Israel's 'referendum' on 'two-state solution'
Why did so many Israeli voters switch their allegiance to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just before this week's election? The answer is simple and obvious: most of those small-party voters oppose a Palestinian state, and a day before the election Netanyahu ruled out a Palestinian state on his watch.
(Mar 19, '15)
Tehran's success, Riyadh's failure
The global consensus on behalf of Iranian hegemony is now coming into focus. The unifying factor among different players' diverse motivations is that America's competitors are constrained to upgrade their relations with Iran in order to compete with Washington as the Obama administration shows its determination to achieve rapprochement with Tehran at any cost.
(Mar 17, '15)
Air castles of Nuland Kaganate
US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and her ilk are charged with wanting regime change in Moscow. Others do too, just as they might want the restoration of the Temple sacrifices in Jerusalem, but they do not expect to get that anytime soon. Promoting regime change is the equivalent of shooting spitballs at the zoo lion: it simply increases the likelihood that the zookeeper will get eaten.
(Mar 10, '15)
World bows to Iran's hegemony
The problem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the US Congress was not the risk of offending Washington but Washington's receding relevance. World powers, including China, have elected to legitimize Iran's dominant position, hoping to delay but not deter its eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons. But war cannot be avoided; it is inevitable.
(Mar 4, '15)
The bidding war for Iran
The world now anticipates that the US will reach a strategic agreement with Iran. Russia and China are responding by offering their own deals to Tehran. A possible game-changer is Russia's offer of the Antey-2500 air defense system to Iran. Such an intervention might make Iran effectively impregnable from attack by Israel.
(Feb 26, '15)
Too many 'most wanted'
With the Copenhagen synagogue shooting, involving a person “known to the security services”, we may have a repeat of the Paris pattern: terrorists whom the security services monitored and perhaps used as informants suddenly turned active and perpetrated atrocities. It appears that the methods employed by European security agencies to control jihadists have broken down.
(Feb 16, '15)
Too many 'most wanted'
With the Copenhagen synagogue shooting, involving a person “known to the security services”, we may have a repeat of the Paris pattern: terrorists whom the security services monitored and perhaps used as informants suddenly turned active and perpetrated atrocities. It appears that the methods employed by European security agencies to control jihadists have broken down.
(Feb 16, '15)
Why Jews are good at money
The sort of admiration shown in China for the historic ability of Jews to make money makes Jews uncomfortable, given the ugly history of European Jew-hatred. It shouldn't. Chinese admiration of Jewish business skills carries no stigma. On the contrary: it begs an explanation.
(Feb 12, '15)
Michael Pillsbury and Fu-Manchu
The author of a new book claiming China is plotting to take over the world gets some things right but gets the big picture wrong. China may end up dominating the world, but if so it will be by default - because the United States abandoned the role, with its increasing tendency to walk away from strategic responsibilities bemusing China's leaders.
(Feb 11, '15)
STDs and strategy in Iran
In the 5th Century BC, the "Persian disease" noted by Hippocrates probably was bubonic plague; in 8th-century Japan, it meant the measles. Today it well might mean chlamydia. Standout levels of infertility among Iranian couples, a major cause of the country's falling birth rate, coincide with epidemic levels of sexually transmitted disease. Both reflect deep-seated social pathologies.
(Jan 30, '15)
How US policy blunders hurt Israel
It has long been obvious that Russian foreign policy involves a trade-off between Ukraine and Iran, responding to Western efforts to bring Ukraine (and Crimea) into an alliance by subverting US interests elsewhere. Vladimir Putin must be frustrated to encounter a White House so eager to deal with Iran that it fails to notice where its interests have been impaired. The Israelis, however, do notice.
(Jan 28, '15)
Don't mourn - neutralize
The murder of journalists and cartoonists at French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo is the latest indication that the cancer of terror has spread so far that any cure will be almost as painful as the disease. Nonetheless, it must be cured if civilization is to prevail over barbarism. As American trade unionist Joe Hill told his friends before he was executed: "Don't mourn - organize."
(Jan 9, '15)
Dumbing it away
Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars,
by Daniel P Bolger
A current of Russian and Chinese opinion, including some foreign-policy specialists, holds that the US chose to destabilize the Middle East intentionally. That is paranoid nonsense. How could the Americans be so stupid? We could, and were. Lieutenant-General Daniel Bolger's insider explanation of the blunders that led to the present situation in the region is convincing and should be circulated as an antidote to the paranoia.
(Nov 21, '14)
The Sino-American comedy of errors
Misunderstandings that bedevil relations between the world's two most powerful countries remain comedic rather than tragic. That probably is as good as it gets, for no amount of explanation will enable Chinese and Americans to make sense of each other - and Beijing's attitude towards Washington has turned towards open contempt.
(Nov 10, '14)
Erdogan's flying carpet unravels
Belief among Turkish voters that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the best-placed politician to deliver growth and jobs has helped him win one election after another, but this ignores the currency depreciation, rising interest rates and declining economic activity that is rapidly becoming a vicious cycle. Unfortunately for the "mystery investors" helping the opaque economy fly, the dream is looking ragged.
(Sep 23, '14)
Some of my best friends are Straussians
The late philosopher Leo Strauss was woefully wrong to assert we have something to learn from the statecraft of ancient Greece. The road from the self-destruction of that civilization leads through insidious turns of history to American narcissism and the fatuous belief that the whole world can be saved if force-fed the elixir of democracy. Even so, some of my best friends are Straussians.
(Aug 26, '14)
Sherman's 300,000 and
the Caliphate's 3 million
The new Thirty Years War in the Middle East, with its origins in a demographic peak and an economic trough, will only be won by the feeding of enough young men to the meat-grinder until there are insufficient recruits to fill the fighting ranks. That was precisely how General Sherman fought the American Civil War - though add another zero to his estimate of casualties to calibrate the likely extent of deaths in the Levant today.
(Aug 12, '14)
Musil and meta-Musil:
The inevitable World War I
We will hear endless variations on a lament for Western Civilization as the centenary of World War I approaches. Robert Musil's masterpiece The Man Without Qualities is particularly pertinent. The novel depicts Vienna's elite pursuing petty concerns in ignorance that their bubble of a world was about to burst. After Musil - meta-Musil, so to speak - comes a great evacuation. Western culture will not end; it will pass into the hands of Asians.
(Jun 30, '14)
America wants the impossible
The United States gets unwanted results - most recently in Iraq - because it projects its values system onto incompatible societies and conflicts. Americans simply don't want to think about the world as it actually is, and by default this may lead the rest of the world towards players with a sense of reality. Unburdened by a social-engineering approach and affirmative-action mentality, China is the leading likeliest candidate.
(Jun 16, '14)
Pope applies universal salve to Middle East
Pope Francis' visit to the Holy Land, and his invitation to Israeli and Palestinian leaders who do not pray to do so in the Vatican, was a rather pointless intervention into Middle East politics. His sudden passion for a Palestinian state was political theater, with nothing more at stake than his ambition for the renewal of a Church that saves fewer individuals than ever but hopes nevertheless to save everybody.
(May 29, '14)
The phantom menace in Palestine
The Israeli Solution by Caroline Glick
The "problem" of Palestinian refugees has some rare distinctions. They have remained in refugee camps for seven decades, while comparable large refugee groups have long been assimilated into other populations; and their actual numbers are below the official figures bandied about by various authorities. Ms Glick draws a bold conclusion: Israel should annex Judea and Samaria - the West Bank - just as it did Jerusalem.
(Mar 31, '14)
More sitcom than CENTCOM
Americans stumble into the world's troubles like incongruous clowns in a tragedy, concluding from the anguished faces of other characters that everyone else on stage is insane. In the situation comedy of errors in Ukraine, the chance to forge a new consensus was missed - and now the US must grin and bear the consequences.
