Washington Post Calls for Arming Syrian Rebels

Pro-democracy fighters in Syria?


The Washington Post writes that Syrian rebels should be armed by outside aid under UN leadership. This is idiotic. The end of the Assad regime will lead to rule by Islamic extremists and factional fighting as it has done in Egypt and Libya. But, of course, nobody in the media pays attention to what has happened in those two countries! Below is a quote from story in the Post.

"So how to stop the massacres? The most available and workable solution is tactical and materiel support for the anti-regime forces, delivered through neighbors such as Turkey or the Persian Gulf states. Opponents say that would increase the violence, but violence in Syria will continue to escalate as long as the regime believes it can survive by force. Others worry that radicals among the opposition will be empowered. But what will strengthen extremists the most is the failure of democratic nations to act and the entry of groups such as al-Qaeda into the vacuum."

http://tinyurl.com/72tnp7v

Review of "Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited"

This review is from: Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy (Kindle Edition)
Scott argues that the collapse of Latin-Greek civilization in Western Europe happened not in the 5th century during the migrations of the Goths, Vandals and other Germanic peoples, but was delayed until the 7th century.

Among other evidence of continuity after the fall of Rome, Scott writes the the barbarian kings issued coins with the face of the Eastern Roman Emperor on them until about 640AD. He also shows that learning, long distance trade, building, intensive agriculture, and other facets of Latin-Greek culture continued until about that date.

Archeologist cited in the book have found serious soil erosion only after that same 640 date. This is true not only for all of Western Europe but also for North Africa and much of the Middle East.

So, what happened in the Mediterranean world about that time? The Arab-Islamic conquests. Which effectively forced trade across the Mediterranean to be given up, the abandonment of coastal agriculture, and the building of the first castles near the sea. The pirate raids and looting carried out by the Arabs destroyed Roman civilization, not those Germans, who only wanted to benefit from the culture they took over.

There is other evidence on the state of early Islam that counters the standard model of the first Islamic civilizations being good, and post-fall-of-Rome civilization in the west being bad. That is the failure of archeologists to find any evidence of large cities in early Islamic lands. No massive ruins in 8th or 9th century Baghdad or Cordoba, supposedly centers of large, prosperous Islamic civilizations, with beautiful palaces and Mosques. I found this very surprising and evidence that clinched the author's arguments.

A very well argued book that attacks several recent books on the fall of Rome and the benefits of Islamic culture.

And then at the end of the book, Scott goes off on a tangent suggesting...

Well, read the book.


P.S. Emmet Scott often publishes online in something names New English Review. It you are interested in the impact of Islam on current affairs and the problems of western culture due to our general decline in morality, religious belief, and social responsibility, I suggest looking at the Review's web pages at the start of each month. The URL is: http://www.newenglishreview.org/home.cfm

Egypt, the US, The New York Times, and Islam

Typical Egyptian Soccer Game

The New York Times has an article online today about the female head of Egypt's Planning and International Cooperation push to arrest and try those American caught over in Cairo doing working for various international aid organizations. To quote the Times:

"With $1.5 billion in annual American aid hanging in the balance, Egypt’s top military officer and de facto chief executive is asking Ms. Abul Naga to moderate her tone. But she has become more caustic than ever, issuing her own warnings for Washington to back off. If the United States is not careful, she says, it may push Egypt closer to Iran."

Good grief. Does our government not know that the Islamic radicals have WON in Egypt? Did not those silly foreign aid workers in Egypt know something like this was going to happen?

Beside the fact that the Times is also clue-less about the truth about Egypt and the whole Middle East, the false note in the quoted paragraph above is the threat that Egypt might ally itself with Iran. Come on! The Times itself does not know that Egypt is Sunni and Iran is Shia? And that those two sects of Islam hate each other as much as they hate us?

Link: http://tinyurl.com/6ltyw3w

Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost (DVD)

Innocents Lost should have been named Redemption, because that is the primary theme in this movie starring Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone, sometimes chief of police in Paradise, Massachusetts. The previous movie in this series was lame, this one excellent.

Most of the characters from previous books and movies are back, including officers Luther "Suitcase" Simpson and Rose Gammon, State Police Captain Healy, Boston mob boss Gino Fish, and even former Paradise city councilman - and former criminal, Hasting Hathaway

As I wrote above, redemption is the key to this movie. Hathaway is thinking of putting himself up again for city council as a reformed criminal who has learned his lesson from his past jail time. Gino Fish gets a bit of redemption by identifying a bad guy who has gone against Fish's strange code of criminal behavior. Suitcase follows his own code of honor (taught to him by Stone) by resigning because he does not like the thoroughly unlikable new Police Chief. And Healy and Stone earn a few good points to weigh against past sins by getting a kid wrongly convicted of murder freed from that charge.

Without giving too much of the plot away I will tell you that as always in these Jesse Stone movies there are multiple story lines going on, some finished with a bang and some left hanging waiting for a yet another sequel.

This movie holds together so well because all the characters seem at ease with each other and their roles in the ongoing Jesse Stone drama. Oh, and by the way, there are hints that Jesse is getting over his dependence on his ex-wife.

Libya Today in the New York Times

The country that witnessed the Arab world’s most sweeping revolution is foundering. So is its capital, where a semblance of normality has returned after the chaotic days of the fall of Tripoli last August. But no one would consider a city ordinary where militiamen tortured to death an urbane former diplomat two weeks ago, where hundreds of refugees deemed loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi waited hopelessly in a camp and where a government official acknowledged that “freedom is a problem.” Much about the scene on Wednesday was lamentable, perhaps because the discord was so commonplace.

