Nuclear Iran

Monticello and Shenandoah

Like most posts on this blog and the Parmesan in the fridge, this is a little past due. Here are some pictures from the Thanksgiving trip to Monticello and Shenandoah. The camera worked rarely, so there aren’t many.

Here’s T.J.’s bachelor pad.

The one above is the one panoramic shot we managed. Below, me and the awesome Zipcar.

Movie review

In response to Oliver Stone’s attempt to make a film about Ahmadinejhad, a conservative Tehran paper reviews the director’s oevre:

Oliver Stone is the same famous Hollywood director who in 2004 made the film Alexander about the life and battles of Alexander of Macedonia and engaged in blatant alterations of historical truths against Iran. In addition, by offering an unrealistic and sensationalist image of Alexander, introduced him as a free, justice-seeking and just person and in contrast, showed the Iranian nation as barbaric and a savage race and at no point in the film does he point out the burning of the glorious Persepolis structure which represented the Iranians’ civilisation and the height of Alexander’s savagery. This is despite the fact that because of his overthrow of the Achaemenid dynasty and the savage mass killings and attacks carried out by his army, Alexander is a hated figure among Iranians. Also, through his film, the World Trade Centre and in keeping with the Pentagon and in line with the White House, he tried to show the 9/11 event as an attack by the world of Islam against the western world and western civilisation. Incidentally, two years previously, Stone had also made a documentary about Fidel Castro which was met by Castro’s protest and dissatisfaction. Although he introduces himself as one of the critics and opponents of Bush’s and the White House’s warmongering policies, he supported George Bush in America’s presidential elections.

Among Oliver Stone’s other works, films such as Platoon, JFK, The Doors and Nixon can be pointed out and The Doors was in commemoration of one of America’s perverted and half mad singers; someone who urinated on the head of his fans during his concerts and enjoyed doing so and who finally died in Paris as a result of a drug overdose and was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

The film JFK was made with the aim of drawing a picture of John F Kennedy as a political saint as ordered by America’s Democratic Party who during the first elections against Bush senior, introduced Bill Clinton as the person most similar to Kennedy and the film played an undeniable role in Bill Clinton successfully entering the White House. And finally, in the film Nixon, an overthrown and warmongering president who initiated several wars is shown as an innocent and blameless individual. All these facts leave no room for doubt of Oliver Stone’s affiliation to America’s key policies; despite the fact that some groups, out of ignorance, call and introduce him as an independent filmmaker.

Now the question remains that has Oliver Stone, suddenly and single-handedly risen to reveal certain truths and to enlighten the American nation? At a time when under orders from their politicians, policy makers and the ruling system, it is on the agenda of the western world’s media to portray Mr Ahmadinejhad as a harsh, dogmatic, inhuman and … individual, does Stone want to move against this current? Why has he decided to choose Ahmadinejhad, a figure disapproved by western and American officials, as the topic of his film? Will Ahmadinejhad’s active diplomacy and foreign policy based on interaction with Iran and forging ahead be portrayed or will Iran be portrayed as warmongering, violent, abusive of human rights and undemocratic?

A group of American academicians invited Dr Ahmadinejhad to Columbia University to make a speech and to engage in a question and answer debate but contrary to academic conduct and procedure and manipulated by White House politicians, they tried seriously to discredit him and to portray him as extremely savage and inhuman, in which endeavour they were heavily defeated however. How can we now trust such a deceitful culture with its double standards and forget the Americans’ propaganda and negative portrayals and voluntarily go under the hand of the filmmaker’s blade so as not to have any chance of self defence later on.

In any case, we are afraid that the outcome of such a venture will not be the true and realistic portrayal of an intellectual and a peacemaker such as Ahmadinejhad but a portrayal of Ahmadinejhad according to Stone, Hollywood and global Zionism and in that case there will be no opportunity for complaint because there is no solution to an act which is done voluntarily.

Well it’s 1 2 3, what’re we payin’ for?

One of the most amazing aspects of the United States Department of Defense has been its ability to innovate what eventually becomes broadly accessible civilian applications. The Internet is one, thanks to DARPA, and remote sensing is another, thanks to the needs of the Union Army. While taking a class whose purpose is to analyze remote sensing in all its detail, I’ve come to feel that the technology should have stayed within the confines of the Pentagon, I am tortured so).