(Mar 10, '14)
Careful what you wish for in Ukraine
Western governments jubilant at the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich can justly claim the ouster of a Russian ally as a well-deserved embarrassment to Moscow. But in sizing up European anxiety over the size of the bill to settle Ukraine's problems, the Kremlin is telling the West to be careful what it wishes for, knowing that the waiting game favors Russia's higher tolerance for pain.
(Feb 24, '14)
Turkish financial crisis adds to region's chaos
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's prestige, founded on Turkey's supposed economic miracle, has collapsed along with the lira. Western planners once believed the country could be a pillar of stability in an otherwise chaotic region. Under Erdogan, it has become a spoiler allied to the region's most destructive and anti-Western forces.
(Feb 5, '14)
Don't cry for ME-Argentina
East Asia is faring better than the rest of the world in the great economic transformation because its culture imposes merciless meritocracy, and other so-called emerging markets are in trouble because they are teeming with people who have nothing remunerative to do. The Chinese by and large have better things to do than riot, whereas for pointers of wider dysfunction to come, look to the Middle East and Argentina.
(Jan 27, '14)
Common traits bind Jews and Chinese
It may seem odd to compare the largest of peoples with one of the world's smallest, but Chinese and Jews have something in common that helps explain their success and longevity; the ability to transcend tribalism through a unifying civilization. It should be no surprise that they have enemies in common.
(Jan 10, '14)
What is musical style?
Mendelssohn's Instrumental Music: Structure and Style
by Erez Rapoport
Chopin's complaint that most pianists resemble an actor who has memorized lines phonetically in a foreign language he didn't understand will strike a chord with many learners. Simply, they may lack the cultural expectations to make sense of the sequence of events they are experiencing. Erez Rapoport's posthumously published work may not be for them, but advanced teachers will be among those who will appreciate this work and the author's rare insight into "style".
(Dec 23, '13)
The dead's envy for the living
Many commentators draw a parallel between the appeasement of Hitler in 1938 and the appeasement of Iran at Geneva. There is a more chilling parallel: Iran's motive for proposing to annihilate the Jewish State is the same as Hitler's, and the world's indifference to the prospect of another Holocaust is no different now than then. It is the dead's envy for the living
(Nov 27, '13)
A Pax Sinica in the Middle East?
China's interest in a peaceful Middle East is large and growing, notably in its energy purchases but extending well beyond those, just as US energy needs there are waning. Without attributing any geopolitical intention to Beijing, the visible facts make clear that China has the capacity to exercise strategic influence in the region. What China might choose to do in that regard, Washington will learn after the fact.
(Oct 28, '13)
Reports of Russia’s death are exaggerated
Implosion: The End of Russia and What It Means for America by Ilan Berman
The United States can make strategic plans in Asia on the premise that Russia's recent return to world power status will ultimately be undermined by demographic disaster triggered by long-term social collapse. But while that outcome - put forward in Ilan Berman's new volume, cannot be excluded, neither is it likely. Russia will be around for quite a while, and requires strength, not bluff, to handle.
(Oct 15, '13)
US plays Monopoly, Russia plays chess
As Russia's president carefully gauges how each Syria maneuver impacts on Moscow's spheres of interest, the US administration continues to view geopolitical real estate in isolation. The big prize is a restoration of Russia's great power status, and as American popular revulsion over foreign intervention intensifies, Vladimir Putin can simply wait as the clock runs down. - Spengler
(Sep 16, '13)
OBITUARY
Ronald Coase: A respectful dissent
The late economist Ronald Coase showed how individuals and firms in the private market can do a better job at most things than government regulators. But we should keep in mind that markets are never better than the people who trade in them. - Spengler
(Sep 10, '13)
World learns to
manage without the US
The pipe-dream of an Egyptian democracy led by a Muslim Brotherhood weaned from its wicked past has popped - but official Washington has yet to waken up to the fact or listen to old hands who recognize what is afoot. That leaves other powers - specifically a condominium of Russia, China and Saudi Arabia - to do their best to contain the mess as America blunders on.
(Aug 19, '13)
First things last
As national suicide by infertility becomes the new normal, demographics looms large for people of religion for whom fertility and faith are inextricably linked. Religious conservatism and its twin pillars of classical political philosophy and natural law theory are in need of a rethink, and no other venue is better suited to the task than First Things, the monthly journal of religion in the public square.
(Jul 22, '13)
Islam's civil war moves to Egypt
Whether Egypt slides into chaos or regains temporary stability under the military depends on the view from the royal palace in Saudi Arabia, not on the conflicting protests in Tahrir Square. Democracy activists are a hapless force as democracy in Egypt is dead. Crosswinds from the great Sunni-Shi'ite civil war enveloping the Muslim world are at work, and the only question in the current power struggle is whose Islamism will win out.
(Jul 8, '13)
Syria and Egypt can't be fixed
Syria and Egypt were dying before the Syrian civil war broke out and before the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Cairo. They are are dying because they chose not move people from rural backwardness to a modern urban economy. Whatever the Western motivations for trying to help mend them, the two countries are broken and cannot be fixed.
(Jun 17, '13)
Russia's new Middle Eastern role
Russia's promise of S300 surface-to-air missiles to the Assad regime in Syria is upsetting to Western plans, but the matter is up for bargaining - which begs the question of what the Kremlin wants in the Middle East. Its Syrian naval base is a certainty; destruction of the regime in Iran could be another. In fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin's position is more amenable to US strategic requirements than Barack Obama's.
(Jun 10, '13)
The economics of the 'Turkish Spring'
The credit bubble that cosseted Recep Tayyip Erdogan's incipient Islamist dictatorship has now burst while politically directed generosity has come back to bite Turkish consumers. For a growing proportion of Turkish voters who mistrusted his agenda but liked his economics while the going was good, the devil they thought they knew hasn't kept his side of the bargain.
(Jun 3, '13)
Syria's madness and ours
While atrocities in Syria, such as the cannibalism viewable on YouTube, transfix the West, the real horrors of war are still to come in the Middle East. Americans, whose appetite for horror shows little sign of satiation, cannot abandon the region, but should avoid the conflict in the grim recognition that civilizations determined to destroy themselves cannot be prevented from doing so.
(May 20, '13)
Snaking the Scotch
The most successful Christian communities embrace the State of Israel, while the least successful ones abhor it. A recent report by the Church of Scotland, itself a dying echo of a once-notable institution, merely reflects in its criticism of Israel's territorial claims the collapse of its own former congregation into the narrow, ethnic concerns of a failed and disappearing people.
(May 6, '13)
Turkey's ticking debt time-bomb
The consequences of spiraling short-term foreign debt for Turkey's government could be devastating should the largesse of Gulf states fade. As other emerging economies maintain growth and as a domestic consumer bubble rapidly expands, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's claim to leadership of the Islamic world - let alone his own country - is looking far less credible.
(Apr 23, '13)
When hunger came to Egypt
Subsidized basic foodstuffs like bread, sugar and oil look like going the same way as the price of beans in Egypt - beyond the reach of half the Egyptian population - as the flat-broke state sinks further into the financial mire. The question is how long Egyptians can go hungry before the Muslim Brotherhood loses its capacity to govern.
(Apr 15, '13)
Coming 'crash' will end in a snooze
No trade has lost more money for more people than the Japanese government debt crash that never happened. Likewise, as alarm bells ring over America's burgeoning public debt, nothing is going to crash there. The Japanese experience shows the big sleep can continue for a remarkably long time - and unlike Japan, the US is not about to run out of savers anytime soon.
(Apr 8, '13)
Obama converts to neo-realism
With an Israeli-Palestinian agreement as unlikely as at any time in the past two decades, President Obama went to Israel for one simple reason - where else in the Middle East could he go? With the Passover holiday imminent, it was also a useful place to declare his own personal Exodus from idealism (as in Cairo 2009) to neo-realism and recognition of who is the US's only Mid-East ally.