...

A sense of entropy lingers here. Some state employees have gone without salaries for a year, and Mr. Shamis acknowledged that the government had no idea how to channel enough money into the economy so that it would be felt in the streets. Tripoli residents complain about a lack of transparency in government decisions. Ministries still seem paralyzed by the tendency, instilled during the dictatorship, to defer every decision to the top.

.......

The militias are proving to be the scourge of the revolution’s aftermath. Though they have dismantled most of their checkpoints in the capital, they remain a force, here and elsewhere. A Human Rights Watch researcher estimated there are 250 separate militias in the coastal city of Misurata, the scene of perhaps the fiercest battle of the revolution. In recent months those militias have become the most loathed in the country.

http://tinyurl.com/7k6yc4q

The New York Times on Egypt and Islam

Cairo on a Good Day

Today, the 4th of February 2012, the New York Times has posted an editorial online complaining that the Egyptian military may not give up its influence over the government of that country. The author of the article writes, “The danger is that in the future, without accountability to elected civilian authorities, the Egyptian military and security services will seek to increase their power by manipulating Islamic extremist organizations in volatile and strategically sensitive areas like the Sinai Peninsula.”

We should be so lucky. If the military does not intervene, then Egypt will go the way of Iran with Islamic rulers who will make that country a viciously anti-western, anti-modern, failed state. Just like Somalia, but worse because it is so much larger in both population and regional influence. And because it is part of the heartland of the Middle East, rather than on the edge.

The editorial goes on complain that Egypt may go the way of Pakistan where the intelligence services and the Military manipulate Islamic groups to maintain power. Again we will be lucky if that happens. That is if anyone still believes that it is the Military in Pakistan that controls the terrorists rather than the terrorists who control the Military or, at least, work in close cooperation with it to run the country for the benefit of both.

This is yet another example of how blind the MSM is to the true roll of Islam in the world today.

See the full editorial at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/opinion/can-egypt-avoid-pakistans-fate.html

Satillo Mexico by Edward Hopper. Copied from a reproduction of an oil painting

The Pesident's Speech on the Occupy Movement

The Occupy movements across the country have received the attention of every adult American by breaking the law. One of the sparks for their action is the failure of colleges in American to provide useful educations to their students, coupled with the overhanging debt from loans for education that cannot be eliminated by legal bankruptcy in front of a judge. These loans are too often done under Federal programs, and it was a Federal law that, by exempting students loans from bankruptcy laws, encouraged the banks to make unrealistically high loans.

The Federal government shares the blame for this situation together with that of the student who took advantage of this opportunity for larger loans than they could reasonably hope to repay, along with their parents, and the schools, which took advantage of this easy money with skyrocketing tuition rates.

As President I propose several laws which I am sending to Congress as soon as one action is taken by the rioters.

First, I will propose legislation to allow student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy by the court in those cases where it is reasonable to do so under laws guiding similar debt problems.

Second, I will propose legislation to congress to eliminate all Federal lending programs for higher education.

Third, I will propose legislation to provide relief to those same Wall Street institutions that that the rioters vilify which, encouraged by the loan guarantee programs, made the existing student loans. More details on that legislation will be provided in the next few days.

But now I go back to that “one action”. These occupy riots around the country stop. They stop today. If the rioters go home I will present these proposed laws to congress. If they do not, I will not.

When they go home the students and their parents should approach their congressional representatives to support the legislation I will propose. At the same time they should apologize to their younger brothers and sisters because they will not have the same educational opportunity they had through educational loans, and for their bad behavior in taking on excessive debt even if it that action was encouraged by the government. You students and your parents have hurt future generations of Americans.

In closing I repeat, these “occupy” riots must stop. They stop today. You have made a case for yourselves in an illegal manner which everyone in the country is going to be punished for financially. You won and everyone lost. It is over. If you do not disperse immediately, which will lead to you being rewarded for illegal actions, I will call the US military to clear the streets if local governments do not.

Pencil Copy of a Paintings by Edward Hopper

Copies of a paintings of a lighthouse by Edward Hopper done about 1927

The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East by Tumur Kuran

I have read many books on Islam. I read them to understand why Islam conquered so much so quickly, and why it failed both politically and economically over the last 500 years. The relative economic decline is of interest because around 1000 CE, the Muslim world was as wealthy as Europe. This is the first book that provided understanding that I could use. Not on conquest directly, but on the economics.

In "The Long Divergence", the author emphasizes two themes around Muslim law of inheritance. Islamic law mandated distribution of wealth after death amongst multiple heirs. This had two results. First, it forced partnerships to be short lived: Death followed by demands for their part of the inheritance by heirs required liquidation of a partnership. Knowing that any death would end the partnership, Muslims tended to favor two person partnerships of short duration. In contrast, after 1000 CE Europeans developed forms of partnership and corporations that could survive the death of a single participant. Partly this was adoption of primogeniture, under which a single descendant could inherit the whole on one person's assets in a property, business or partnership. At the same time Europeans were becoming innovative about the types of business arrangements used to accumulate wealth. Something like modern corporations developed to manage guilds, monasteries, and even cities. European rulers, desperate for money, and often only weakly in power, were willing to allow independent groups take local power, in exchange for stability and the right to tax revenues or profits. These independent institutions were allowed to change their internal rules and general goals as circumstances changes.