Archive for November 6th, 2007

Trouble Ensued

What will happen next in Pakistan?

The nuclear state, which is battling encroaching al Qaeda fighters at its borders, has descended into chaos after President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency and suspended Pakistan’s constitution. Taliban fighters and al Qaeda terrorists who had sought refuge in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan are moving into more populated regions of Pakistan and they appear emboldened by the chaos erupting from Musharraf’s crackdown.

“Pakistani analysts are increasingly questioning General Musharraf’s contention that emergency rule was needed to help him fight terrorism,” reports David Rohde in a New York Times analysis Tuesday. Across the country, policemen and intelligence agents have been diverted from hunting terrorists to arresting lawyers, who apparently are being assessed as the greater threat to the general’s rule.”

[snip]

ABC News correspondent Jim Sciutto reports that officials believe there is a “very real” possibility that those weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

“The nightmare scenario for US officials,” Sciutto says, “that a government collapse could put Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.”

Unless, of course, you want to start another war, in which case all you need is some asshat to kick it off.

Talk is Cheap

The situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate, and there’s not a damned thing Bush can will do about it.

President Bush on Monday urged Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, to hold elections and give up his army post “as soon as possible,” but gave no indication that the general’s imposition of emergency rule would bring about any significant change in American policy.

The comments were the first by Mr. Bush since General Musharraf’s move over the weekend ignited a constitutional crisis. Mr. Bush would not comment about what the United States might do if the Pakistani leader ignored the pleas, saying only, “I hope he takes my advice.”

Mr. Bush also praised General Musharraf as a “strong fighter against extremists and radicals.”

There’s a great deal of talk about how bad this is for Bush, blah blah blah. I don’t buy it. Bush does not seem the least bit concerned. IF Bush actually cared about democracy in the Middle East or anywhere else, THEN you might argue that Musharraf’s actions pose a problem. All this talk about democracy means nothing. Bush did not send Americans into Iraq to bring peace to the Middle East. He did not give Musharraf billions of dollars to support democracy in Pakistan.

The events of the past years make much more sense once one disposes of all the useless, misleading cover stories. Acknowledge the true goals: chaos, war and upheaval, and you see that things are moving along quite nicely. Yeees. Lovely work.

Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

[snip]

American fundamentalists strongly supported the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. They consistently support Israel’s hard-line policies. And they are beating the drums for war against Iran. Thanks to these end-timers, American foreign policy has turned much of the world against us, including most Muslims, nearly a quarter of the human race.

Bush meets with these people according to the author, Jon Basil Utley, associate publisher for The American Conservative.

These end-timers have great influence over the U.S. government’s foreign policy. They are thick with the Republican leadership. At a recent conference in Washington, congressional leader Roy Blunt, for example, has said that their work is “part of God’s plan.” At the same meeting, where speakers promoted attacking Iran, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay glorified “end times.” Indeed the Bush administration often consults with them on Mideast policies.

[snip]

The beliefs of the Armageddon Lobby, also known as Dispensationalists, come from the Book of Revelations, which Martin Luther relegated it to an appendix when he translated the Bible because its image of Christ was so contrary to the rest of the Bible. The Armageddonites worship a vengeful, killer-torturer Christ. They also frequently quote a biblical passage that God favors those who favor the Jews. But they only praise Jews who make war, not those who are peacemakers. For example, they vigorously opposed Israel’s murdered premier Yitzhak Rabin, who promoted the Oslo Peace Accords.

Sick, sick, sick people.

The overwhelming power and warmongering of the Armageddonites has inspired some resistance from other fundamentalists, but they are a minority. Theologian Richard Fenn writes, “Silent complicity (by mainline churches) with apocalyptic rhetoric soon becomes collusion with plans for religiously inspired genocide.” Their death-wishing “religion” is actually anti-Christian and should be challenged openly by traditional Christians.

Yes. I am nobody, but I challenge them. They stand Christianity on it’s head. Anti-Christian would be a more appropriate description for them, and I mean that in every sense of the word. You can see that having people like this influence our foreign policy gives lie to the “We heart Democracy” cover story.

Never mind what Bush says, what does he do about Pakistan? Nothing. And he used American taxpayer money to bring this situation about. He gleefully tied his own hands behind his back with billion dollar bows. I’m sure he’s very “sorry”, and this is all so “unfortunate”.

Yeah, sure. Whatever.

Compassion

Scientists have discovered mirror neurons, which help humans experience other people’s emotions.

Enthusiasm among scientists has been spreading as growing evidence suggests that “mirrors” may explain the roots of human empathy and altruism as well as provide insight into such disorders as autism and even schizophrenia. But that’s not all. In the past few years, dozens of studies have linked mirror neurons to the emergence of language, abstract reasoning and even self-awareness or consciousness. “The self and the other are just two sides of the same coin. To understand myself, I must recognize myself in other people,” says Marco Iacoboni.

[snip]

If Ramachandran, Iacoboni and hundreds of other neuroscientists now poring over mirror neurons are correct, directly sharing the experience of others is a key to who and what we are, how our brains and minds evolved, and how they develop from childhood. Compassion and empathy, feeling the experience of another, is not just something we’re capable of, it is woven into the fabric we are cut from. “Mirror neurons dissolve the barrier between you and someone else,” says Ramachandran. He calls them “Gandhi neurons.”

[snip]

In fact, the problem of altruism has vexed biologists since Darwin. Why do people sacrifice their own self-interest, sometimes even their lives, in order to help others? Genes for such behavior should be selected against quickly and definitively. But if mirror neuron theorists are right, the advantages of directly understanding others may be so great that it blows the evolutionary cost of occasional self-sacrifice out of the water. What’s selected for might be the ability to imitate others, and to understand and feel what they are feeling. Self-sacrifice and altruism might be mere byproducts of mirroring and not themselves adaptive in a way selected for by evolution. In any case, “we are good,” says Iacoboni, “because our biology drives us to be good.”

The article goes on to discuss the science involved as well as some criticisms.

Remember this little saying? Compassion is a virtue; Possess it if you can; Seldom held by women; Never held by man. Obviously it overstates the case, but certainly it gets near to the truth that compassion is sorely lacking in the world, in all of us. I have more to say about compassion, but not today.

h/t Malcontent