(Mar 25, '13)
Speaking truth to impotence
in the Middle East
President Barack Obama's advisers who anguish over blood spilt in Syria's civil war have good cause: they helped the US (with European assistance) set going a regional Sunni-Shi'ite war, with minorities involved in a fight to the death. The do-gooders may not want to see the consequences of their mistakes, while the response from Republican hawks is to switch off the world news for a generation.
(Mar 18, '13)
US exceptionalism a matter of faith
Claims that the era of American Exceptionalism is over are exaggerated at best. What has made the United States radically different from all other big industrial nations during the past generation is a fertility rate above replacement, and religious folk are the last who seem determined to keep it that way. The question is not what we forecast, but whether we will keep faith.
(Mar 12, '13)
Vatican and the fight
for China's soul
Scandal surrounding the Roman Catholic Church in the run-up to the election next week of a new pope is a distraction from a real scandal - the belief that God holds one people above others - that still finds support in Latin America and Africa. That is one reason why the election of a pope from a self-confident Asia would be better for the Church. The other concerns the greatest battle of the 21st century: the fight for the soul of China.
(Feb 25, '13)
Ketchup, not blood, on the trading floor
Amnesia is an unlikely culprit for the collective dissonance of US stocks at pre-financial crisis valuations of 2007 at a time the global economic outlook looks increasingly treacherous. Financial carnage hasn't been forgotten, it's just that record-low funding costs are leveraging deals like last week's takeover of boring, predictable Heinz last week, while risky innovation - the lifeblood of growth - is ailing and unattractive.
(Feb 19, '13)
Eygpt, Syria - it's just the
end of them
All Syria has to show after two years of civil war is 60,000 causalities, while
more rationing of bread in Egypt is proof of inevitable financial exhaustion.
Libya has dropped off the precipice, while Islam's poster-child Tunisia faces
renewed upheaval. As grim as that sounds if you live there, the global
consequences of the failure of Arab states are negligible.
(Feb 13, '13)
Thanks, but I already have a novel
The novel I already have is J W Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther,
which really is about why people shouldn't write novels, let alone read them.
The problem lies not so much in novelists as in what came to be expected of
them, namely to play the role of modern prophets once religion ceased to be the
center of public discourse. They are woefully ill-suited to such expectations.
(Jan 28, '13)
Denial still is a river in
Egypt
More concerning than the inherent sentiment in Egyptian President Mohammed
Morsi 2010 comments denouncing Jews as "descendants of apes and pigs" is that
such Dark Age-style ignorance afflicts a leader charged with rescuing one of
the most troubled economies in recent global history. Yet neither fact stops
well-wishers from the Western foreign policy establishment poring money into
the evolving Egyptian crisis. (Jan 22, '13)
The siege of Baghdad
and China's rise
The failure of the last Abbasid Caliph to prepare Baghdad for an onslaught of
Chinese innovation led to his gruesome death at the hands of Mongol invaders in
the siege of 1258. Like Baghdad then, Americans have no idea what is about to
hit them as China's deep pockets source whatever technology is required. By any
means other than a resurgence of US innovation, resistance is futile.
(Jan 7, '13)
School deaths terror's dark twin
The suicidal jihadi is the Doppelgänger of the angst-ridden Westerner.
An encroaching sense of social death motivates horrific acts in Muslim
countries, while the popularity of fantasy mass murder expresses the cultural
despair of the West. The real surprise about the school shooting in Sandy Hook
is that deranged individuals do not cross the line between fantasy mass killing
and real life more often. (Dec 18, '12)
The talented Mr Erdogan
Welcome to the post-American Middle East, where the United States is shocked -
shocked - to discover Turkey, its notional ally, has done more to help Iran
skirt sanctions that any other country. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan is the geopolitical cognate of the Talented Mr Ripley, and his economic
mirage is maintained only because Saudi Arabia counts on his country's military
to counterweigh Iran. (Dec 3, '12)
Post-US world born in Phnom Penh
President Barack Obama used a summit in Cambodia to tout a US-based
Trans-Pacific Partnership that would exclude China. Representatives of 3
billion Asians preferred, with good reason, a regional grouping that excludes
the United States. Washington might want to pivot towards Asia. At Phnom Penh,
Asian leaders in effect invited Obama to pivot 360 degrees and go home.
(Nov 26, '12)
Barack Obama and America's decline
America is in an incipient decline that this week's presidential election might
be the last chance to reverse. If returned to a second term in the White House,
Barack Obama will bring more dependency, more entitlement spending, more
federal debt, and more dependency on foreign lenders. Only if they act now, can
voters help America fix the damage already done. (Nov
2, '12)
Small US companies
pose profit-less riddle
There's a simple reason why investors are avoiding the smaller companies that
contributed most job growth in the United States during the past 40 years. They
aren't making much money. Firms with 500 to 1,000 employees, the biggest job
creators in previous recoveries, have been the biggest shedders of employment
in the present economy. (Oct 31, '12)
Why 'Intelligent Design' subverts
faith
The earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755 marked a turning point in the battle
between science and faith, as philosophers and religionists sought to
understand how a benevolent God could fail to prevent the malevolence of
nature. Yet man is not a passive victim of nature; hunger and the continued
existence of bacterial disease is our failure to further the ongoing act of
creation. Herein lie the fundamental flaws of the theory of Intelligent Design.
(Oct 22, '12)
Horizon collapses in the Middle
East
As self-aggravating disturbances engulf the Middle East, this isn't the
apocalypse. But it sure feels like it in Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt amid
short-term problems that represent the implosion of long-term problems. If
calamity is restricted to the region, and prospective malefactors are prevented
from acquiring nuclear weapons, the impact on the rest of the world will be
surprisingly small. (Oct 9, '12)
Palestinians ditched; Egypt next?
The world has stopped funding the Palestinians, and the Palestine Authority is
collapsing. The question is: When will the world also grow weary of Egypt? The
notion that the world will send $1 billion a month seems whimsical. The
catastrophic decline of a nation of 80 million people is something not seen in
some time. (Sep 28, '12)
Living without solutions in Samaria
The West Bank is in ferment, but not the way you might think, as boutique
wineries there offer a taste of a better life for settlers and Arabs alike.
While that's not a solution for people looking to the settlements to end the
world's problems, the region's future belongs to those prepared to dig in and
get on with life. (Sep 24, '12)
All-out Middle East war
as good as it gets
The prospect of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran fills the United States'
foreign policy establishment with practically unanimous horror - unreasonably
so. The spillover effects would be considerable, and bloody for numerous
countries. Yet there is no reason to expect most of the region's countries to
go quietly into irreversible decline. All-out regional war is the likely
outcome sooner or later. We might as well get on with it. - Spengler
(Sep 17, '12)
BOOK REVIEW
Can North Korea's agony find an end?
Escape from North Korea by Melanie Kirkpatrick
This author sees hope in the efforts of humanitarian heroes, largely Christians
with their "underground railroad", for "one free Korea", but the efficiency of
Pyongyang's politics of starvation along with the ill-treatment of refugees by
China make this unlikely. Still, her book is a compelling and important case
study of the North Korean tragedy. (Sep 10, '12)
North Korea on the Nile
The recent advances of President Mohammed Morsi signal a changed, albeit
increasingly impoverished, Egypt. As the Muslim Brotherhood turns the country
into a North Korea on the Nile, Washington is confronting an unwelcome set of
new alliances in the Middle East. China will feel at home with the new regime -
although an Israeli strike on Iran would change all that.
