Is this not the goal of our Western women’s movement?

On sex and marriage, the rules that were originally put in placed in 1979 have since been modernized. Men and women are still forbidden to intermingle and touching is absolutely taboo in public. Most Iranian people can live with the morals that are implied and therefore many appreciate the dress that is required, however tempered and with some color. As far as birth control Iran has received international acclaim for the methods of education and distribution of all the various methods of birth control. This acclaim is recognized in the United States as well. This transition was largely due to the Ayatollah Komeini and several of his Cleric officers in the Assembly of Experts. The movement has enabled Iranian women to become professionals. Komeini's daughters all three are professionals by career and modern working wives. Marriages are still arranged whereby the mothers of the son go to the mothers of the daughters and select a bride. It is also astonishing to read that the legal age for marriage for a girl is nine. This is primarily because first it is the official age for puberty and second she can make the transition from her father to another man. In divorce, the laws have been made largely comparable to that of the United States. In my opinion because the shift from all awards of rights to the man to a 50/50 split and equal bias on children; that Iran has a more realistic view on the division of property than that of the United States.

Twenty years after the revolution Iran is getting back to the original intent of the revolution, but like the undertow of the oceans surf, the Cleric mullahs continues to impede the achievement of the original goal. The struggle between power and empowerment rages on. The undertow is indeed not Komeini or his successors of rank. It is the momentum of the mullah movement immediate underneath the surface. The Hizbolleah continues to spread the revolution abroad while maintaining internal activism towards militant Islam. Each year on November 4th Iran sponsors a protest whereby the youth of Iran shout "death to the great Satan" while also calling for a dialogue with the United States. The protesters are wearing all the USA sports gear and at the same time burning the American flag. It is almost a paradoxical whereby Islam’s peaceful intention of faithful religious practice is contrasted against the temptations of a degenerate product of the West, but the interpretation is warped by over zealous mullah’s quest for power.

There is an active movement now in the forth wave of the revolution to correct the inside of the regime. The goals now stated are freedom, justice, and religion; with democracy on the top of the list. Iran does indeed have a constitution and an elected government that acts with due process. This movement lay with the students of Iran's universities. Their enemy is indeed the Cleric mullahs. Unfortunately the Fiqah can and do, at any moment change law and arrest alleged dissidents when they feel the young have exceeded their power. Example: Parliament speaker was quoted on July 7 1999 as he revoked freedoms of the press saying “ The press is a gateway for cultural invasion, so we must take measures to stop it." However within the same Parliament session, Statesmen Mohajerani was quoted as saying "freedom can't be repressed by any law. We have to create laws in accordance with freedom, not freedom according to our laws. If crime is committed, we'll take action. But let the people have their say first".

I point this out because I read about a country, while not vested with the same culture, are indeed working through to freedom and liberty with debate. There is progress, and I question any interference from any outsider, especially the United States. This is a difficult assessment because of the tollateriate practice of the Clerics with their Hisbollah muscle. The book closes with a description of government that is tolerant to protest until the Cleric regime feels they have lost control. The author describes situation whereby all the democratic instruments are in place. She describes a culture that appears to have a say in its destiny. Then right when you think you are going to break through, the Mullah Clerics step onto the scene with a government sanction Hisbollah terror action vested upon their own people. There is no freedom of press if you consider writing or speaking against the regime.

The final conclusion however describes a successful revolution in terms of objectives accomplished. Iran clearly has a Theocratic Government guided by the laws of Islam. But at what cost? Since the revolution, baby boomer phenomena occurred. This was a result of Islamic regulated non-birth control during the first ten years of post revolution policy. Today one in twenty students have a hope for a college education. The schools are bursting at the seams at primary level. Inflation is at 25%. The Iranian currency has seen a 800% increase in it’s peg to the dollar. Today the price for a set of tires cost the same as what a whole car cost in 1979. While merchandise has found it's way back into the worlds largest Brasserie, the people cannot afford it. There is a high degree of discontent that is fueled by hunger for the conveniences of Western life. The Iranian people reach for the West and at the same time shout death to Satan. Keep in mind Muslims do not view Satan as we do. With all this said you could easily argue a case of confusion for the Westerner. You could argue the same case for the Iranian people.

There is hope in the hearts of the youth in Iran. They do not hold the same disdain towards the West. In fact hunger breeds disdain towards their own government instead. As the USSR's economy fell under the weight of its communist ideology, Iran may well follow suit. And thus Western foreign policy should be one of patience. It should be a policy that monitors with vigilance and safe guards towards security. The safe guard could indeed include military action only towards a regime that has proven to export terrorism and not the people. The proof must clearly be presented to the international community. I read nothing in this book that suggests Iran as a country or a people that pose a threat to the United States. For that you would have to read up on Hizbollah, terrorist groups, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia. For that matter we should be keeping an equally watch on the militia camps of with fanatical views here in the United States.

