Major Hasan And His Colleagues

One thing is clear, when it came time for Major Malik Nadal Hasan to kill, he had no problem doing it, morally or otherwise, and he had no confusion about which side was the enemy.

If, as this article suggests, American Muslim sentiment about the US military is "split down the middle", with one side being opposed to it, there is good reason to suspect that a portion of that opposition has the will and the means to express it violently. It is estimated there are somewhere between 3500 (Pentagon's figure) and 20000 Muslims in the US military.

Yesterday, I noted that there will be some Muslims in the US military that will find inspiration in the violent actions of Major Hasan, and they will seek to emulate them. We cannot know how many people will be drawn to take such actions, and if the US military pressures Muslims in its ranks with loyalty questionnaires or investigations of their political views, it is going to communicate loud and clear the the military thinks Muslims might be questionable in their loyalty.

Many Americans think the "might be" is ludicrous, and that we should operate from the position that Muslims need to prove their loyalty, perhaps like they do in the Mafia or something, by having to randomly kill a fellow Muslim. Of course, Major Hasan could have done just that yesterday, which just highlights the insanity of what are essentially wars of religion—certainly from the Muslim perspective.

Many Muslims view the increasingly godless culture of the USA in the way religious conservatives in the USA view it, as a basic, Satanic, defect of American character, which is deeply offensive in the eyes of God, and which threatens the souls of Muslims (and others) everywhere it is allowed to flourish.

In addition, the USA and the West in general have exploited Muslim lands and peoples, taking fantastic wealth out of them while leaving in place manageably despotic regimes and unhappy, and often violently angry, populations. If that weren't bad enough, let's just say the US part in the Terror Wars has not won many hearts or minds in Islamic countries, especially not in the occupied lands, Iraq and Afghanistan. To the contrary, US war policy has fed the growth and fanaticism of terrorists and insurgencies around the world, and now all through the West there is growing fear that the backlash from Muslims over the West's Terror Wars (or modern Crusade), and violence in accord with this, will be homegrown.

Homegrown terrorists are much harder to track, not the least because if you do what seems the obvious and easy thing, simply distrust all Muslims and essentially downgrade their citizenship to something just a little better than "illegal alien", you will incur considerable wrath from civil libertarians and (we would hope) the judicial system, and also provide the very provocation that may push more Muslims into the fold of the terrorists.

So, what to do?

As we said yesterday, the festering boil in all these issues and the calculations that have attended them is US Terror War policy, which has repeatedly devalued the lives and wellbeing of thousands of innocent Muslims all around the world, but particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, in pursuit of objectives that have ranged from murky to downright dishonest. And all along, there was the view on the American side that it was all necessary to protect our security.

Whatever process underlay construction of the policy allegedly pursuing that objective, it was not merely hopelessly in error over the most basic assumptions, but it was also of a kind of mythic arrogance one sees in states seeking a fast route to decline and fall.

Obama had talked in his campaign a lot about the need for a change in the war policy. Unfortunately, all along, while emphasizing his view of the Iraq war as a basic mistake—one from which he has yet to show any real interest in recovering—he bought into the myth of Afghanistan as a "good war", one worth fighting, and presumably winning (for a change).

Of course, what exactly was going to be won there, and how it was going to be won, Obama said he would leave to the time he was president and could consult with the generals over the next best move. Unfortunately, the next best move ended up sounding a whole lot like a major Vietnam-style escalation of a war most Americans neither understand or support—which makes them pretty much like most soldiers fighting the stupid war.

The generals and the pols of course cannot ever admit defeat, not of the USA. It would look bad, wouldn't it? And it might negatively affect the USA's prestige in the world. And hey, it would only aid the cause of the terrorists.

Well, the nasty little secret, which is not so little or secret, is that fighting on in these stupid Terror Wars, as if there is something to win, looks bad in the world, negatively affects the prestige of the USA, and definitely aids recruiting for anti-American terrorist groups (which have grown far more numerous and widespread than al-Qaeda).

