Just as the modern G.O.P. builds escape velocity from any discernable scientific culture, throwing up infomercial worthy spokesholes who jeopardize The Onion's satirical imagination, it's warped drive still conjures the veneer of gravitas and the imprimatur of inquiry. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new catechism ensconces Paul Ryan's budget plan as audacious, bold, and serious.
Pakistan has not been faring well. If a litany of woes since the 70's weren't bad enough, it now faces major collateral strain from the Afghan conflict and devastating flooding in 2010. Pashtun and/or Taliban elements view the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan as something real only on a world atlas. Meanwhile, U.S. drone attacks in Waziristan and other Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where no real government control exists, are viewed by the majority of Pakistanis as serious violations of sovereignty. The Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, though often supporting Taliban elements, nevertheless face insurgency threats and mounting poltical instability.
The picture appears bleak enough to prompt concern for the survival of Pakistan itself. Stephen P. Cohen, author of The Idea of Pakistan, has authored an important new essay, "Coping with a failing Pakistan":
"...will it gradually disintegrate, shedding its character as a moderate Muslim state, losing control over more and more territory? The country is in the metaphorical position of someone who has swallowed poison, sits on a keg of dynamite, is being shot at, all while an earthquake is rumbling through the neighbourhood."
One of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi reactors contains a blend of uranium and plutonium fuel that may soon find use in the U.S. Does it pose more risks than standard uranium fuel?
A range of views surveyed by Scientific American above regarding general risk/safety questions surrounding MOX, a mixture of plutonium and uranium used as fuel for the Fukushima #3 reactor. The possibility of the release of MOX into the environment is a cause of major concern as well as calls to focus on determining exactly what is being vented from the #3 reactor.
Japan’s nuclear regulator said one reactor core at the quake-damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant may be cracked and leaking radiation. ...fire engines have streamed 4,000 tons of water on the No. 3 reactor, five times more than any of the other five units, according to the government.
"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The ’80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."
Lee Atwater ~ Interview with Life Magazine, Feb 1991
Last night, upon hearing of the U.S. shift regards Libya it was easy to get cynical. All seemed too late, especially with the spectre of a Security Council veto. Especially with Libya's jasmine bloom so near to being crushed. I noted an irony. But afterwards I realized the irony was even deeper, for I wanted shit to happen outside UN auspices. Suddenly I realized the horrific vibration of a strong contradiction.
What was different in the desire to see unilateral action against Gaddafi - and the U.S. invasion of Iraq?
Although, I felt there was a way to neutralize a hypothetical sneering neocon, I could see the density of problematic argumentative vectors. And I realized the problem could not easily be waived away. The horror, the wild fate of slowly turning into...
But the UN has acted. My cynicism was ultimately misplaced. I can forget about the problem - at least for a moment - caught up in astonishment.
So many people transported into the harrowing spirit of Bouazizi's defiance. I wish I knew I had the guts to step forward, unarmed, into that agon. I want to think that no rational world citizen could ignore their heroism. I want to think that somehow, in the better sense, I'm slowly turning into you.
Then something else came to mind
That was the mirror
It made everything clearer
That you're more beautiful compelling and stronger
It didn't take much longer
Just for me to realize I love all the little things
And the beauty that they're gonna bring
"…With their mental chains broken after Mr. Bouazizi’s suicidal cry of 'enough', Tunisians then felled an entrenched dictator within a matter of weeks. They simply behaved as if they were free, and thus made it so. A new collective consciousness had begun in the region.
History is littered with such great moments of rapid shifts in mass psychology – the aha moments that shatter paradigms, pierce groupthink…"
- Clayton Jones, csmonitor.com
"For nearly two decades, the leaders of Al Qaeda have denounced the Arab world’s dictators as heretics and puppets of the West and called for their downfall. Now, people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.
In fact, the motley opposition movements that have appeared so suddenly and proved so powerful have shunned the two central tenets of the Qaeda credo: murderous violence and religious fanaticism. The demonstrators have used force defensively, treated Islam as an afterthought and embraced democracy, which is anathema to Osama bin Laden and his followers."
Though events are fresh enough to feed possible naiveté, it very much looks like we are witnessing the manifestation of a new concept of force. An historical surprise, almost ex nihilo, interrupts the conflict dynamics of both Al Qaeda and the United States. Suddenly, breathtakingly, both are revealed caught up in what should have been obvious - as geared into inadequate concepts of force.
Both will, however, naturally aim to prey upon the Jasmine flower, projecting spectres of the other as a means to influence and access.