The Arabs

2009-02-27T11:38:00.001-05:00

The Arabs
By David Lamb

This review is a rambling review in the same sense that David Lamb rambles through Arab Nations drawing salient points to cast a spotlight on the diversity factor of Arabs from the perspective of a western paradigm. This book is by a Western author who largely paints a contemptual picture of Arabs. For instance he suggest that jihad would be considered the "sixth pillar of Islam" and would define jihad as holy war. These statements would be an insult to a Muslim. And these printed words, read by the millions of Westerners would most certainly breed contempt. He then weaves nuggets of fact, about Islam that grates across the fabric of our core values. Separations of church and state rules are diametrically opposed when comparing Christianity and Islam. The facts laid out are consistent with most everything I have read. It connects the past with the present, which may give insight into the future.

The book actually takes you on a tour of all the Arab nations in an effort to give you a feel for how life would be in that country. For instance: The author describes Cairo as a city in decline of major proportion. The reasons why are: 1.) Centralization of all Egyptian commerce in Cairo, 2) a constant state of hot or cold war with Israel, 3.) Nassar's burst of socialistic policy from 1973 to 1990, 4.) over population from a baby boom growing at the rate of a 1,000 people per day. The population density in Cairo is 240,000 people per square mile. People actually rent living space in cemeteries underneath tombs. It should be interesting to note that the United States has spent $62M in aid to help Egypt institute birth control. The downward spiral in Cairo's economy has led the desperate young to seek out Islam as a refuge.

In drawing the similarities and differences between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, the author threads his Arab tour with a history lesson on the origin if Islam. While the faiths were largely similar, they shared a common enemy; their differences began early as a result of mistrust in sharing power in the city of Medina. Because Mohammed fled Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, for his own safety his new home of Medina was already populated and controlled by Jews. While they at first shared the same God and rituals, the Jews rejected Mohammed as an Arabian prophet and untrained. The rejection caused Mohammed to change the orientation of his newly formed religion towards Mecca and away from Jerusalem. The differences between Jews and Muslims were sewn and the Muslims. Soon after the Muslims prevail in a 25 day battle with the culmination of the beheading of 600 of the defeated Jews. It was interesting to read that Mohammed sprouted Islam by force. He literally funded Islam’s beginning by raiding pagan tribes. Eventually the pagan sold out to Mohammed so that they could share in the booty of the raids. As a result Islam began to flourish. It seems that these beginnings draw similarity to that of Judaism yet sharp contrast to those of Christianity. Christians had their turn later as I understand things.

The author suggest that the brush fire beginning of Islam was not aimed at conquest or conversion but merely a continuation of the Bedouin skirmishing tradition that was primarily carried out for economic reasons. Kind of like Yugoslavia 1,400 years later. And I would suggest most other wars alleged to be of religious nature on the surface.

The schism between the Shiites and the Sunni helps clarify jihad within Islam. As history has it, Shiites believe the correct descendant to Mohammed is Ali and not Abu Bakr. The warring sides had the Shiite leader Husayn sacrificing his life to the Sunnis and hence giving mayrtarism a comparable sense of sacrament. This fanatisism is vested in only the Shiites or if indeed the Sunnis hold marterism in the same light. In the course of the reading about the conquests of the Muslims I reflect upon the Crusade Wars in the 12th and 13th centuries and realize the meaning of Diaspora and it's impact on the Jews. Of course, the Jews did spend a few centuries oppressing the Christians and significant amount of energy opposing the Muslims in their early days. So today could one simply say turn about is fair play. What has changed!!!!?

As Lamb describes the making of a terrorist, he begins with Kadafi in Libya. Kadafi is described as a man capable of deep thought and no reason yet apparently a popular characteristic of some Arab leaders. Kadafi has taken an oil rich country to third world status. I am especially intrigued by Kadafi’s raise to fame on the heels of Egypt’s Nassar and then immediate decline after the bombing of his compound in Tripoli. The Arab world power centers of Cairo, Libya and Lebanon have found themselves in a self-induced world of hapless poverty. The west, through colonialism and then support of Israel are the natural scapegoats for their demise. We clarify this in the Arab mind when we engage in warfare on their soil. Lebanon became a breeding ground for terrorist as we shelled their soil from the US New Jersey. Iran, a country that suffered years of US backed aristocracy and British extortion of oil money found an easy recruit to even their score. The Arab issue is not “land for peace”, an initiative that began with Nixon. It is about an inferiority complex towards their Jewish neighbors with a strong Western guardian.

George Washington warned in his farewell address against doing precisely what the United States is doing in the Middle East today. He admonished the young people to be neutral and to observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivating peace and harmony with each. He said the United States should avoid permanent, inveterate antipathies toward some nations and passionate attachments to others. Such attachments engender a variety of evils and lead to the illusion of an imaginary common interest exists and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into participation in quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. As long as the Arabs continue to ban democratic outlet and the US remains insensitive to Arabs while supporting Israel then terrorist activity will flourish.

