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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
A follow up to this post on Iran's nuclear weapons program and the purpose of negotiations with the Mullahs, in this article:
A top Iranian official has claimed a "great victory" over the US after the UN said it would not punish Iran's nuclear activities with sanctions.
Hassan Rohani said Iran would never give up its right to nuclear power. . .
We have proved that, in an international institution, we are capable of isolating the US. And that is a great victory," Mr Rohani said.
He added that the US representative at the IAEA meeting in Vienna "was enraged and in tears, and everybody said that the Americans had failed and we had won".
It was Iran's first direct comment on the nuclear controversy since the IAEA resolution on Monday.
'Not too long negotiations'
According to Mr Rohani, Iran's offer to suspend uranium enrichment would only apply for the duration of talks with the EU.
"We are talking months, not years," the cleric and head of Iran's top security body said.
But of course. The piece concludes with this observation:
Tehran stepped back from a similar offer to freeze uranium enrichment six months ago, sparking the current round of negotiations over its atomic ambitions.
China's lightning advance into the production of cars, computers and high-tech industry poses a serious threat to Europe's economic base, according to a report by the European Commission.
Guenther Verheugen, the new enterprise and industry commissioner, said the EU must improve to avoid quick relegation down the world's economic league as Asia storms ahead on every front. . .
The Commission blamed much of Europe's sluggish performance on suffocating red tape. It said the EU could raise overall GDP by 12pc through adopting an American-style "regulatory burden".
From the economy to military and diplomacy to technology and science, the EU's various report-prepairers are actually very good at recognizing the existence of a problem.
But they seem to treat that, and the follow-on plans for solutions, as dealing with the problem. These are necessary preconditions for solving any problem, but they aren't sufficient in and of themselves. One has to take meaningful action - bite the bullet to reform an economy, spend what it takes to build up a European reaction force capability, free things up to encourage scientific and technological innovation, reduce regulation and control. All of these things go directly against the inclinations of the people who run the EU, so grand plans to deal boldly with deficiencies have invariably fizzled. Will it be any different this time? I wouldn't bet on it.
A good article in the LA Times on Basic Training today. What's described when it comes to 5 hours average sleep a night and training on Sunday and the like wasn't my experience, but experiences do vary - especially from post to post.
We were formed up for PT this morning outside the 4th ID HQ building when a helicopter landed at the nearby helipad to pick up some people, and took off again. That was their last flight. May the Lord keep their souls and comfort their family and friends.
(Before anyone asks, no I didn't know any of them personally, and couldn't say even if I did, because their loved ones are still being contacted).
While you're at it, check out this piece by James F. Dunnigan. The good news:
Moslems are beginning to change their attitudes towards Islamic terrorism. That’s a major step forward in the war against terror.
Then there's this:
The Islamic conservatives hate what the West stands for. Freedom, especially in thought, is not what conservative Islam is all about. Such worship of “the good old days” is not unique to Islam. Other religions have had similar attitudes.
That last part is worth remembering. It's become fashionable for Leftists to say no, they don't hate freedom, they just hate our policies (and then they list a litany of policies that, not coincidentally, the Western Left dislikes). But it really is Liberty that they fear and hate, as Paul Berman (more here) and others who have researched their statements have found out.
We should remember that it up until fairly recently, historically speaking, that the Catholic Church had its own problems with democracy, liberalism, and the like, condemned by Pope Piux IX's Syllabus of Errors in the 1860s, and then there were Catholics throughout the first half of the 20th century who had serious problems with mass-rule and liberal democracy. This is not to pick on Catholics - they weren't alone, but it's a good example, and they got past it. But it is an illustrative example, showing both that yes, it's not implausible, but also a path through which Islam could follow in moving forward without losing the essence of their faith.
I read this piece by Richard Miniter in their "dead tree" version when it originally came out, but didn't think to look for it online. I just found it now, by acccident, when I was wandering around on the web. Anyhow, within it is a good synopsis of how the EU works. Here's a section:
Part of what makes the E.U. confusing to Americans is that each of its institutions seems to do a bit of everything. The Commission, now composed of 20 members selected by 15 national governments, is a hodgepodge of executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It oversees the work of agencies, known as Directorates General (DG), that have much more power than American cabinet departments or regulatory agencies--including the power to write legislation (although it must be approved later by the other institutions), enforce the rules they write (sometimes over the determined opposition of national governments), and interpret the rules (like American courts do).
There are very few checks and balances. Europe's courts cannot overturn these regulations unless they violate a specific treaty provision, which is rare. Individual citizens or businesses cannot bring a case to overturn a regulation, only that rule's application to themselves. Commission employees can't easily be reined in, as they are not appointed by commissioners or elected officials but rather by a Civil Service-like procedure. They can only be transferred, not fired. "Maybe if they sleep with a commissioner's wife. Maybe," says a Dutch Commission staffer. He's not joking.