The best we may hope for is that these wars will just fade away, like a bad television series, given a few more episodes to try to obtain some face, and then cancellation, barely noticeable on a US radar dealing now with the worst employment picture in at least three decades!

I know there are a lot of you out there who have good jobs, stable situations (so far), you don't think or care much about politics or social problems or anything that might rock your happy boat. And life is grand.

And I'll bet in the year 2050, when they're interviewing "oldtimers" about the Terror Wars, and the Great Recession, and what they were really like, you'll still be around, having lived your carefree life for far too long, and they'll pick you to tell everybody those times weren't so dark, weren't so bad really—you did OK after all.

(jk)

An Inspirational Massacre

Many interest groups will find inspiration in the massacre of US troops at Fort Hood yesterday.

Not the least of these will be any other US troops, of certain faiths and predilections, who will now also want the pleasure of yelling "Allahu Akbar" as they gun down their formerly fellow soldiers.

Also seeking a boost in their faiths will be the right-wing nuts of America, who will note that the US Army is now spinning this as some kind of anti-war protest on the part of the perpetrator, Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

The math from that will be easy to figure:

Anti-war = terrorist suspect or collaborator.

The pro-war right has argued that position right from 9/11, through the lunacy and failure of its Iraq and Afghanistan misadventures. And now they have their posterboy to make that point for them: Major Hasan.

Of course this story is still developing, and it may turn out that the reluctant warrior was in fact a terrorist plant or convert, and that the story is therefore more complex than is presently being reported.

The US Army of course would prefer Hasan to just be a fellow who went crazy at the thought of being deployed to a war zone where he might end up directly aiding the killing of fellow Muslims. That is one thing.

What they likely will not want to do is admit their officer corps, and if so no doubt the enlisted ranks as well, are infiltrated by home-grown terrorists. That would be such a disaster, nobody wants to go there, even if they may need to.

One thing, which now is going to be perhaps harder to say than it was 24 hours ago, but these insane Terror Wars are still needlessly filling up ghastly numbers of body bags all over the world.

US strategy in dealing with terrorism is a failure, and chiefly because the notion that killing a bunch of innocent people to make the West safe was always a dumber-than-dirt policy, and has now inspired home-grown hatred of Crusader mentality that is only likely to grow in numbers and destruction of people and property.

Chickens, meet the roost.

---

An additional point, in light of the following comment, reported here:

"A former co-worker told Fox News the Army major opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 'He said maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor,' Col. Terry Lee said. 'At first, we thought he was talking about how Muslims should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but apparently that wasn't the case.'"

Yeah, apparently not. People in the US military are so blinded with propagandistic thinking that they can have somebody plainly tell them that Muslims are sick of the aggressor, and they actually imagine to themselves they are NOT meaning by that term the USA and its military.

And that attitude, of blindness to the truth, helped to kill and wound a lot of people yesterday at Fort Hood, as it kills and wounds so many all over the world every day in the Terror Wars.

Not understanding your enemy, and why he might have cause to be your enemy, is stupid.

(jk)

Reading The Fine Print

While this is a tiny bit of good news, this is definitely not good news at all.

And if you read the fine or buried print, you see some of the reasons that the Great Recession is being made even more painful for people than it needs to be.

For example: “I just sent in my form requesting my last unemployment check,” Jim Schmitt, 58, of Apple Valley, Calif...“I have always voted Republican, and now I'm reading the Republicans are holding up the vote to extend the benefits. I might not be voting Republican again, even though the Democrats are no better.”

Well Jim, the Democrats are better in the sense they don't despise unemployed Americans, like the stinking Republicans do.

I think the real problem for Republicans is that they have a basically Old Testament view of people's worth, which is to say that if you are a good person, God will reward you, and if you are not a good person, you will find yourself doing things like sending in your form to collect your last unemployment check. Why should the good, still employed people, have to keep helping the clearly bad people, who can't or hey probably won't find another job?