The author offers three paths towards eradicating terrorism. First, is to assassinate terrorist leaders. Second is to impose sanctions against terrorist states, and third is to engage in diplomacy with Arabs states. Alternatively, as our recent world history shows us we have indeed gone to war in behalf of Muslim people three times, in Kosvo, Somalia, and Kuwait. To the point on diplomacy, given the assumption that war is the last step in bringing a diplomatic solution, we failed. Sanctions against Iraq come under an ever-increasing scrutiny by world leaders. This leaves the assassination route, one not legal, as the one to try. I suspect the reason why the virtues of global economics are not explored, is because of the internal Muslim leadership's non-participation on Western terms.

The author makes his position no secret on the fight against terrorism. "Is to conduct not massive air strikes but covert, selective assassination campaign against terrorist leaders. I find this ironic coming from a person who makes a living as a journalist. The classic mantra of academic left finds no home when our own are being killed in our home. This is medicine both left and right needed to unite under one flag for the security of one people. Yet, it is painfully brought out that the drastic swing to the left in post Nixon years leaves us with laws that render the recommended option illegal here in our home of the free.

Interesting trivia and digression in thought constructed by the author: Dawn is when there is enough light so that a person can distinguish a black thread from a white thread at arms length. Yet in Islam, science is indeed at loggerheads as to precisely when Ramadan begins and ends. When and in what time zone is the official beginning? The decision is vested in the authority of the guy in Saudi Arabia holding the threads who has control over the astrominy in the observatory. There is no word for fundamentalism in Arabic. Usouliyya (basic principles) comes close. The author states that " in any religion the believer is asked to put intelligence on the shelf, which is harmless enough. But when it has militant overtones it is self-righteous, irrational, anti-intellectual and dangerous. " He further suggest that the current movement back to the mosque does not represent an artistic or religious rebirth. He suggests that movement is a religious revival that gets louder and angrier with louder and angrier demands of the western world. The Six-Day War set off this revival, where Arab's vision of a Pan Arab nation dissolved. The 1973, Egyptian counter offensive gave the Arabs new found momentum in their fundamental roots to the extent that imposing an oil embargo was just a taste of things to come. It is not about land for peace; it is about the Arabs being second rate to the region's superpower.

Those poor miss understood Arabs. Why you ask? They do not invest in a level of public relations that is commensurate to the issues at hand. In contrast while a journalist in Israel has red phones on their desks for interviews with public officials, the same journalist would wait weeks for a visa in an Arab country and then wait days to get an interview with a officer of the person actually sought after. Granting high profile interviews with western news network is the exception and only due to extreme circumstance. During the interview the Arabs will not say what they mean; because pride and dignity are more important than what we in the West recognize as the truth.

This book led me to conclude that from a global perspective, we are very different people in our core values and thought. We have parted company long ago. The way back is not right around the corner. Yet I can set on the stoop of my New York apartment with a Muslim a Jew and me an Irish Catholic, and we see life the same way. Go figure.

Eugine Onegin

2008-12-30T16:00:00.003-05:00

Eugine Onegin
By Douglas Hofstadter

Hofstadter’s preface is an intriguing love story by a master of symbols and patterns who falls prey to compulsiveness and pounces on random coincidences. He gives in to love-for the poem, if only for the love of his wife, Carol. The question that anyone familiar with Hofstadter is; is this book Carol’s symbol, his deceased wife living beyond her mortality? Ironically, the story line by the original author Sergeevich Pushkin, the godfather of Russian literature, is a love story as well. Hence you’ll find two parallel themes in my review. First is the answer to the Hofstadter question. The second is a question to all of you. Pushkin’s love story told in poetry is one of familiar refrain. I suspect love manifests itself in many ways and thrives on many different levels..

In Hofstadter’s book I Am a Strange Loop, discussed in my review found here on Cigar Room of Books, he tells a touching true-life story of his wife’s passing. In that story he eventually climbs out of the funk he found himself in. This translation project was his bridge. He provides a rationale of how the entwined life between himself and Carol became an entwined thought pattern. Thought being capable of transcending modalities, allows is wife Carol to live on through the people she was close to, and then through generations. In piecing together the story in Strange Loop and his preface in this book, I have come to conclude that the hidden power of love drove Hofstadter, to this project so that he could release his grief and find a higher plane to express his love for Carol. The most remarkable feat I find is this book is Hofstadter's soul, already fluent in a few languages which are mere symbols of thought, flowing from the patterns of DNA, he translates a poem written in Russian, a language he is not fluent in, by the most renowned Russian author ever, and receives high accolades from Russians who say he captured the pure essence of Pushkin’s heart and mind.

You find evidence in chapter 7 verse 23: to my summation. This stanza is Tatyana’s soul reacting to the same books her long departed Onegin had read. The story places Tatyana in the same study that Onegin had spent time in. Pushkin infers that time and space becomes only somewhat relevant as she is experiencing the thoughts and feelings of her denied true love through the common denominator of the word symbols. In that room she becomes one with her lover. All of the entwined expressions of life between Douglas and Carol continue through their children and through their work.