Nor are there external checks on their authority. Bureaucrats are not required to open their meetings to the public. Reporters have no "Freedom of Information Act"--like powers to force the E.U. departments to release documents. Not that they would use them if they did--many European reporters are funded directly by national governments or indirectly through political parties. In Brussels all journalists must register and have government-issued "press cards," which can be taken away at government discretion. These controls are rarely necessary anyway--the Continental press is a compliant bunch. Attend the daily press briefing at the Commission and you'll hear lots of questions like "When will the quarterly agriculture report be released?" If it gets too tedious, journalists can wander a few steps outside the briefing room to the subsidized bar.
And while the 20 commissioners can kill or rewrite the legislation that is drafted for them by unelected junior staffers, they usually timidly adopt most of what the bureaucrats hand them. "About 95 percent of what the Directorates General write is taken on board by the Commission," estimates Rod Hunter, a lawyer-lobbyist working in Brussels for the past decade.
at least for me, and that was something Benjamin Franklin said, as quoted in a quote from the polarized debate post I linked to, below:
Knowledge, he realized, "was obtained rather by the use of the ear than of the tongue."
I feel the same way, which is one reason I've been reluctant to blog lately. Not because I don't like expressing what I know, or think I've learned - quite the contrary. But I don't blog just to babble inanely, and when I don't think I have something to say that would be worthwhile for others to read, an aspect of which they might not find elsewhere, it takes the wind out of the effort.
The hardest part of blogging, or punditizing, or writing like this isn't the writing itself, it's acquiring the knowledge to do so in an informed manner (a lesson Maureen Dowd might profitably learn). I like learning stuff - a lot of people do. I would guess readers of political and "idea" blogs all do. But it's surprising to me how many people don't. I've meet more and more of them now that I'm "out and about". Hardly any of them are stupid, they just have different priorities, different interests. There might be a lesson there about the whole "Blue-Red Divide", not in the sense that one half of the divide is interested in learning while the other is not, but that they have different priorities, different interests, see things differently, without one side having all the stupid people and the other all the smart ones.
Possibly unrelated, but not really, here's a well-thought-out post on polarized debate. It's certainly not unrelated to the theme of many recent posts here, and it's well worth reading for those of us who discuss things with people who don't share our points of view. The most satisfying way of expressing yourself (see below post) may not be the best way of persuading those who don't agree. The post is long, but well worth reading.
Sorry for the delayed update, but I'm still operating this blog on a "blogger-out-of-the-loop" basis (that blogger being me).
The Iranian Mullahs decided that maybe they pushed for too much, and have backed down from demanding overt exemption for some of their nuclear weapons research programs. So the deal is back on. But how many people believe that this solves the problem, and that they will not pursue nuclear weapons now?
It's like deja vu all over again. This deal is almost identical to the one brokered by Our European Allies with Iran the last time, proclaiming "Peace In Our Time" and a triumph of European-style diplomacy over - well, not so much Iranian's nuclear goals as Cowboy-American threats of punishment. That deal, too, was seen by the Mullahs as temporary, and they quietly continued to pursue their nuclear ambitions after the pressure was off, while the International Community patted themselves on the back - again, not so much for thwarting Iran's nuclear program as sidelining the confrontational Americans.
So here we are again. Only the invincibly (willfully?) stupid, who intransigently refuse to learn from even recent history, believe that this agreement means that the Mullahs will not try and acquire a nuclear weapons capability. Everyone else - including those lauding the agreement - knows that this is just a way for them to buy time and resume their ambitions, while the Good People (European elites and America's "Reality-Based Community) politely avert their eyes, and turn off international pressure (read Cowboy-American attempts to confront Iran over it).
Just start a conversation with any one of them, and one will quickly see that they aren't that concerned over it - they will soon turn the discussion towards not Iran's nuclear weapons program, but America's, asking how we can tell them to stop while we have our own weapons, and our own program. Proliferation isn't the problem for them, and it isn't really for me, either. The problem is they fail to see a distinction between their own democratic republic on the one hand and a Religious Oligarchy that has vowed to use possession of such weapons against us and our friends if - when - they get them.
That's a distinction with a difference, while they're arguments rest on what used to be called, during the conflict between the SovWorld and the West, "moral equivalency". Such an argument empathizes not with us, but with our enemies. But it's the height of rudeness to point that out, as rude as pointing out that the Emperor wears no cloths. But that etiquette is just a means of keeping people from challenging the premises of their assertions - and challenging the mindset of "Peace In Our Time" deals such as this one, deals that ultimately make the situation worse rather than better.