(Aug 27, '12)
Romney's math and the Ryan
nomination
The great split down the center of America society is not between the rich and
the middle class (the Obama campaign), but within the middle class itself. With
more people paying taxes than getting handouts from government, and taxes
eroding already savaged assets and income, the arithmetic suggests adding Paul
Ryan to the Mitt Romney ticket could be winner. (Aug
20, '12)
The Bush Institute bells the cat
The intractable nature of the US' economic problems are illustrated in the
George W Bush Institute's new collection of essays on restoring growth. Like
mice agreeing that the cat should wear a bell, the need to restore a high
growth rate is common ground. How to get there is represented by diametrically
opposed monetary policies. (Jul 31, '12)
Now for something about nothing
...
German philosopher Martin Heidegger asked "Why is there something instead of
nothing?" as a nod to Goethe's playful explorations on metaphysics.
Wrong-footed from the outset, a new detective book on existential angst chases
the phantom of "nothingness" down the rabbit holes of metaphysics and discovers
- nothing. - Spengler (Jul 24, '12)
Dr Frankenstein's LIBORatory
US Justice Department plans to prosecute banks for manipulating the London
Interbank Offered Rate ignore that rigging the LIBOR rate downward meant less
income for the banks and lower interest payments for homeowners with
adjustable-rate mortgages. By criminalizing rule-bending sanctioned during a
crisis rather than tackling real fraud, Washington has indulged in pure
political grandstanding. - Spengler (Jul 16,
'12)
The economics of confrontation
in Egypt
American backing and domestic pressures have emboldened Egyptian President
Mohammed Morsi to confront the military much sooner than expected, with an
attempt to revoke a military decree dissolving parliament. If the Muslim
Brotherhood succeeds in pushing the army out of power, Saudi Arabia will almost
certainly pull the plug on financial aid keeping the country afloat, with
bloodshed likely to follow. - Spengler (Jul
9, '12)
Banning circumcision is
dangerous
to your health
A ruling by a court in Cologne, Germany that the circumcision of children for
religious reasons "constitutes the infliction of bodily harm" presents a threat
to the survival of the German people. Circumcision denotes the transformation
of Jewish flesh to a holy vessel for God's presence in the world, and by
extirpating the presence of the divine, Germans are inviting extinction.
(Jul 2, '12)
Napoleon's march on Russia:
Do dictators always fail?
Yesterday's 200th anniversary of Napoleon's catastrophic march into Russia
should resonate with American conservatives expecting an imminent collapse of
China due to its communist rule and human-rights violations. A closer look at
why dictatorships such as Napoleon's and Hitler's failed suggests that an
enemy's stupidity is often more decisive than the cleverness and heroism of the
other side. (Jun 25, '12)
Europe's crisis is about
wealth, not growth
Bad behavior is being rewarded as European institutions continue to prop up the
continent's asset bubble as part of a fallacious "growth policy". But as aging
populations put catastrophic pressures on national pension and health systems,
the issue is not growth - it is who takes the hit when Europe's illusory wealth
is written off. (Jun 18, '12)
The Muslim revolution 'hiding
in plain sight'
Christians and Jews can thrive in modernity - witness America and Israel, the
most modern, religious and fertile of the industrial nations. But modernity and
Islam appear incompatible. As soon as Muslims (and especially Muslim women)
become literate, fertility drops below replacement. While few in the world of
public policy have taken notice, the consequences of a fast-aging population
have not escaped Iran. (Jun 11, '12)
Open letter to Merkel:
Sacrifice Spain
The international consensus has collapsed, elite opinion is confused and
Germany has become the arbiter of the European crisis. At the time when it is
indispensable to preserve a functioning banking system, Germany needs to lead
with clarity. Clear thinking means that ultimately Spain will have to be
sacrificed to the financial system. (Jun 4, '12)
What if Facebook is really
worth $100 billion?
Facebook and its social media imitators diminish us by substituting
unpredictable human interaction with a pre-arranged display window whose
purpose is to block our gaze from the real person behind it. Sadly, the system
- and its raison d'etre to advertise one's conformity to commercial culture
while preserving the illusion of individuality - is worth a great deal of
money. And even sadder, it is unlikely to fail. (May
21, '12)
Zombies remind us that death
is social
The improbable and growing popularity of zombie movies is indicative that amid
the weakening of the foundations of tradition and culture, our lives and deaths
have no meaning. We have dismissed the Jewish and Christian hope of eternal
life as superstition offensive to reason, and find ourselves trapped in a
recurring nightmare. The more we try to ignore death, the more it fascinates
us. (May 14, '12)
Beautiful evil: Mozart's Don
Giovanni
at the Mannes Opera
When young singers of the Mannes Opera in New York threw themselves into Don
Giovanni, they sent the audience back to Prague of 1787, hearing
Mozart's world through Mozart's ears. Risk-taking absent in other productions
created a near-perfect performance of the tragi-comedy, and a reminder that the
definitive works of Western civilization expose the flaws in its underlying
structure. (May 7, '12)
The horror and the pita
Egypt is in a classic pre-revolutionary situation that favors the firebrand
Muslim Brotherhood and its desire to seize all the reins of power it is now
grabbing from the country's disintegrating military rulers. The Brotherhood
thrives on chaos that has put essential services under pressure, risks
increasing the price of bread, and is giving Egyptians a foretaste of
Somali-style horrors to come. (Apr 30, '12)
One-and-a-half cheers for
Goldman Sachs
A US$22 million fine on Goldman Sachs for research violations looks like a slap
on the wrist, but it illuminates a huge circle of deceit. Few in the United
States are prepared to face facts that the nation cannot afford its aging
population - and hedge funds cannot maintain the pretense. Goldman Sachs has
been caught out serving one of the most characteristically American of all
functions: helping the public believe its own bunkum.
(Apr 16, '12)
Muslim Brotherhood chooses
chaos
The Muslim Brotherhood says it will block a US$3 billion emergency loan from
the International Monetary Fund unless the military government cedes power.
This despite the fact Egypt is running out of money and faces a chaotic
devaluation - the political actors appear to have moved past the question of
avoiding the crisis, and are positioning themselves to exploit it.
(Apr 10, '12)
Rick Santo rum's's mission
from God
Rick Santorum can one day become the president of the United States, just not
now. First, he needs to act as a beacon for generosity and disinterested
patriotism by suspending his campaign and backing Mitt Romney's bid. By making
the president in 2012, the path will be clear for Santo rum's's God-given
future as one of America's senior statesmen. (Apr 2,
'12)
What would James Q Wilson
tell Mexico?
The teachings of the late James Q Wilson, the academic who transformed American
law enforcement half a century ago, are required reading for any country
wanting to break the stranglehold of criminal gangs. Wilson's theory that
targeting rank and file rather than the kingpins of crime is a staple for most
nations. Mexico, in its headlong pursuit of drug lords should take a page from
Wilson. (Mar 19, '12)
Japan's lost libido and
America's asexual future
The sudden popularly of novels exploring dominant-submissive fantasy portends
the death of America's libido, as, like in Japan, the entry of sadism into the
mainstream will create a culture that objectifies women, making them hate sex.