But the quasi-imperial power has the most to lose, and perhaps the most to gain. For if the new force is greeted above all with the simplicity and the substance of recognition (rather than predatory opportunism), Al Qaeda may lose all vital traction. And yet, since the mystery of recognition moves in two directions, America and the West may be surprised to find they are seen neither as democratic nor as expressions of modern community.
The Rolling Stone has published an important piece, detailing evidence that the Army has violated Federal law by directing psychological warfare against high profile U.S. politicians - and sought to leverage social networking to broaden effectiveness: Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators:
"The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators."
Consider Watergate for a moment. America had been using the CIA to subvert the sovereign spheres of other nations, often working against democracy for the sake of "US Interests". But in what appears to be an ironic, inevitable slippage, the same mindset mobilized against another American political party. Watergate was the tip of an iceberg there. Here it looks like the same kind of slippage. A different scenario and, yet, one firmly within a rubric of power projection.
A Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes objected to illegal employment of US psy-ops assets against visiting U.S. Senators. The programme also involved exploiting blogging, facebook and Wikipedia as outlets for psy-ops conditioning of American public opinion. See pages 3 & 4 of Arstechnica's recent piece in the wake of the Anonymous group's humiliation of HBGary for what appears to be prima facie corroboration of this disturbing picture.
Both Holmes and a Major Laural Levine were subjected to retributory "investigations" for their lack of team spirit:
"Levine, who has a spotless record and 19 service awards after 16 years in the military, including a tour of duty in Kuwait and Iraq, fears that she has become 'the collateral damage' in the military’s effort to retaliate against Holmes. 'It will probably end my career,' she says. 'My father was an officer, and I believed officers would never act like this. I was devastated. I’ve lost my faith in the military, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone joining right now'."
This would appear to be another example of a problem recently highlighted in the Atlantic, "Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving", featuring the central claim that "the military is creating a command structure that rewards conformism and ignores merit". When we add ignoring legality, the problem appears particularly acute.
The speed of change in the world, a velocity that astounds those of us who remember grandparents living in an age before plastic or automobiles, quickens the pulse for greater foresight.
"MIT engineers have designed a new type of nanoparticle that could safely and effectively deliver vaccines for diseases such as HIV and malaria... Such particles could help scientists develop vaccines against cancer as well as infectious diseases."
- Nano-sized vaccines, MIT news
Assuming continued technological and scientific advancement, the working fusion of biology, computer science and engineering will open both profound and troubling trajectories. And though it may punctuate the demand for new forms of ethical inquiry, certain moral postures will be rendered more moot than they already are.
It is not hard, for example, to imagine women opting for total control of the uterine environment. Picture a nano-tech laden womb, perhaps itself a computer network, preventing (in its "on" state) unauthorized access to either ovaries or the uterine wall. And it's not difficult to imagine how inexpensive it could become.
The so called fight against abortion by means of external legislation, already absurd under any conceptual rendering of Christianity, will be revealed on the grounds of sheer impracticality as palpably quixotic.
"I’m traveling, mother. Forgive me... I’m not feeling normal and not in my right state. I’m traveling..."
"... a qualitative leap and the child is born... dissolving bit by bit the structure of its previous world, whose tottering state is only hinted at by isolated symptoms. The frivolity and boredom which unsettle the established order, the vague foreboding of something unknown, these are the heralds of approaching change. The gradual crumbling that left unaltered the face of the whole is cut short by a sunburst which in one flash, illuminates the features of the new world.
Rather than marking Reagan's 100th birthday in the throes of obligatory mythology, let us remember something else.
Rather than heed the call to adulthood and national self-reflection, America retreated into adolescent self-absorption. Reagan was the face of that denial. After all these years, does America have the courage to listen again?
We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.
It's like when you saw Jurassic Park and had an even deeper thrill, perhaps alongside troubling reservations, that for better worse film would never be the same again. What happens when global political reality feels its sinews torn and re-strung in the wake of something like that? With Wikileaks, Tunisa and now Egypt we're finding out daily. And for us in the theatre of events it's every bit as stupefying and sensational as watching T Rex rampage through apparatchiki who comically, yet self-confidently, regurgitate the pablum of unconscious anachronism - as though somebody might as well be ringing the dinner bell.
Senator Claire McCaskill appears on MSNBC back in November, bedecked in a smart clown suit underscoring her expertise in the art of official denial. Questioned about incitement to war with Iran by Gulf state elites, McCaskill's ire focuses solely on the messenger: "Well, I think what I‘m stunned about is that someone that had access to this information decided it was a great idea to make it public... and I really do think it‘s time that we take a look and make sure that our laws are strong enough in terms of going after people who leak this".