There could be found on many pages,
The clench marks of his fingernails.
The girl, her gaze alert, engages
Two eager eyes upon these trails
Tatyana notes, with trepidation
The types of thought and observation
That struck Onegin forcefully
Things he agreed with silently.
The margins brought to her attention
Tracks from his pencil, trapped in coal.
Thus everywhere Onegins soul
Transduced itself, without intention
Through jotted words, through checks and hooks,
Through interrogatory crooks.

The story line is pretty simple and one that should find common experience amongst most readers. What makes this book worth reading is the story is told in verse. I am told many a Russian has it committed to memory which is a testament to the passion I have experienced in my Russian experiences. Eugene is your classic Russian youth full of vim and vigor and a penchant to be a man of the world. Tatyana is a unique young woman with a penchant to marry the person she loves rather than the person presented to her by society’s fate. As the story unfolds Tatyana submits her soul to Onegin in classic Russian form through a love letter invitation. Onegin, who inwardly discovers her inward beauty as well as his love for her rebukes Tatyana as being too vulnerable to withstand the realities his antics. As tradition forces herself, Tatyana is destined to be matched up with someone in the person of Eugene’s rival friend. The rivalry ends in a duel where Eugene while victor, he is deeply remorseful and becomes reclusive. As there lives take separate courses Eugene eventually finds in his approach to Tatyana the “shoe on the other foot” and an already married Tatyana, still with a deep love for Eugene must now reproach him.

To comment on the story and its translation I provide the following view. In my youth the popular song was Love The One You’re With and we all did. But until a man seasons a few years he is lacking in the skills and judgment to respond appropriately. There is much more to love than the outward directed world reveals. My guess is that the reason Russians can remember the poem, is it sings a familiar refrain in the lives of many. In reading this book if you find the same fate, close your eyes and be there now. In this world where you come in to it and leave it alone, and some times in the middle you feel the same; this poem committed to memory, may be your one friend to help you feel not so alone. I wonder if Hofstadter found this same experience?

From a scientific or Darwinian view and a take away on Hofstadter: If DNA is a pattern that evolves through experiences within each host, it is the pattern or symbol of your soul that lives on. Hence life that looks to flourish and continue on in this world requires a host willing to conceive, bare and nourish the symbol of her being, a child. That requires a mate. In natural mate selection to the host searches for a mate with the mutual respect for life, found in love for one another. A love for one another that are vested in the ability to recognize the interconnectedness found in oneness of mankind beginning with one’s self. This couple then forms a life together contributing to a home, village, and state world. This is where the continuation of their DNA (symbols of their souls) continues on.

Churchill's Folly

2008-10-18T18:27:00.001-04:00

Collapse

2008-11-26T12:37:00.000-05:00

Collapse
by Jared Diamond

Diamond takes a very academic approach to this book, providing a case to inspire one to GO GREEN. His introduction examines societies collapses with a theory on ecocide. There is he claims a simple list for causes ecocide. In a history narrative covering a few collapsed societies Diamond covers deforestation, soil problems, water management, over hunting & fishing, the introduction of new species into areas that could not adapt, and human population growth. As he transitions the reader to current times where collapse has yet to occur he introduces the human caused climate change of today, a build up of toxic chemicals, energy shortage, and full human utilization of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity. What is not so simple is why man does what he does, nor is the remedy.

In all the events he covers, he associates things man has done or not done as his part to ecocide. Man seems to have historically demonstrated a knack no not recognize subsequent environmental damage caused by man. For example the Deforestation of Easter Island began around 900 and was completed in 1722 when Roggeveen arrived and observed the tallest trees to be 10 ft. The Easter Island people did not recognize that due to the climate of Easter Island the soil could only nourish a slow growth rate of big trees until it was too late. While this simple factor went un-noticed it caused a domino effect through the whole eco system. The intra island competition to build the biggest idols left chiefs focused on besting each other may have been their distraction. In the end with no large trees, the Islanders could not make ocean-going canoes big enough to export. And the became dependent on imports with uncooperative trading partners, for they ran out of things to trade for. Sound like an ominous parallel?

On the subject of social dysfunctions and short sighted leadership that begins with Easter Island, Diamond provides many other examples. The two poignant ones I took note of were first Maya kings who sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples. Where Diamonds message becomes poignant is where he says this is reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. What makes it especially poignant to me is he overlooks the vocal high paid actors from Hollywood. Next you have the differences between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The former is Spanish while the latter is French. Because Dominican Republic was of Spanish origin, received more rain, fed by more rivers; started with less colonization on a more ecologically sustainable land made them less vulnerable to collapse. The causes for the ignorance to these challenges to avert collapse in Haiti where they were not so blessed were social differences and were somewhat self-inflicted. As a legacy of their country’s slave history and slave revolt most Haitians owned their land, used it to feed themselves and received no help from their government in developing cash crops for trade. France did not lose gracefully. Contrarily while Spain did the opposite with their partner Dominican Republic. It seems the French always seem to extol their superior society however in this example they get caught with their pants down, where no one is brave enough to tell the king, even to this day.