The question becomes: What will the next generation of DoD innovations evolve to become? With this query I mind I searched the Department’s archives to locate all the gizmos I had remembered seeing in magazines and Berkeley coffee houses that traffic in paranoia. There were the microwave rays, or Active Denial System; the robotic wasps that
explode C4 cartridges in the craws of unsuspecting enemies; even the gun that shoots out balls of an adhesive material reminiscent of the glue-like thread material Spider-Man stored in his spinnerets.

But I can’t imagine that these would have widespread utility, at least not in the constructive way imagined by the teams that put the foundations for remote sensing and the Internet into place (once they had gotten past the hot air balloon stage.) Doubtless there are apparatuses being envisaged at the moment that no one outside the deepest chambers of Arlington can speak of, but my guess would be not. Why? There are any number of explanations. It’s inarguable that the military-industrial complex has shifted to a self-serving enterprise, where military technology is now more expensive than at any time before, where the budget for the Defense Department rewards investments in junk projects like the Osprey, which seemingly crashes or blows up every few years, or Predator drones, which to date have managed to blow up an Afghan wedding, mortally wound a US service member, and kill an innocent civilian on the basis that he looked like Ayman al-Zawarhiri. Sure the DoD’s budget as a percentage of GDP is less now than it was even during the Vietnam War, but such a statistic does not take into account the supplementary budgets use to fund Iraq and Afghanistan, or the secret budget outlays for, among other things, defense intelligence.

The gluttony of the Pentagon will no longer allow it to innovate outwardly. Technological tautology is now supreme, and old technologies will persist as long as they serve the central aim of taking out a target with as little collateral damage as possible. But then MRE’s may show some promise for long distance runners…

Intermission

Sorry for the light posting, life is getting in the way. This should make up for it:

ImPervious to criticism

I have never been particularly enraptured by the Pakistani military, and this was before reading a few volumes off the shelf of St. Martin’s Press. I profess to not having to read Sadigga’s piece prior to riding my post, but in hindsight I’m not sure my opinion changes that much.

The mechanisms for Musharraf’s usurpation are in plain sight. There is no doubt that a dictator of his wavering nature can’t last in perpetuity. But as homobavaricus argues in typical circular logic, a US-installed head of state in this part of the world is almost always a bad choice. This is the path we’re heading, though, and if the next Nishan-i-Haider comes is autonomous, and not an automaton, then I will be pleasantly surprised. It’s not clear for instance, that if Bhutto, Sharif, or one of the lawyers throwing rocks in the middle Peshawar rises to prominence that the pattern of coddling fundamentalists while playing patsies to the West won’t continue.

It could well get better, but the landscape has inexorably changed, so my guess is that’ll get worse.

I won’t speak to the nonproliferation issues, because clearly homo’s got my card on those.
I think that this shadow boxing is somewhat useless, though, so I’ll call homo out: who is a better choice to govern Pakistan? What are we looking for, prototypically or incarnate? This is not a logical fallacy, where lack of proof of a viable leader is proof of lack. I’m honestly interested. I think that would be a better way to continue this dialog.

University of Fredo, Gainesville

It’s been more than 24 hours since I heard Fredo Gonzales speak before a “raucous” crowd (that is apparently the adjective of choice among the news outlets that covered his talk), but the experience has left me with a savory taste in my mouth to be sure.

 

While the University of Florida student body is undoubtedly more poltiically conservative than its counterparts in other public universities, say, in California, the tactics employed by activist groups were often original and confrontational enough to be provocative without losing a smidgen of Southern grace.

 

Then again, perhaps Alberto Gonzales is just easy pickin’s these days.

 

His canned speech was less than impressive to be sure. He began with an joke meant to stoke the anti-Big Government flames of the College Campus Republicans in the audience, and ended with some insipid references to pursuing public service in trying times.

 

At one point he seemed to be pointing out his would-be critics seated before him by saying, “It’s easy to make potshots, but what would are you doing?” And, no, no one responded with “avoiding criminal prosecution” or “baking my district attorney an apple pie,” but we were close.

 

The aforementioned tactics ensued about a quarter of the way through Gonzo’s garbage, perhaps at the point when he mentioned that the United States is the greatest country in the world for the eighth time (no wait, that’s how many attorneys he fired). By now you might have seen the footage, but if you haven’t two students reenacted a Camp X-Ray scene that could have used some direction from guerrilla thespians, or at the very least the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

 

Of course, Florida being Florida, they were Tasered.

 

No, actually they were arrested and charged with the ominous statute of “interrupting a public event.” I know what you’re thinking in reading this (disgraced AG Alberto Gonzales talking about himself is actually an event?), but it appeals to my draconian sensibilities; the UFPD will assuredly be on call next time a student comes in late to my class.

