Vision Circle

Terrorist to Terrorist: Selected Quotes

I've read the reported translation of a letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. If the letter is real and if the translation is accurate, people who are against what is happening in Iraq for noble reasons, need to rethink their position.

Some things that caught my attention:

Delphi goes bankrupt. GM next?

First, thanks to P6 for coming out and to T3 for setting us out.

Delphi files for bankruptcy. For people outside of Detroit this is small time news. Probably about as important as new cases of Avian Flu.

Sometime around the late nineties, both Ford and GM began to spin off their parts making enterprises (for Ford, it was Visteon) so they could become leaner and meaner, focusing more on building cars (and financing their purchase--a significant source of profit for both companies). In the case of Delphi, a deal was cut by GM that stipulated that if Delphi went under, GM would still provide for Delphi employees if Delphi went under.

GM doesn't appear to have those resources, but they still have the obligation.

A good friend of mine predicted that GM would file bankruptcy, SOON.

Contrasting Stories Of Iraq

The following two stories appeared in The Washington Post. Both were above the fold.

U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says

By Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 14, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

Then, there was this one:

Iraqi Sunnis Battle To Defend Shiites Tribes Defy an Attempt by Zarqawi To Drive Residents From Western City

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 14, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Aug. 14 -- Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said. The fighting came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of six American soldiers.

Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said.

The contrast is left up to the reader to think about. This one makes me laugh, sigh, and wonder what's going on in the administration.

Globalisation is an anomaly and its time is running out

The HUGE LIE of this false doctrine infects every aspect of the dopamine distraction theatre {politics} by which we alleviate the excruciating boredom of lives essentially devoid of interior psychological value or meaning. Boredom is merely the seeing of how empty I am...dependent on exterior stimuli to validate my existence. What do I look forward to upon awakening in the morning? Newspaper, FOXNEWS on TV, email, input from co-workers, an exchange with my current companion...all of which cover-up an incipient state of anxiety...a desire to avoid being-here-now with how I am - with my avidity, fears, aversions and dreams of how my life should be.

J.H. Kunstler writes with typical flair in the Guardian about how cheap energy and relative peace have helped create a false doctrine, to which I only add that sooner than we expect or can even imagine, the unsustainable bubble of our dopaminergic consensus hallucination will be most rudely popped by a sharp prick from the thermodynamic real world.

What the Iraq fight really costs us

Niall Ferguson clearly sees that the obstacle to ''winning'' in Iraq is our reluctance to do what the British did in 1920: deliberately escalate attacks on civilians. And because, unfortunately to him it seems, the ''humiliation and torture of prisoners have not yielded any significant benefits,'' he is left with only one last proposal. We must maintain an occupation by bribing underprivileged immigrants to be mercenaries.

That Americans will not accept these solutions is not a military setback but an advancement of our morality.

Meet the Press tackles the Pope

(I'm reading off the beaten path for a bit...)

I figured that the sunday shows would be dealing with the Pope. At least one poster is upset at the coverage. But thinking back to Mike's cautious celebration on Ratzinger's nomination, I think much more (rather than less) analysis is in order. Listen to the English translation of Benedict's positions. He's talking about a culture of life, fighting against stem-cell research, and arguing for Spanish bureaucrats to act as conscientious objectors of sorts to same-sex marriage. The election of Bush, the Shiavo case (sp?), the fight for the judiciary, and Benedict XVI are all part of the same phenomenon.

And while Mike's happy about the return to prominence of what perhaps he'd call Old School Catholic values, I'd just ask about Pope Eugenius IV and Pope Nicholas V.

The Abduction of Modernity

The historical reasons that prompted the modernizing process in Western Europe and North America are not necessarily structural components of modernity. Surely, Enlightenment values such as instrumental rationality, liberty, rights consciousness, due process of law, privacy and individualism are all universalizable modern values. However, as the Confucian example suggests, "Asian values" such as sympathy, distributive justice, duty-consciousness, ritual, public-spiritedness and group orientation are also universalizable modern values. Just as the former ought to be incorporated into East Asian modernity, the latter may turn out to be a critical and timely reference for the American way of life.

The Long View of Western Cultural Evangelism

36 Chambers of Not Having It!

China has banned a Nike television commercial showing U.S. basketball star LeBron James in a battle with an animated cartoon kung fu master. The ad insults Chinese national dignity, it says.

Full monty here;

Video here;

Inner-resting control of images....,

Security

Bin Laden(?)

Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential nominee John] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.

Now, to the folks who said that Kerry is what the terrorists want, how do you now respond? Will you at least admit that your comments were, at best, asinine?

Do you remember the "Shoe Bomber"? Do you remember that this happened after 9/11? Do you remember the anthrax deaths? Do you remember that this happened after 9/11?

Do you feel stupid now or what?!?!?!

World War III

Let's call it what it is, shall we?