The book provides several examples where social decisions were attempted and managed for a while but then over run by short sightedness, caused by limitations in environmental knowledge at the place and time. As one example; the Anasazi Indians existed in the Chaco Canyon of our American Southwest from 600 AD to 1200. They lived in peace until 1110 when resources became scarce. Diamond explains the government system that was administered to manage the random flood plains. Unique to this was the centralization of the government in Chaco Canyon. The Chaco Canyon collapse was founded in the people’s failed effort to plant crops in many locations and redistribute some of the harvest to the people still living at sites that didn’t get enough rainfall that year. It involved the risk that redistribution required a complex political system to integrate activities between different sites. Of course the risk as we know today is in centralization of control. Anaszi groups supplied food, timber, pottery, stone, supporting each other in an interdependent complex society, by coordinating the changes of materials, and re motivating people in outlying areas by political and religious centers. Probably the outlying settlements that formerly supplied the Chaco political and religious center with food lost faith in the Chacoan priests who’s prayers for rain remained unanswered. The missing ingredient was not unanswered prayer but rather knowledge of long term drought patterns that would have been transferred if the written word was at their hand.

It becomes clear that in every case where trees or natural pasture is cultivated for mans use, whether for farming or mining, soil problems are sure to be the first domino before water to lead to societal collapse. In the past and it seems still today society does not respond properly. In the past it may have been out of ignorance. Diamond implies that today it may be also out of systematic greed. An example was discussed in Australia. Because the continent does not have the benefit of volcanic ash fall out, it has a very thin layer of fertile soil to begin with. You find these modern era people guilty of the introduction of new species on a vulnerable eco system. In Australia rabbits and sheep were introduced and they rutted the soil and ate the local vegetation thus accelerating soil erosion. Before colonists realized this is was too late. Ghosts of this problem still exist around the globe. Soil problems lead to water management problems where Stalinization of land is the result of letting once naturally vegetated land go fallow and rain water to leach minerals out of the sublevel rock. I now appreciate their fanatic inspection I receive when I land in Melbourne. Its why the Fertile Crescent is not fertile and Australia’s number one problem in it’s very delicate eco system is water, both fresh and ocean water. All these stories inspired me to go out and purchase trees. I planted ten on my acre of property and many more around my neighborhood. While we get the impression Australia is proactive on the environment, Diamond says otherwise. Like in the Middle East Australia inadvertent societal damage on the environment –vs.- their ability to repair it is out of balance. More on that to come.

Human population growth while out of control in poor countries is of concern even maintaining the present population base does not get us out of the woods when looking at countries achieving first tier living standards. First Diamond introduces the Malthusin concept that human population growth would out grow food production as a cause for collapse. Then he applies this to Rwanda where we find detailed cause and effect of the Malthusin concept as not a battle between Tutsi and Hutu but the ''Haves'' and the '' Have Nots'' in a battle for food in the densest population in Africa. The average Rwandan woman has her first of 5 children at the age of 15. Imagine the societal upheaval when you cannot as a family father support your five kids on your three quarters of an acre and no more land to obtain through civil or uncivil means and your parents move back in because their land was taken. So far genocide seems to have to prevailed over vertical farming or family planning. Amidst the discussion of population we gather that Professor Diamond unabashedly and ironically includes this in his book that he fathered twins at age 58. So we have ignorance, systematic greed and clumsy protocol.

The human impact of China becoming a first word country left unabated and assuming the United States leads the way to a friendlier earth will still leave our planet in pearl due to China’s flagrant disregard to our environment. Forget about industry’s disregard; simply look at the human impact of becoming a first tier country. Diamond provides the following simple statistical arguments. First at zero population growth the already large number of China’s households has increased 3.5% per year over the past 15 years. The occupant size decreased from 4.5 to 3.5 and is projected to decrease further to 2.7as there are less multi generation households. There are more divorces where a father can sire more than one child and rear them in separate homes. And finally the per-capita floor space has increased nearly three fold. Having been to China I asked my counter part what happened to the bicycles. He told me the government views bicycles as bad for their image and has placed an exorbitant license fee and thus making polluting mo pads and autos the preferred choice. China’s failure to recognize their guilt is the number one rationale for no country to have signed the Kyoto Treaty in 2000. The right statement is we are on board for green, but we must all be genuinely being on board. China so far has demonstrated everything to the contrary.