Everybody loves seeing a cheerleader get it first in a monster-horror flick. A deer in the headlights, oblivious to the sheer scope of the unthinkable, resorting to the machinery of a paint-by-numbers programme. Only we in the audience know this is the very thing that makes for twitching protoplasm in the wake of der Gang Gottes in der Welt.
A cable newly released by Wikileaks, 10DOHA71, hightlights some fascinating commentary by the Prime Minster of Qatar in discussions with Senator John Kerry. Regarding the Palestinian issue, Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani notes that Hamas has a "greater sense of urgency in reconcilling with Fatah than does the broker of the talks". His point here is that Egypt is in some way impeding progress while maintaining its status in the process. At the very least, the Prime Minister believes that Hamas wants to unite with Fatah for the sake of rebuiling Gaza but that Egypt is not trusted as a broker.
According to HBJ, Egypt -- the broker -- has a vested interest in dragging out the talks for as long as possible. Egypt 'has no end game; serving as broker of the talks is Egypt's only business interest with the U.S.' HBJ likened the situation to a physician who has only one patient to treat in the hospital. If that is your only business, "the physician is going to keep the patient alive but in the hospital for as long as possible."
In what appears to be a stunning offer, up against the suggestion that Aljazeera was the source of Egypt's domestic problems, the Prime Minster recounts telling Mubarak that Qatar would "stop Aljazeera for year" if he could deliver on the diplomatic front. If that was a bluff, Mubarak did not call it, but rather "said nothing in response".
Now we are at a stage, said HBJ, where Egypt does not want Arab League involvement in brokering a reconciliation agreement among the Palestinians unless the talks bog down.
The nature of this peculiar problem with the 2nd largest recipient of US foreign aid was, according to the Prime Minster, even understood by during the Clinton Administration. Regarding internal dissent in Egypt and the regime's tactics, he claims the Egyptian "people blame America ...mostly because of Mubarak and is his close ties".
To all Egyptians on reddit: "I am a Syrian living in London but I want to say this. Tunisia was a great achievement, but Egypt has always been the centre of the Arab world. You’re our capital and you’ve always been in every Arab’s heart. What happens in Egypt happens everywhere so please don’t give up."
Tuesday the 25th marks a potentially pivotal moment for assessing the trans-Arabian potency of Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution". Eyes turn to Egypt where elation over Tunisia and social media amperage drives the expectation of a mass protest against the Mubarak regime.
"In every neighbourhood in the country there is a pressure point which the government is afraid of and which will be brought to the surface on Tuesday," said Ahmed al-Gheity, 23, a doctor and one of the regional organisers of "revolution day". On the event's Facebook page, tens of thousands of supporters have posted comments suggesting Ben Ali's departure could be the precursor for Mubarak's downfall. "If Tunisia can do it, why can't we?" read one. "We will either start living or start dying on 25 January."
What this all means remains unclear. But even with many pointing out the "difficulties in translating Internet clicks to support on the ground", the fact that so many in Egypt have nothing to lose has elites worried. The murder of Khaled Said in June has already primed the pump along with Tunisia's spontaneity, with as many as 17 opposition groups currently supporting the demonstration.
Egypt is the largest Arab nation and the 2nd largest recipient of US foreign aid. 60 percent of the population is under 30. So the US State Department no doubt already watches closely. In fact there's likely a team now working on copy for the sake of something to say should karma hit the fan.
"I’m travelling, mother. Forgive me. Reproach and blame is not going to be helpful. I’m lost and it’s out of my hands. Forgive me if I didn’t do as you told me and disobeyed you. Blame the era in which we live, Don’t blame me. I am now going and I will not be coming back. Notice I haven’t cried and no tears have fallen from my eyes. There is no more room for reproach or blame in the age of treachery in the People’s land. I’m not feeling normal and not in my right state. I’m travelling and I ask who leads the travel to forget."
Translated message written by Mohamed Bouazizi on his facebook before his self-immolation on the 17th of December, 2010
What's next? Eyes inevitably turn to the street in other Arab countries, where corrupt and anti-democratic regimes sit atop seething discontent. Will Egypt and Mubarak soon feel the tremors of this modern volcanism? Whatever the case, the ubiquity of the internet has shaken the global order - and political glaciers have begun to melt.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a new catechism ensconces Paul Ryan's budget plan as audacious, bold, and 
in the military, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone joining right now'."
has already primed the pump along with Tunisia's spontaneity, with as many as 17 opposition groups currently supporting the demonstration.
manifested itself again in spectacular fashion.
