Spring? In What Sense?
Monday, September 12, 2011
Via HBL comes an ominous report about things on the ground in Egypt. The title just about says it all: "Egypt's Military Rulers Ignored Pleas from US as Mob Attacked Israeli Embassy."
Israel was forced to send military aircraft to Cairo to evacuate its ambassador and more than 80 diplomats after a mob, angered by the killing of three Egyptian border guards by Israeli forces last month, laid siege to the embassy. As the Egyptian police and army stood by, unwilling or unable to intervene, the rioters broke through the mission's defences and ransacked the building. The incident has plunged relations between Israel and its oldest Arab ally deep into crisis.Regarding this news story and the so-called "Arab Spring," I commend you to the last two comments of a post at this very blog after the uprisings in Tunisia and Obama's admonition to Hosni Mubarak.
Fresh details disclosed yesterday showed how narrowly an even more serious incident was averted. Both Israel and America appeared concerned that the indecent could spiral into a repeat of the US embassy siege in Tehran after the Iranian revolution of 1979, when 42 US diplomats were held hostage for 444 days.
--- In Other News ---
Another round of Jean Moroney's "Tap Your Own Brilliance" teleclasses is starting up soon and space is limited. It's also a steal at less than a couple hundred smackers. I'll quote the participant review she cites in the mailing list announcement I received: "This class makes it easier to face difficult decisions, to more quickly find paths to better solutions, and to overcome obstacles such as overload, confusion and lack of ideas. The time and money I spent thinking about thinking was a solid investment that will pay dividends for decades." All I can add to this is, "And you can use it now."
A conservative commentator makes quite a few amusing and trenchant remarks about the Obama Presidency. I disagree with the title of the article, however, which calls Obama's agenda "Obsolete." As I once said of Social Security during a "man-on-the-street" interview ages ago, "That's not an 'obsolete' idea: It was never a good idea in the first place." I was quoted, but that gem was left out. Nevertheless, I was happy to see that I was not so heavily edited as to sound like a buffoon.
Is Apple disrupting disruptive technology? This blog posting on "The New Apple Advantage" makes the best case I have ever seen for why, despite vendor lock-in and a lack of control by end-users, Apple has a competitive advantage. All that control comes at a price that people are less and less willing to pay. There is a lesson for any high-end vendor here.
4 comments:
Gus,
I'm perplexed as to how anyone who has lived a day in his life and is not a Leftist or a NeoCon could have expected post Mubarak Egypt to be anything other than a Sharia dominated, Infidel-hating movement. The whole premise of removing Mubarak is that there was a pro "democracy" movement afoot. That should immediately give one cause for expecting the worst because the term "democracy" reveals that anyone who uses it is an idiot - plain and simple. As Ed Cline so brilliantly put it: Democracy + Islam = Jihad.
That's what the movement in Egypt is really all about. It is not any "Arab Spring". It is the continuation of the Jihad revivalism which has been going on for over 100 years. What is the first thing that the Egyptians have done since their "lust for democracy"? That's right. Attempt to kill Jews. As they must because it is dictated by their religion.
All democracy does is unleash the mob. What do mobs of Muslims believe in? Only one thing. Islam. And Islam is constitutionally violent and inherently warlike. I don't see how non-Leftists and non-NeoCons can't see this after our experience with Muslim belligerence 10 years since 9/11.
Much of the problem is wishful thinking, made dangerous by a failure to appreciate the motivating role of philosophical ideas or the predominant nature of the ideology of Islam.
Rats, you fixed the "indecent" typo before I could comment on it.
What was it? I'm serious. After posting this before five (whatever the blog post time stamp says, it's knackered), I worked feverishly on a document I am preparing for four hours and attended to a continually-awake baby ever since, until now (8:30 pm in this time zone). This post is already a distant memory!
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