Not to stand holier than thou, this transitions my review nicely to Diamonds recommendations to go green. They come with examples in both bottom up and then top down approaches. First lets look at top down from two perspectives. In Japan the spread of silviculture probably promulgated by diffusion of knowledge of the technique from its first two sites of invention, plus perhaps some later inventions in other areas. But the country’s shift was led from the top by successive shoguns who invoked Confucian principals to promulgate official ideology that encouraged limiting consumption and accumulating reserve supplies in order to prevent disaster. Living in a stable society without input from foreign ideas, Japans elite and peasants alike expected the future to be like the present, and future problems to have to be solved with present resources. In the Dominican Republic while Trujillo was a brutal dictator, he advanced a stronger economy through conservation than Dovalier, his 20th century counterpart in Haiti. He did this though for self-serving reasons and the unstable situation and lack of cooperative productive trade partners today therefore renders the odds for sustainable environmentalism in question. The contrast demonstrates that no one person is smart enough to get the job done.

A good example of Bottom up is provided in Papua New Guinea where a local Chevron employee explained, “We recognized that in Papua no natural resource project could be successful in the long run without support of the local land owners. They would disrupt the project and shut it down”. Conditions allowing such a statement were a decentralized government with a lot of authority at local level. This is an oil project run by the people because the executives saw good reason in terms of risk abatement which led to being first in line for exploration contracts in other countries. In the end the bottom up approach has a positive global impact beyond political boarders.

Each tier, whether political or industrial commerce must reach out to each other in a cooperative spirit. Top Down-v-Bottom Up is discussed where in 1993 eroded land in Australia was purchased by the Australian Commonwealth Government and the Chicago Zoological Society. The managers applied top-down control and gave orders to local community volunteers who became increasingly frustrated, until control was turned over to the private Australian Landscape Trust mobilizing 400 local volunteers for bottom up management. The trust funded in large degree by Australia largest private philanthropic organization, the Potter Foundation which is expressly concerned with reversing the degradation of Australia’s farmland. One must remember that in order for Potter Foundation to exist they needed to earn capital to become of such elite status to help out. It is always a word to the wise to the masses to not bite the hand that feeds you and an equal word to the elite to appreciate who is washing your hand. More on that to come.

It is clear Diamond is a little left of center and a tad antiestablishment. While he maintains for the most part in my opinion a fair degree of objectivity in fact he occasionally digresses in opinion. What I think could be the focused intended outcome in reading this book is to learn from mistakes and then to take both a top down and a then a bottom up approach towards righting a sinking ship. The ship may be sinking due to forces beyond our control as Diamond admits, but then his book would be considerably shorter and provide nothing but hope. In taking a more involved look, Diamond provokes the reader to be much more conscious of his individual environmental impact, much more informed of societal impact on our environment, and much more keen with a invigorated spirit to “pitch in”.

Australia has a well-educated populace, a high standard of living. and a relative honest political and economic institutions by world standards. Australians are asking a central question: which of our traditional core values can we retain, and which ones instead no longer serve us well in today's world. This is something that should catch on globally. In the bottom up cause where the reader cannot help but find inspiration towards his contribution we find yet another story in McDonalds. In this case McDonalds is subservient to the government hence “bottom-up. McDonalds in the interest of protecting their marketplace (the people) applied public pressure for industries to conform to inspections. They, through their consumers have the world’s largest shopping cart. Diamond uses the mad cow-testing mandate by McDonalds to illustrate the power of the people and big business but seems to overlook the fact that the solution at hand was separate from government involvement. Diamond in my opinion rightly appeals to consumers to press a moral obligation to conform to environmentalism and wrongly proposes the government as the conduit. He falls on to the government, because of its authority through force, as opposed to, schools, television, radio, newspapers, the church, synagogue, or mosque where the conscience of One Man and the Unity of us all is conveyed and thus producing voluntary acceptance and adaptation. What do you think caused people in the United States to “buckle up” your car seat belts more; the “buckle up” “media campaigns or the ticket you get if you don’t buckle up? Equating moral consciousness to government dependency is an indictment on the classic educated elite liberal who has forgotten how to sell ideas. It is an unfortunate undertone in Diamonds message that I fear as one of the many examples impeding on the collective conscience to GO GREEN.

Diamond proposes the root cause of Collapse is group decision making. He outlines causes at group level. First is anticipation of a problem. Second is perception of a problem. And third is problem solving. Greenland climate changes cannot support long-term farming. They did not have the knowledge that when they discovered Greenland it was during a global warming period and that a mini Ice Age would return. This very course in the book had me suspicious of our current “global warming fears”. In Greenland the Norse Vikings could not draw on prior experience and made mistakes through reasoning by false analogy. Separately, I particularly enjoyed Diamonds assumption as to why Norse Greenlander didn’t eat fish. But preferred to eat beef on a land that could not sustain cows. Fish were deemed taboo as Eric the Red got food poisoning in his founding year of Greenland. This only represents an example where ignorant leaders actions can lead a society into collapse. More on that later. Problem solving was preempted by instance of a life style dictated by leaders from distant Norway.