Republicans, rotten to the core with religious fanatics who would actually rather bulldoze the poor into a giant landfill, HATE helping Americans in need—especially when the idiot Republicans were largely responsible for putting those people in need in the first place. Instead the bad, unemployed, people can just go live in tents where they belong, or they could just die and stop bothering good people for handouts.

So, yeah, the Dems are pretty worthless, and actually pretty cowardly in my view. But their basic inclinations on some fundamentally important issues are wildly better than those of most Republicans.

(jk)

"Just Love and Companionship"—and Cratering Self-Esteem

A really great BBC4 show, The IT Crowd, did an episode parodying Facebook, and the dangers and humiliations of wanting to end up reconnecting with your past, which after all you had probably let go for good reasons. Worse of course is the prospect of making any new connections, which are compared to plague germs just waiting to infest your face.

As the brilliant fake ad for Friendface says:

"Each Friendface page is like a petrie dish, filled with friendship germs. When you stick your face into the dish, you may come away with millions of other people attached to your face. That's right, it's basically a diseased face of friendship."

Just put your face in that big petrie dish of friendship—everything's fine!
After informing you that Friendface will infect you, will take all of your personal information and share it with whomever or whatever it wants, and oh yes, that it owns everything you put onto Friendface, just as Facebook was alleged to in an earlier version of its terms of service, the ad encourages you to forget all that and just remember the important thing:

"Now it's just love and companionship, and everything's fine!"

Yeah, well, maybe not.

In The IT Crowd episode, Roy, who has in the past had a number of one-night stands with women he'd just as soon forget, but who for some mysterious reason can't forget him, finds himself tracked down by an old one-nighter, a woman whose fragility was displayed to him when her troweled-in makeup mixed with her breakup tears and caused her to look like the Joker (Ledger brand).

He figures he'll just defriend her, and be done, but his nominal boss, Jen, tells him that's no way to treat the poor girl, and insists a physical brushoff is the only humane and manly gesture. Roy agrees, only to later have Jen point out to him that the girl might go mad if she's rejected in person. Roy and Jen and their co-worker Moss (whose main Friendface problem is that his mother friended him, so she can make sure he eats the lunch she makes for him every day) find life is not really all that fine having lots of trivial acquaintances which have to be managed as if they mattered.

Problem is, in today's absurd world, where your SN friend-count will soon be more important than your credit score, those trivial acquaintances do matter. And people are suffering real, if ridiculous, pain if total strangers reject their friend requests, or if they get defriended, you know because they're not really friends with the enormous list of strangers they've picked up in the friendship petrie dish.

So used to the casual affirmations and approvals of social networks, people now get very upset if somebody actually rejects their friend request, or worse, defriends them.

Now we learn that the pain of virtual rejection on a social network like Facebook is just as bad, if not worse, than if somebody dumps you in real life. How pathetic is that? People actually care, and are deeply hurt, if total strangers don't necessarily cotton up to them, just because they asked them to.

Jen, in an episode of The IT Crowd, trying to navigate the dangerous waters of Love and Companionship on Friendface till all hours.
So bad have things gotten on the self-esteem and promotion front that now there is this aid to being utterly obsessed with one's importance in the cosmos:

"This year, a third-party service launched Qwitter, which allows Twitter users to determine who's stopped following them and which tweet may have turned them off."

The great thing is, it doesn't really matter to people whether or not the "personality" or avatar on the other side of the digital gulf is real, or a droid or some sort. The rejection people feel at not being sufficiently included or affirmed is all the same.

On the other hand, a person might feel just as good about himself if he had 500 computer-generated, but very affirming and supportive, "friends" as the real thing. In fact, the droids would be ever so much better, since they would only say good things to and about you, would never defriend you, and would in fact attack any outsider you target as a threat to your fine-feelingness.