 

He lost his rapt audience from that moment on: nubile sorority girls slung their UF gear aside and brandished their bright yellow “SHAME” shirts with flare, he was booed and heckled more than Barry Bonds at an away game, even the ushers looked exasperated about having to deal with this much pent-up bile given the pathetic automaton standing stage left.

 

I took part in the jeering, unscripted as it was, and even elicited a response from the pursed lips of our nation’s first Latino attorney general. In describing Clinton’s ouster of all 93 attorneys just after his inauguration, Gonzales began to rehash the typical Republican balderdash about “serving at the pleasure,” etc., etc. This evasive argument has helped the Rush Limbaughs of the world comfort themselves, but it hardly applies to a case where sitting attorneys were systematically targeted and dismissed during a presidency–especially on trumped up charges of not prosecuting voter fraud or because their party affiliation wasn’t especially well liked.

 

“Apples and oranges,” I bellowed, causing a few prep school-educated frat boys in front of me to turn around and give me the stare reserved for the puny freshman who doesn’t manage to pass a hazing ritual of multiple bananas stuffed up the rectum.

 

“This is not apples and oranges,” Gonzo shot back in his best soliloquy of the night. In truth he spoke to a faculty member of the law school, but that cupcake was insubstantial enough to make Fredo look stately.

 

The Q&A period was a predictable wash, with the former AG denying the US uses torture tactics at every turn, and admitting to one mistake and one mistake only: the mishandling of personnel management in the Department of Justice. Oh, wee, is he ever a master of the euphemism.

 

However, when pressed about the rationale for torture for the fifth or sixth time, Nerd Blossom finally succumbed to vexation with a rehashed rhetorical question about whether or not “Al Qaeda cares about whether or not we follow the law or torture.” Fredo still seems to arguing two sides of the same argument, claiming that the US didn’t or doesn’t torture, but then seeming to infer that it wouldn’t affect our troops abroad if they did.

 

The true travesty is that Alberto Gonzales was paid $40,000 in speaker fees to attend (does that mean that Regent and Liberty Universities will have shake down Pat Robertson and the Fallwell estate to equal this sum?). He has no public presence to speak of, and given that he read off of his notes most of the time, and gave one-sentence answers to the moderator the rest, he should have been paying UF students to come.

 

But he was not prepared for this barrage, and I think it is safe to say that neither were the UFPD. One can only hope that Washington University, his next stop on what normally be called a show of penitence if anybody but a Bush Administration official was involved, will end in similar chaos. The best these troglodytes can do is entertain us, and Fredo served his purposes there.

Hardly Perv-ect!

In a groundbreaking first for Unknown Knowns, homobavaricus (me) would like to pick a public bone with perdixperdix. You will have to wait a while for his rejoinder, though. He is currently sitting in an auditorium, no doubt being riveted by the Honorable Alberto Gonzalez’ rhetorical stylings. Let’s hope Fredo can recall something!

I’ve been an agnostic on the Great Musharraf Debate that’s been raging in the think tanks on Massachusetts Ave. and the blogosphere for quite some time. Like the other grand foreign policy challenges we’re facing in the starting years of what is promising to be a pretty screwed up century (I’m thinking of Iraq, Darfur, and EU expansion), I’ve been following it with great interest, but have yet to commit myself to one position or another.

Until perdixperdix went too far. (Hey, the cable news channels made a business model out of contrived outrage.)

The corruption issue first. I’ll admit it’s pretty tough to beat Sharif and Bhutto at the corruption game, even for some of New York’s finest. But there’s one entity that leaches more off Pakistani society than the two ex-PMs put together: the military. I’ve heard great things about Ayisha Siddiga’s Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. In a nutshell, the military owns vast amounts of real estate and runs businesses from dairy farms to steel factories. And to state the obvious, they can do whatever they want with it and are known to expand their economic empire by force and coercion. Somehow I think a few kickbacks to a PM’s husband will have a more benign effect on the economy and society.

Second, the “lack of alternatives” argument. Take the statement “Mr. President, we don’t like everything X is doing, but if we don’t support him the extremists will take over.” Replace “X” with the Shah, Idi Amin, Diem, Pinochet, Marcos, etc. etc. Rinse and repeat. Observe magnificent results.