In a more current example of irrational problem solving Diamond presents the reader with the story of competing interest and distant managers in the way we find a practical and commercial argument in Australia. When a farmer buys land and takes out a mortgage, the need to pay the interest on that high mortgage resulting from the land (based in British valuation) results overcapitalization pressures on the farmer to try to extract more from prime land than it could sustain-ably yield. That practice, termed flogging the land, has meant stocking to many sheep per acre. At a world group level the farmer should concede and choose to starve if not for the group to somehow subsidize the farmers transition to a new vocation. Our credit crisis ushered in by Clinton policy and perpetuated by Bush’s' unwillingness to repeal it, but rather perpetuate it, parallels the Australian mistake with sheep. In our case the bank plays the role of farmer and we the people the role of sheep, while the bank is guilty of the flogging. I add this only to illustrate all the obstacles in the way of a society’s ability to perceive and solve a problem collectively, it is not simply the technology of the written word, and it is the word itself and its response.

Here is what the author means in detect-ability relevant to the written word, a frequent dilemma for historians is trying to apply the comparative method to problems of human history: Apparently there are too many potential independent variables, and far too few separate outcomes to establish those variables' importance statically. In my Six Sigma view, Diamond is flawed in his opinion. I do not believe he has explored a statistical approach to adequate depths rendering potential statistical facts to a mere opinion. Where there is dispute over the numbers there is certain disagreement. With the right statistician this could be solved. In the Papua example statistics were not required. Folks could readily see environmental impact and therefore made appropriate decisions.

Laws of supply & demand directly challenge attempts to overcome agendas for individual survival as the mining industry deals with their ability to stockpile their core product. Diamond provides sound historical economic argument as to why mining companies are recalcitrant to properly funding mine cleanup. But in merely rightly or wrongly ridiculing he mining companies he falls short of a complete solution, which would be pointing a finger at consumers as well to be held accountable for the higher end-product pressure aimed at environmentalism. Putting the right measured information in front of consumer leveraging environmental purchasing pressure on the distant managers in mining industry has proven ineffective so far due to the consumers ignorance to the core ingredients blinded by the end product of their demand on the core product. Putting the written word in front of the consumers would go a long way to applying the right forces. What if right next to the words that said this product is environmentally safe, there were a before and after price? This is my solution aimed by environmentalist at industry but a paradigm shifting solution that includes the whole food chain…consumers.

In rethinking our approach consider the following. Once established overseas in Christian lands, pagan Vikings were quite prepared to inter marry and adapt to local customs and that included embracing Christianity. Conversions of Vikings overseas contributed to the emergence of Christianity at home. As chiefs and kings recognized the political advantages that Christianity would bring them they were adopted and made official. Norwegian kings then force Christianity on to all its conquered lands and trading partners, whether it made sense or not. The things deemed important in Bergen, ended up costing Greenlanders their lives. If only the true ideologies of Christianity were embraced as opposed the power found in “the secret” bestowed upon religious leaders. Some of our global problems are distant problems and hence we as distant and detached managers are apt for power over another rather than love for one another, and pawn the problem off. Are we as leaders and individuals across the globe truly prepared meet the Australian question to forego power a cousin to ignorant greed and reprioritize? Owning the concern one by one, and then recognizing the inter connectedness of our part in the concern is what this book conveys. If indeed it is our will to live then let it be that we work together. If it is Gods will then let us …work together anyway.

The prosperity that the First World enjoys at present is based on spending down its environmental capital. It makes no sense to be content with our present comfort when it is clear that we are currently on a non-sustainable course. I weaved Diamond’s 500-page thesis message to a short review to hopefully with minor flaws aside compel you to overcome any intentional or most likely unintentional opposition to environmentalism in any form and read this book. For me I was immediately inspired to plant trees. I would enjoy hearing from you how you pitched in as a result of reading this book.

Fleeced

2008-10-20T16:34:00.005-04:00

Fleeced
by Dick Morris

Are you a little pissed off? Do you feel this country is going in the wrong direction? This book falls into the category of pundit books that may change your mind about the source of your discontentment as the once political advisor to Bill Clinton takes aim at Democrats He may bore you with a plethora of facts. Some of which you may challenge because you believe contrary pundit input. Some of which you may challenge because you do not find the fact to be directly or even remotely relevant to his case in point. But if there is one rule Morris holds to it is the one where he does not engage in any rivalry diatribe with other pundits, which really has him in a unique political analyst stature of which you may find enjoyable for a change. What I find puzzling is Dick Morris was Bill Clinton’s political advisor and you would assume he leans left. But oh-contraire! What never comes out in his book, unlike most other political pundit or political figureheads in exile is any personal agenda. What I find intriguing is Morris’s targeting seems to fall largely with the Democratic Party of which he enjoyed a high degree of success and notoriety.

Morris covers many different subjects spanning big government, big business, and unions where he demonstrates how Americans as individuals are being fleeced by an organized entity with its own sense of self. I only provide a commentary to a few of Morris’s subjects, simply because I have a sense of priority that one may rather call a sense of urgency.