I suspect such a service—automated social supports (ASS) perhaps would be a good acronym—is just around the corner. And you'll pay any amount of money to obtain the advantages provided by these little bot friends, especially the ones who have real credentials for their little fake selves.

Hmm...possibilities...possibilities.

(jk)

To Hell With Books, Give Me Data!

Regarding: Kindles Replace Books In Library.

Humans, being the hopeless victims of distraction they are, have turned libraries into giant—REALLY giant—statements about the extent of their commitment to being learned, or at least their commitment to providing the dweebs who want to read a book with somewhere to mingle and not be seen or smelled by normal people.

I say this is being really distracted, because books are simply data conveyances, like bio-terroristic hard drives, which munch up living things called trees to provide people with incredibly inefficient ways to get at the data contained in one lousy book. Stack up a bunch of these books in a warehouse, and let people check them out, and you have a library. Hell, stack them up in your house, and you have a library. And a lot of dweebs are very impressed with their home libraries. I knew a fellow once who measured his in linear feet of biblio-virtue.

And more than this, we have these special libraries, much more prestigious than the usual ones, where they house the rare books, the special books, and especially the rotting, stinking books nobody should see or smell or ever touch. That is why they make you wear those silly white gloves and masks, like you're dissecting an especially diseased toad, which is a fair description of the contents of a lot of the special-and-rare items, and for that matter most books ever written.

At the research libraries, the worship of books, and other junk, is elevated to a great height of utter arrogance and insanity. While people in this country could use some space to actually live in, could use some $ to help out in rough times, research libraries have bunches of space devoted to housing a massive clutter of old, allegedly valuable, foul artifacts, almost all of which could be converted into digital forms, and the space and the air cleansed for better purposes.

Many years ago, I saw this wave coming. I could see how much more efficient it would be if I did not have to go to a big, pretentious, physical building to access the temple of rare books. And more than this how much better would it be if ALL the resources of the library which could be digitized were, and made available to everybody, all at once! Wouldn't that be something like a major advance of civilization?

So, I mentioned that to one of the librarians at the Harry Ransom Center, that wouldn't it be great when we can digitize all these awful stinky old books, so people won't have to physically encounter their rotting corpses anymore? She looked at me as if I had suggested burning down the library, with her inside as a marshmallow. Let's just say she wasn't on the bleeding edge when it came to progress.

Well, now we have finally arrived at that moment I have been hoping for, when libraries are dumping the books, and going digital, and naturally the book fetishists are going crazy, acting like the poor books, which last time I checked a digital resource about this, don't have nervous systems or feelings, are being abused! And worse, the fellow who wants to dump the books, and just hand out Kindles to everybody, has also put up big-screen televisions at the entrance to the library, so people can watch cable channels. And the reaction to this is to accuse him of having not read 1984. Well, of course he has. He just actually got the point of the book, unlike the dummies who took it as some kind of warning about something.

So, just pick up your hands, and wave goodbye. The ancient world and its faulty, fumy forms are finally, thankfully, dying.

And who wants to read a book, anyway?

(jk)

Turns Out "Baby Einstein" Was Really Stupid

At least, it was lamebrained for parents to think they could engenius their babies by immersing them in video bowls of smart-pops. So badly did the whole baby-media ploy turn out that Disney (which acquired Baby Einstein in 2001) is offering customers refunds.

Maybe someday parents can utterly abandon parenting and just plug their brats into the Matrix and have them seem really smart. But then, with everybody an Einstein, or seemingly so, being a genius will have to be redefined as something better than "smart as Einstein". It will have to be upgraded, and so all the Einstein-level smart people will still not be affirmed in their specialness.

They'll just be one more E-level slug, wishing they had good parents that could have afforded a better simulation in the Matrix.

(jk)

Monsters On The March!

Nope, that isn't a notice concerning the next meeting of the Republican National Committee, but it is a notice that there is a new website you may like:

Monsters on the March!

As I noted on Facebook, it has a strangely familiar tone and attitude.

(jk)