If women become sufficiently disgusted with men, men become disgusted with
themselves. "Enlightened" secular culture prefigured the cataclysm at the end
of the Freudian century. - Spengler (Mar 12,
'12)
Conjuring the ghost of
Richelieu
Thank heavens for the ghost of the Cardinal de Richelieu, a bottle of Armagnac
and a bellyfull of Bordeaux ... all allow the 17th century's l'Eminence rouge
to appear in spirit and apply his brutal logic to the existential question
taxing men and women in power today: what nations should "do" to stabilize the
Middle East. (Feb 27, '12)
Lincoln's fatalism and
American faith
The intellectual right in the United States will form a critical mass when
there is no more wiggle-room for self-consoling illusions about Americans'
ability to master their own destiny. It is those illusions and the present-day
belief in a freeze-dried exceptionalism that make Abraham Lincoln the country's
least popular president. (Feb 13, '12)
Gold and bonds as options on
inflation
Economists, commentators and financial advisers are talking nonsense when they
insist on referring to gold as an inflation hedge. Clear-headed comparison of
the gold price and US government bond yields shows gold for what it is: an
undated put option on the dollar's reserve role. (Feb
6, '12)
How America made its
children crazy
American children do not read; they surf. They do not write; they text. And
when they fail to concentrate, we prescribe drugs that only harm them - drugs
can't be found in pharmacies in China, where perseverance and classical music
are the order of the day. If China replaces the US as the pre-eminent world
power, America will only have itself to blame for handing kids over to quacks
and computers. (Jan 30'12)
Failed treasury auction
portends
Egyptian disaster
It seems unlikely that Egypt's central bank will be able to prevent a
banana-republic devaluation of the Egyptian pound, and a sharp rise in prices
for a population of whom half barely consumes enough to prevent starvation. The
difference between Egypt and a banana republic, though, is the bananas: unlike
the bankrupt Latin Americans, who exported food, Egypt imports half its caloric
consumption. (Jan 23, '12)
God's promises and man's
preferences
For Christianity to succeed, it must "Judaize" to one extent or another. That
is why America is the only remaining Christian nation in the industrial world:
it succeeded in styling itself a new (almost) Chosen People in a new Promised
Land. And that is why the Jews remain indispensable to Christians. One learns
to Judaize from the Jews. (Jan 17, '12)
Recall notice for the Turkish
model
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's "model" economy is a bubble, and it is
bursting - even without the impact of ailing neighbors in Europe. Large-scale
bankruptcies and unemployment will make 2012 an ugly year - and an even uglier
period for Turkish politics. (Jan 9, '12)
Angels and inquisitors
A Point in Time by David Horowitz For a quarter of a
century, Horowitz has told unpleasant truths about the political left where he
spent the first half of his career before turning conservative some 30 years
ago. He surpasses himself in this new essay, though, by telling unpleasant
truths about the human condition. - David Goldman
(Dec 21, '11)
The fifth horseman of
the apocalypse
Past nations fell to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, plague, famine
and death. Today's more civilized world has a fifth: loss of faith. The world's
apathy is seen in plummeting fertility rates threatening population collapse,
most devastatingly in the Muslim world. This makes radical Islam more
dangerous, since nations are like people - on the brink of death they lose
rational self-interest. - Spengler (Dec 12,
'11)
Are Jews better off in Israel?
Israel's immigration ministry stopped running television ads exhorting Israelis
living in the United States to come home after American Jewish organizations
complained. American Jews should reconsider their umbrage. As indolence and
self-deception takes hold, Jews of all shadings in America are falling away,
failing to bring enough children in the world, and failing to raise them as
Jews, while Israelis run circles around their co-religionists.
(Dec 5, '11)
Blazing Saddles in Pakistan
Even before America found itself on the defensive after the air-strike deaths,
the Washington consensus was summed up by the need to keep Pakistan on side as
a "friend'' because of its nuclear capability. While Pakistan menaces the
United States with the prospect of its own failure, the simplest solution to
the problem of atomic weapons to frighten the Pakistani army into eliminating
terrorists who might use them. The second-best solution is to take the nuclear
weapons away. (Nov 28, '11)
It might not be an Asian
century after all
Demographics, resistance to democracy and complacency about its visible success
all risk taking the steam out of China's rising trajectory. If Beijing
erroneously concludes from the United States's financial crash that a command
economy is in its interests, and regards America as an enemy rather than as an
unthreatening rival, it will decline. The greatest challenge is not American
strength but American weakness. (Nov 21, '11)
The incredible lightheadedness
of being German
I Sleep in Hitler's Bed: An American Jew Visits Germany by Tuvia
Tenenbom
Tuvia Tenenbom comes off as a Jewish Hunter S Thompson, describing cringing
encounters in Germany that strip away the veneer of sanity from his subjects.
His peregrinations show that World War II and the Holocaust have left the
Germans with a terminal case of post-traumatic stress disorder and aspirations
for their national identity to be subsumed into Europe. To understand Germans,
one has to learn their language and live with them - or read Tenenbom's book. - Spengler
(Nov 15, '11)
What do we want from Wall
Street?
In the banking world after the 2008 financial Armageddon, exotic securities are
extinct, proprietary trading is a shadow of its former self. While weakened
managers won't take on risk or lend, that is what is needed to promote economic
growth. Investors too need to size up what may lurk on bank balance sheets.
Transparency and a fix of the broken system of assessing credit risk could help
restore back-to-basics banking, and give the market the means to punish Wall
Street gamblers. (Nov 7, '11)
The economics of
polarization
America is engaged in a class war of survival between the productive middle
class and the dependents of the state. The middle classes are on the edge of
calamity, paying a crushing tax burden to foot generous pension and health
benefits to public sector employees who make up the backbone of the Democratic
Party. The economics of polarization favor the Republican Party in 2012, but
the fight will be desperate and nasty. (Oct 31, '11)
Is modern science
Biblical or Greek?
A red line can be drawn from the Hebrew Bible to the higher mathematics and
physics of the modern world, where it remains a force in science despite the
best efforts of rationalists and materialists to send it into exile. The Greeks
abhorred infinity, while the Hebrews wondered at the infinitude of creation and
human limitation. With due honor to the great achievements of the Greeks,
modernity began at Mount Sinai. (Oct 24, '11)
Are the generals stealing
Egypt?
In part because Egypt's military government fires officials who report bad
news, assessing the country's economic health is like staring into a black
hole. At first glance, the army doesn't want to tell itself the truth. But the
reality is probably far simpler: Actions such as firing the central bank's
outside directors clear the way for corruption on a grand scale.
(Oct 17, '11)
Never have so few been blamed
for so much by so many
The death of Coptic Christians at the hands of the Egyptian military can be
linked to Benjamin Netanyahu for building apartments in Jerusalem. And if 15
million Egyptians starve, Syria plunges into a genocidal civil war, Turkey
kills another 40,000 Kurds and Iraqi Shi'ites and Sunnis exterminate each
other, it's a given that Israel will also get it in the neck.
(Oct 11, '11)
Italy's future - a theme park
Historians have found that Roman tourists kept Sparta afloat half a millennium
after the civilization succumbed to demographic suicide, paying to watch the
last Spartans oil their hair, don red robes and play flutes until the 2nd
century CE. The same could be true of the Chinese and modern-day Italy.
However, Chinese visitors do not wish to merely gawk: they want to learn, buy,
and carry home the magic of Italy's most elegant manufacturers. - Spengler
(Oct 3, '11)
Cairo, Egypt and Cairo,
Illinois
Cairo, Egypt - the site of United States President Barack Obama's effusive
address to the Muslim world in 2009 - is becoming the world's epicenter of
despair. Echoes of misery inflict the poor in Cairo, Illinois, too as they sink
in an incipient welfare system that warehouses rather than prepares them for
productivity. While America's social safety net will remain in place, the
Egyptian poor and those in similar Arab cities are in urgent peril.
(Sep 19, '11)
Israel as the Dutch Republic
in the Thirty Years War
Without stretching the analogy, the conflict between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam in
the Middle East today has something in common with the Thirty Years War that
surrounded 17th-century Holland. Most Israelis seem to have adapted well to a
long-term war regime amid a sea of unrelenting misery, and seven months after
the start of the Arab uprisings, its position is a paradox, just like Holland's
before it emerged victorious from the European maelstrom.
(Sep 12, '11)
How the hijackers
changed American culture
There has been a six-fold increase in the total number of horror films released
since 1999. Starting on September 11, 2001, Americans were exposed to an enemy
that uses horror as a weapon. In its attempt to engage the countries whence the
terrorists issued, America has exposed its young people to cultures in which
acts of horror (suicide bombing, torture and mutilation) have become routine.