Morris begins the book with a chapter on Barack Obama. The statistician he is, Morris provides a twelve-point list of reasons not to send Barack Obama to the White House. While there are numerous books on the doom that would fall on the United States during an Obama presidency, this book sums it up in one chapter. Below is the list of talking points of which I highly recommend that you go to the bookstore and read the narrative to fully digest and articulate to others the consequence of poor judgment before November 4, 2008.

1. Double capital gains taxes on stock and real estate sales
2. Increase FICA taxes by 14 points on all income over $100,000
3. Double taxes on dividends
4. Expand the inheritance
5. Weaken the PATRIOT ACT
6. Curb anti terror wiretapping
7. Extend health care insurance benefits to illegal immigrants
8. Give children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition at state universities
9. Expand the number of immigrants who can enter the United States
10. Weaken education standards, by making it illegal to base a teachers pay on the test results of their students
11. Expand health insurance so drastically that it forces us to ration medical care, particularly to the elderly
12. Expand the welfare state, dividing America between tax-payers and tax consumers.

Morris makes his case for wire tapping in an argument for terrorist surveillance. His argument is much like video surveillance and laws enacted in Britain. Quoting authorities he states “there is a difference between surveillance aimed at prosecution and that which seeks to “learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities”. For Information gathering alone, warrants are utterly beside the point. Quoting judge Richard Posner as saying once you grant the legitimacy of surveillance aimed at detection rather than at gathering evidence of guilt, requiring a warrant to conduct it would be like requiring a warrant to ask people questions or to install surveillance comers on city streets. Connecting the dots with the Obama chapter, to find the Democratic left media, and the Democratic Party, and specifically Barack Obama would make it a priority to remove an essential tool to our national security.

Morris discusses the Fairness Doctrine in draft form that is being pushed by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama where not only does the government control the content of what is broadcast on the airwaves it dictates who works there at each station based on there political orientation. Does that sound like socialism, or communism. or Nazism? It certainly does not sound like a free press. But one thing for sure is under a Obama presidency us Americans will never see it coming!

What’s coming you ask? McCain and Obama tried to push a bill through Congress to police for foreign lobbyists. Hillary Clinton led the effort to kill it. One can only conclude that this was due to her husbands special lobby interest in Dubai under the guise of a not for profit fund. Why a US Senator who is running for president has a husband so closely tied to Dubai is not drawn into question by the media is a good question that can be answered in the preceding paragraph. . Many foreign lobbyists lined up behind the Clintons with Hillary campaign run. In other material we are now learning since the Democratic Convention that Obama may have lately received as mush as $65M from foreign entities. This is all illegal under our current campaign finance law. If you wonder where it ends or why folks go to Washington to “serve their country” Clinton’s post administration advisors are on the take and earning a pretty dollar, you don’t have to look far when you read that Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist was on the lobbyist take for Central American trade bill. Penn is now a post Clinton lobbyist millionaire

Freddie and Fannie have found the personal integrity and agenda of prominent Democrats as in Christopher Dodd, and Charles Schumer to be in question. While he points this out here is what Morris missed. Forget about Obama’s association with radical leaders walking through life with spinning moral compasses. Lets look at his connection with Tony Rezko. While running as a reformer, Obama has had a 17-year relationship with an convicted Chicago con man now in prison for fraud, extortion, and money laundering. Rezko benefited from Obama’s role in the Illinois Senate by receiving millions in state funded housing.

Was the favor returned and is big business involved well consider this: A former Illinois bank official, now claiming whistleblower status, says bank officials replaced a loan reappraisal that he prepared for a Chicago property that was purchased by the wife of now-convicted felon Tony Rezko, part of which was later sold to next-door neighbor Barack Obama. In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document. Only in Chicago’s Hyde Park!!!! The questions are why is Barack Obama not brought up on charges for fraud? There is a thin veil… a very thin veil. But then why has the Senate ethics committee not even included this on their agenda? Look at the names mentioned in the preceding paragraph. One thing for sure, this goes to the very heart of our current credit crisis.

This book includes many chapters that show government and big business working in concert to fleece American citizens. We clearly understand that in 1999 the Democrats put America on that slippery slope ( I am now calling it the Rezko Slope)to easy money in the hands of those who can’t make responsible decisions. There is an old saying that once government gives away an entitlement, no subsequent administration can take it a away. I will also add that once government gets in bed with big business, it is the citizens that get screwed. In the six years of Republican rule, they made the problem worse. Why Morris’s indictment appears in this book to tilt against the left may lay with an overwhelming preponderance of fact. Morris is a fact and stat man. While Morris leads with a chapter that takes aim against Obama, many of the remaining chapters find Obama’s hand behind the scenes. This book could have been stronger in its indictment on the Democrats, and I give Morris credit for keeping the facts down the middle and his opinion to himself. Had I written it using the same facts with a little pointed narrative, you would see a cover that reads Obama’s Conspiracy by Paul Murphy. Reading this book and talking about it to as many people as you can before November 4, 2008, is paramount to arm Americans with the right intellect to avert Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi efforts in bamboozling America.