I agree that it may not be the greatest idea to hold a free and fair election in Saudi Arabia because most Saudis are not terribly interesting in creating a pluralistic and open society. In Pakistan that’s not the case. The crazies already get a small share of the vote in elections rigged in their favor (by our splendid Perv). Supporting Musharraf’s coup can only embitter the Pious Plurality (get it? like Moral Majority!) and turn the part of society that matters against the West.

I’ll add some more thoughts (and proofread this) later.

Oh, Pervy, you’re simply darling!

I gained something of a new insight In talking to a South Asia friend of mine recently: Musharraf isn’t such a bad cookie in the grand scheme in the politics of the region.

Yes, he’s served as nothing less than a dictator of one of the most politically volatile countries in the region in wearing both the uniform of head of state and chief military officer.

Ay to the fact that nuclear materials passed through his borders via the likes of AQ Khan and his associates, making the world a far more dangerous place.

Indeed, he’s been ineffective in holding together a federal state fraught with all sorts of sectarian divisions. If anybody has doubts about this you’re more than welcome to read Pamela Constable’s pieces in the Washington Post, or better yet schedule your holidays in North-West Frontier Province or Balochistan.

Then there’s the Red Mosque incident, his mishandling of the Supreme Court, and on and on.

And he’s only 4 feet tall. That won’t do.

Well, this pal of mine was insistent that Musharraf was at least less corrupt than the twin kleptocrats of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. He maintained that the country hasn’t fallen prey to the sort of perennial religious revolution that existed in the subcontinent starting in the mid-19th century and leading up to the disastrous rule of Ayub Khan.

His most compelling argument was one of alternatives, though. If Musharraf doesn’t survive the country’s state of emergency, it is almost certain that another military cadre will assume the helm. Elections may usher in enough Bhutto cronies to make the government appear to have the vestments of civilian rule, but that’s about it.

Basically the best forecasts are for a sick and twisted version of the power-sharing arrangement that exists in a place like India, where in place of Sonia you have Benazir, and in the place of Manmohan Singh you’ll have some Joe Kahn that rose just sufficiently enough through the ISI or the army that he knows where to attach his epaulets.

Clearly the situation south of the Khyber Pass is not tenable in its present form, but I’m not sold that there aren’t better alternatives. True, few in the West want the next Mullah Muhammad Omar to be calling the shots in Islamabad, but a one-eye tribal chieftain who’s not hellbent on suicide bombings isn’t all bad either.

In fact, I suggest that a presidential exploratory committee be launched for Imran Sharif, a 90 year-old baker, specializing in unleavened bread, from Nok Kundi. He’s pleasant, wise, and would at the worst be accused of negligence when gun-running jihadists reigned over the countryside. Hell, when bombs started raining down on Bombay he could honestly say he was sorry. And his state dinners would serve actual comfort food, and not the chez crap that made Bush the First vomit.

Perhaps not. It is a tragedy when somebody like Musharraf represents the last, best hope for your country.

Heil Nation von Alligatoren!

The bellicism of the University of Florida is becoming something of a slight concern for me. Orange and blue regalia are nothing new in the 352, but the ubiquity of this color, and any alligator-related iconography, brings to the fore scenes from Triumph of the Will or perhaps Victory of Faith. Neither Bernie Machen or Urban Meyer can assume the mantle of Die Fuhrer, now matter how many good ol’ boys show up to UF football games.

Today I had the misfortune of walking by a stadium while the Christians were being eaten (in this case the Vanderbilt University football team) and saw how this indoctrination takes place firsthand. Young children seem to be taught the various gesticulations necessary to be a true Gator before they’ve even acquired basic motor skills. The disabled appear to be wrapped in blue and orange adornments despite their garbled protestations. Even the elderly accompany their progeniture clad in Mardi Gras beads and war paint because they understand full well that their sons and daughters will place them in a nursing home otherwise.

I have researched the matter and discovered that though this phenomena is not exclusive to the South, that they are exacerbated by the isolation of Gainesville, and places like it, from larger urban populations. Such places perhaps do not fall prey to such games of excess as easily.

There is no more serious a time for the dispensation of energies than at this moment, what with war, global warming, and staph infection conspiring to bring us crashing through our Victorian porches to the shifting sands below. Yet the Gator Nation is more concerned with whether Tim Tebow will throw an interception, or whether one’s peroxide blonde hair should be tied with a blue bow or an orange bow.

I fear that I will be forced to meld my mind to the color saturation and mascot omnipresence of the community at some point in my life. I mean after all, how did millions of Germans fall in line with Hitler and his timeless message if not because of constant exposure? One can only trust one’s will to triumph.