(Sep 7, '11)
Why you won't find the meaning
of life
The only thing worse than searching in vain for the meaning of life within the
terms of the 20th century is to find it. For those of you who still are
looking, the sooner you figure out that the search itself is the problem, the
better off you will be - you can't find immortality by seeking it.
(Aug 29, '11)
The winner economy and the loser
economy
It is confusing to speak of the overall performance of the United States
economy when some parts will languish for years if not decades and other parts
function perfectly well. America has become a dual economy - like China or
India - but the fact that larger American corporations have had a strong
rebound should reassure us that America is capable of a broader recovery.
(Aug 22, '11)
The people's Ponzi scheme
A proposed witch-hunt of American bankers for the 2009 crash would be a wicked
thing to do since the asset bubble that burst wasn't caused by "Wall Street
gamblers" - it was a Ponzi scheme by the people, of the people and for the
people. Bankers got wiped, while Main Street is now better off than before the
crash. (Aug 15, '11)
Instant obsolescence of the
Turkish model
Turkey's economic problems are dwarfed by the carnage in global markets, yet
the strategic importance of the currency route in a country hailed as a
template for democratic reform in the Middle East will become a major theme of
the slump to come. Turkey's economic growth differs little from the old Latin
American borrow-and-bully model. (Aug 9, '11)
End of the road for hedge
funds
The American government won't go bankrupt, China won't sell its holdings of US
Treasuries, and the world's Asian growth epicenter isn't going to roll over and
die. The bubble that has now been popped represents a liquidity event for the
overstretched and overpromised hedge fund industry, not a true crisis in the
mode of 2008. (Aug 8, '11)
The collapse of America's
middle class
Behind the budget debacle in the United States, the compromise reached in
Washington is of little comfort for the majority of Americans, as economic
fundamentals leave them out in the cold. The polarization of American politics
will only get worse, and a budget deal this week will delay, rather than
defuse, the crisis of American governance. (Aug 1,
'11)
A time to be silent and
mourn
Grief - wrenching, uncomprehending and mute grief - is the response that life
elicits to the appalling deaths of so many people in Norway, so many of them
children. Our silence and our tears in the face of repudiation of life bears
witness to life. (Jul 25, '11)
Memo to Tea Party: Obama wins
if you stir a crisis
Tea Party budget-cutters pushing for a debt-ceiling showdown have nothing to
gain by stirring a default as United States President Barack Obama could simply
engineer a deep but short-lived crisis and emerge as a national savior. A
better strategy is to keep the blame for budget failure on the socialist
occultist through to the 2012 election. (Jul 18,
'11)
Why we will be poorer
Rapidly aging populations in the developed world, Japan and Europe especially,
will place enormous demands on public pensions and health systems just as the
number of taxpayers to pay the bills shrinks. Citizens of industrial nations
have no choice but to accept lower returns on investment, reduced government
largesse, and a poorer existence. (Jul 14, '11)
When will Egypt go broke?
The demands of protesters back in Cairo's Tahrir Square are making headlines
again, but a less tractable and more important story is in the making over the
Egyptian government's increasing slim chance of avoiding financial meltdown.
The economy will most probably collapse before Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states
tire of paying all the bills. (Jul 11, '11)
DSK and the death of the
novel
That fiction has a hard time trumping reality has been recognized since The
Decline of the Novel was published in 1925. It is now in its death
throes, with thanks due to a satyriasis-afflicted French presidential hopeful,
a hotel maid of dubious repute and a district attorney so politically correct
that there is not enough cocaine in Hollywood to invent him.
(Jul 5, '11)
Poisoning the well of animal
welfare
The Dutch parliament votes this week on a bill to ban kosher slaughter on
supposed humane grounds. This flies in the face of a three millennia-long
Jewish regard for painless killing, and poisons the well from which the concept
of the sanctity of life is drawn. It would be bitter irony if the Netherlands
were to defy its history of religious tolerance in the specious pursuit of
animal welfare. (Jun 27, '11)
Zombinomics and volatility
The so-called American economic recovery won't die, because it's undead. It was
a zombie to begin with. And the actual volatility of US stock prices is
remarkably low for a declining market: the economy is stuck in the mud; it
can't go forward, but neither should it be expected to move very fast in
reverse. (Jun 13, '11)
Israel, Ireland and the peace
of the aging
A generation from now, the Palestinians will make peace with Israel, since the
stone-throwing kids of the First Intifada will be close to retirement age, and
the gun-toting young men of today will have families. Just like the Irish
before them, they will get tired of killing, and as the window for radical
Islam closes, that makes the present an exceptionally dangerous period.
(Jun 6, '11)
Humpty Obumpty and the Arab
Spring
Stupefying numbers on the oil-poor Arab economies from the International
Monetary Fund show that the egg has splattered on industrial nations' attempts
to get food aid - and all United States President Barack Obama's horses and men
can't mend it. Foreign aid can't fix an Egyptian economy in free-fall and the
borders of hungry nations are dissolving. (May 31,
'11)
Israel as Middle Eastern hegemon
If present trends continue, Israel will be able to field the largest land army
in the Middle East. That startling data point, though, should alert analysts to
a more relevant problem: among the military powers in the Middle East, Israel
will be the only one with a viable population structure by the middle of this
century. That is why it is in America's interest to keep Israel as an ally.
(May 23, '11)
The hunger to come in Egypt
At the rate it is going, Egypt will be broke by September while the chaotic
political situation threatens to disrupt food supplies. Street violence will
become the norm rather than the exception - all discussion about future
political models and its prospective relations with Israel will be overshadowed
by the country's inability to feed itself. (May 9,
'11)
Obama's hidden radical past
Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism,
by Stanley Kurtz
Detailed organizational charts, histories, and smoking-gun
documentation about the world of left-wing organizations in which Barack Obama
circulated early in his career make this book required reading for anyone who
wants to pierce the veil of a self-constructed enigma. It also shows the US
president is not the man he claimed to be in the 2008 campaign. - Spengler
(May 2, '11)
Osama a casualty of the Arab revolt
The Saudi royal family allowed some of its more radically-inclined members to
provide covert support to Osama bin Laden in return for al-Qaeda's de facto
agreement to leave the Arabian Peninsula in peace. This all changed with the
upheavals in the Middle East, as Riyadh looks for new allies, possibly
Pakistan. Bin Laden was crushed between the tectonic plates now shifting in the
Muslim world. (May 2, '11)
Israel the winner in the Arab
revolts
While President Bashar al-Assad may cling to power, Syria has disappeared as a
prospective player in peace negotiations and the unrest will undermine its
support of resistance movements in the Arab world, especially in Palestine and
Lebanon. More by accident than design, United States and Israeli dominance of
the region - imperiled by the changes in Egypt - will be restored.
(Apr 11, '11)
Why the Republicans can't
find a candidate
The ambitious 20-to-30-year-olds of the Reagan era have become the cramped and
fearful 50-to-60-year-olds of today's Tea Party as the United States has lost
its monopoly as the place for the entrepreneur to Asia. As long as Americans
remain wrong-footed as a people, the Republican Party will search in vain for a
charismatic candidate for next year's presidential elections.
(Apr 4, '11)
Food and Syria's failure
Syrian President Basher al-Assad's inability to contain unrest is a frightening
gauge of the magnitude of the shock of rising food prices. Hoarding by local
merchants has exposed the fecklessness of the regime. As the scramble for
individual advantage unfolds in Syria and the rest of the Arab world, US
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is right: existing political structures will not
hold. (Mar 28, '11)
The heart of Turkness
Talk about the "Turkish model" would seem less vapid if only the world could
make sense of what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is up to. His
impassioned Islamism responds to the danger that, with no other resources but a
graying population, European-style decline awaits. And since every attempt to
advance his agenda hits land mines, Erdogan's tone is steeped in desperation.
(Mar 23, '11)
 SPENGLER
The Internet bubble
in Middle East politics
What is true of the post-cultural apartment-and-cubicle dwellers of the United
States who live in a disembodied cyberworld applies in force to the Facebook
revolutionaries of Egypt. They are neither secular nor Muslim, neither modern
nor traditional, neither enlightened nor backward. They are stuck in a cultural
twilight zone and will do nothing more than furrow the mud of Egyptian society.
(Feb 15, '11)
Chinese weather on Tahrir Square
Egypt has no oil, insignificant industry, small amounts of natural gas, and 40
million people who are about to become very, very hungry. Without figuring out
how to feed the destitute bottom half of the Egyptian population, all talk of
political "models" is window-shopping. And if, after bad weather, China,
usually self-sufficient, is forced into the world market to buy millions of
tons of wheat, Egypt's problems will get a whole lot worse.
(Feb 9, '11)
Food and failed Arab states
China, not the United States or Israel, presents an existential threat to the
Arab world, and through no fault of its own: rising incomes have gentrified the
Asian diet and priced food staples out of the Arab budget. Whether the Egyptian
regime survives the current uprising or a new one replaces it, the outcome will
be a disaster of biblical proportions. The jump in food prices was the
wheat-stalk that broke the camel's back. (Feb 1,
'11)
Tunisia's lost generation
Whatever political improvisation might result from Tunisia's popular uprising,
it won't solve the real problem facing the country. After years of heavy
investment in education, Tunisia now teems with diploma mills churning out an
army of unemployed university graduates. At the same time, all this education
has reduced the fertility rate to below replacement levels.
(Jan 18, '11)
Sodomy and Sufism in Afgaynistan
Researchers from a US Marine battalion in southern Afghanistan have made a
disturbing discovery about Pashtun sexuality: that for the men, most of their
sexual contact is with males. The marine report blames cultural restrictions on
contact between men and women, but this ignores the broader role of
homosexuality in Islamic (and especially Sufi) culture. - Spengler
(Jan 10, '11)
Naked emperor and a conspiracy of
silence
While America's competitors stood transfixed as the emperor's garbs of global
dominance were stripped away, they likely found the extremities exposed -
prospects of new wars in the Middle East, a freewheeling North Korea and a
nuclear-armed Iran - an ugly sight. Never in the course of strategic events
have so few done so much damage to so many. (Dec 22,
'10)
Longevity gives life to Tea Party
America's Tea Party helped shift the political balance in the United States and
it would be incautious - even as a slapdash agglomeration of amateurs - to view
it as a passing expression of voter frustration. Demographics and rational
interest will make it an even stronger force as time passes.
(Dec 6, '10)
The lunatic who thinks he's Barack
Obama
Between the lines of revelations in the 250,000 diplomatic cables released by
WikiLeaks is proof that Barack Obama's approach of "engaging" Iran and coddling
Pakistan is failing badly. Obsessively pursuing a more multipolar world, the US
president has shown an almost delusional neglect of Tehran's nuclear ambitions
and Islamabad's dalliance with terrorism. - Spengler
(Nov 29, '10)
Why not call it a 'Petraeus
Village'?
The "surge" and truce that US General David Petraeus engineered in Iraq is now
crumbling as Iran inserts military proxies in the Baghdad government and Sunni
fighters he put on the US payroll defect. While this is blowing up in America's
face, Petraeus may yet share the fate of Grigory Potyomkin, whose name lives on
in the idiom for a facade constructed to deceive passing inspection.
(Oct 18, '10)
What really bugs Iran
The programmers who planted malware in Iran's nuclear facilities needed a high
degree of sophistication. It would require far less effort to bring about a
virtual shutdown of all computing in the country, and the collapse of the
economy. (Oct 12, '10)
Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior
That pinpricks like the threat delivered by Florida fringe preacher Terry Jones
to burn the Koran can produce chain reactions shows Islam's vulnerability to
theological war. Just for the sake of argument, suppose that instead of trying
to stabilize the Islamic world, one or two world powers set out to throw it
into chaos. Russia, for one, has urgent reasons to sow discord.
(Sep 13, '10)
BOOK REVIEW
Reason to pause
The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern
Islamist Crisis by Robert R Reilly
Objectively speaking, the answer to the question, "Are Muslims less rational
than Christians?," is a flat "no". The Jewish idea that the maker of heaven and
earth cares with his creatures and suffers along with them seemed idiotic to
the Greeks, and still seems idiotic to the vast majority of philosophers today.
The trouble is that we cannot speak objectively about human reason. - Spengler
(Aug 23, '10)
Why don't Americans like Muslims?
A recent poll shows a 70%-29% margin of opposition to plans to build an Islamic
center near Ground Zero in New York. This reflects another survey showing that
Americans have an "unfavorable" view of Islam by a margin of 53%-42%. What
Americans observe, in part as a result of exposure to the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, is that Islam has produced a large number of individuals enraged
enough to blow themselves up to kill Americans as well as each other.
(Aug 16, '10)
Murder on the Khyber Pass Express
Who covered up a scandalous arrangement known to everyone with a casual
acquaintance of the Afghan situation? WikiLeaks has added to the evidence that
Pakistan has been backing the Taliban, but the facts have long been clear, as
has the answer: everybody. Two US administrations, India, China and Iran - all
are terrified of facing a failed state with nuclear weapons. But at some point
the charade must end. (Jul 26, '10)
PIIGS to the slaughter
The next time European nations in the south-sweeping arc from Ireland to Greece
- aka PIIGS - sink under the weight of their debt, the Germans will not come to
the rescue. The hard-working northerners have other priorities, and other
friends, and aim to survive when a Latin American-style crisis breaks out in
the profligate south. (Jul 20, '10)
Sympathy for the Turkish devil
Conventional Western wisdom on Turkey is wrong, as usual. The modern Turkish
state was born in a bloodbath and much less distinguishes a failed state like
Kyrgyzstan from an apparently successful state such as Turkey than Westerners
think. America's blunders in Iraq gave Iran the chance to become a regional
hegemon, with whichTurkey must vie as a matter of self-preservation.
(Jun 28, '10)
ASK SPENGLER
The state we're in
Baffled from Belfast won the Nobel Peace Prize but can't get into Gaza, Anxious
in Ankara would like to rule the Muslim world, and Rattled in Ramallah feels
left out in the cold. What should they do? Head for Kyrgyzstan - and stay there
as long as possible. (Jun 14, '10)
Fethullah Gulen's cave of wonders
We are now in a post-American world, and Turkey, like its neighbors, is
scrambling for position - and it will take anything it can get. The Mavi Marmara
incident was crafted by Ankara as a piece of theater, preparing, with the help
of self-exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen, for the fulfillment of a mystic's
vision of Ottoman restoration and a pan-Turkic caliphate.
(Jun 8, '10)
HIGH JINKS ON THE HIGH SEAS
The Israeli raid on a ship heading for Gaza has drawn international
condemnation, yet in Israel the attackers are being spun not only as heroes,
but as victims, writes Pepe Escobar, who argues the incident also leaves
United States President Barack Obama emasculated. Spengler writes the
flotilla caper should teach Israel that no matter how gingerly it approaches
the threats on its borders, it ends up holding the bag for the region's
problems and that it might as well get down to the business of war.
(Jun 1, '10)
No Israeli good deed goes
unpunished - Spengler
Whipping boys and spanked wives
ATol presents two diametrically opposed points of view on the collision between
the West and Islam, as encapsulated by concepts of law and justice. Spengler
focuses on wife-beating to illustrate the fundamental incompatibility of sharia
and Western law, while Stephan Salisbury discusses how Western justice is far
from blind when it comes to America's Muslim citizens.
(May 24, '10)
Wife-beating, sharia, and Western
law - Spengler
Muslim-beating in the 'righteous'
US
Ignore that Keynes behind the
curtain
Few forecasters expected the Greek debt problem to threaten the world financial
system, yet it has. And yet again, governments will claim to have "fixed" the
problem and halted the rot. Perhaps the fix will hold for a while, or maybe the
panic will spread. Either way, the markets now recognize such Keynesian
short-term fixes are no solution to deep-rooted problems.
(May 10, '10)
General Petraeus' Thirty Years War
After creating an American-financed militia in Iraq and doing the same in
Afghanistan and Palestine, General David Petraeus, head of the US Central
Command, is leading a grand withdrawal that leaves behind men with weapons and
excellent reason to use them. Disastrous field-marshalling in Europe's Thirty
Years War notwithstanding, the "divide and disappear" strategy is perhaps the
silliest thing an imperial power ever has done. (May
2, '10)
Post-Apocalyptic zombie finance
The whole world is bailing out the US government by purchasing US debt - with
money lent by America. While such zombie financing persisted for two decades in
Japan, the US arrangement is weakening the reserve status of the dollar, the
very foundation on which it depends. The situation is so absurd and unstable
that the list of potential points of failure is endless. - Splengler
(Mar 22, '10)
Obama in more trouble
than Netanyahu over Iran
If the Barack Obama administration attempts to punish Israel for doing what
American public opinion seems to favor - striking Iran's nuclear program - then
Obama is likely to pay the political price. The US administration is hamstrung
by the investment it made in rapprochement with Tehran, which it hoped would
become the pillar on which American regional policy would rest.
(Mar 15, '10)
The case for an Israeli strike
against Iran
Rather than focus on Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons, more
pressing for Israel is the weakening of its main ally, financier and arms
supplier - the United States. Israel must now decide whether to act as a US
client state, or establish itself as a regional superpower. The latter could be
achieved by attacking Iran. (Feb 17, '10)
Profits, not principals, move
the age
What brought United States and other Western banks down was not speculative
bets in volatile markets but the necessary pursuit of profit in what appeared
to be ultra-safe investments. The sources of the crisis remain unchanged: the
industrial world's need to fund the greatest retirement wave in history.
(Feb 1, '10)
Is America a failed state?
When America came to the end of decades of wealth creation, the electorate
thought a Barack Obama presidency might reverse the coming tide of misery. The
tens of millions facing unemployment and poverty now realize that the cure will
take years, not months, to take effect. Republicans, meanwhile, should be
careful what they wish for - right now, voters will pounce on whichever party
is unlucky enough to be in power. (Jan 19, '10)
A Commedia for our times
The France Telecom suicide wave is one of the iconic events of 2009, the
sociological quirk that sets in relief the mortal flaw in the Western
character. Dante notwithstanding, Lust is the least of the problems in
21st-century Europe. The insatiable predator is Sloth.
(Jan 4, '10)
Life and premature death of Pax
Obamicana
The apparent fecklessness of the president of the United States reflects the
gravity of the strategic problems in Central and South Asia. Those who wanted
an end to US hegemony will get what they wished for. But they won't like it.
(Dec 23, '09)
Bah, humbug and labor statistics
The latest United States jobless figures supposedly reflect an economic
recovery. Yet the continuing movement of prospective workers away from the
labor force is only part of the more revealing and worrying story.
(Dec 7, '09)
When the cat's away ...
With the cat in semi-retirement, the mice are not only playing, but growing to
cat-like stature. From Iran, Turkey, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Russia, the Barack Obama administration so far has shown no action except
lockjaw; the great decisions of the world are being taken outside Washington.
(Nov 23, '09)
Europe's tragedy, and Europe's
tragedian
The 250th anniversary of the birth of German poet, philosopher, historian and
playwright Friedrich Schiller passed last week with less attention than it
deserved. Schiller understood European history not as the shift of power from
obscurantist Catholicism to enlightened Protestantism, but rather as the
death-tragedy of Catholicism and of Europe itself. (Nov
16, '09)
The idiot twins of American idealism
It is mad to believe, as the George W Bush administration did, that
the United States can remake the world in its own image. It is even madder to
turn foreign policy into an affirmative action program for disadvantaged or
dying cultures. In such lean times, Washington's "realists" do not seem focused
on what should be a core interest, fostering viable partners for the future and
jettisoning those that are beyond viability. (Nov 2,
'09)
When the cat's away, the mice
kill each other
It is most astonishing that official Washington seems oblivious to the crack-up
of American influence occurring in front of its eyes. Without America to
mediate and restrain, each of the small powers in the Middle East has no choice
but to test its strength against the others. Those who wish to reduce American
power may get what they wish for, but they might not like it.
(Oct 19, '09)
Obama cocktail makes a permanent
depression
The toxic cocktail of fiscal stimulus combined with near-zero interest rates in
the United States allows financial institutions to profit while further
depressing the productive economy. The resulting deteriorating jobs market is
now instilling panic in Barack Obama's White House. The parallels with Japan in
1989 are uncanny. Japan, though, had one advantage: it knew how to export. - Spengler
(Oct 5, '09)
Gold a hedge and no more - yet
Gold's re-emergence above US$1,000 indicates neither the early demise of the
United States nor of its currency. The world is stuck with the US - and wants
to be stuck with it, while even an indifferently managed reserve currency with
a broad capital market behind it is better than gold.
(Sep 14, '09)
Palestine problem hopeless,
but not serious
United Sates President Barack Obama has called the situation for Palestinians
"intolerable". But compared to what? And why haven't they moved to other Arab
countries if things are so bad? What the West needs to do is cut support to the
Palestinians to lower their quality of life as an incentive for emigration.
(Aug 17, '09)
Blame Michael Jackson
His body lies in the grave, but Michael Jackson's adolescent soul goes dancing
on. America's obsession with perpetual youth remains and this Peter Pan
syndrome will continue to afflict US culture. Baby boomers spent money on toys
rather than saving for the retirement that's now rushing at them like an
express train. - Spengler (Jul 13,'09)
Obama creates a deadly power vacuum
President Barack Obama has not betrayed the interests of the United States to
any foreign power, but he has done the next worst thing, namely, to create a
void by withdrawing American power. By removing America as a referee, he will
provoke more violence than the United States ever did. A very, very dangerous
period is about to begin, and it could start with Iran.
(Jun 29,'09)
Hedgehogs and flamingos in Tehran
The handling of election results exposes the weakness of Iran's strategic
position. That makes an Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities all the
more likely - not because Tehran has shown greater militancy, but because it
has committed the one sin that is never pardoned in the Middle East -
vulnerability. (Jun 15,'09)
Obama should do Muslim speech in
India
By addressing the "Islamic world" from Cairo, US President
Barack Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other
advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and
on religious terms. For an American president to validate such an aspiration is
madness, and also undermines Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his home
ground. There is a way to fix the situation: move the venue to New Delhi.
(Jun 1,'09)
Dolphinplasty as a principle
of governance
Setting out the parameters of a market, a bank, a state or a marriage does not
mean they have any more claim on reality than, say, a carefully defined
phoenix. Years of experience, natural capacity and sense of sanctity give
existence to such things. Absent these, the substitutes for reality will blow
up in our face. (May 18,'09)
Why the West is Boyle'd
The day is gone when a smile and a shoeshine will get you a shot at the
American dream, but a smile and a song can still get you a chance at instant
stardom. Now, more than ever, audiences in the West validate their own
mediocrity by crowning stars-for-a-day. That is the message of hope that Susan
Boyle bears to the beleaguered Anglo-Saxon world. Meanwhile, in China, 60
million children are learning music the hard way. (Apr
20,'09)
And Spengler is ...
For the past 10 years, Asia Times Online has guarded the secret of Spengler's
identity zealously. Now, the columnist whose interests range from the banking
crises to Biblical exegesis steps out of the shadows with an autobiographical
essay revealing who he is, why he writes, and why he chose his pseudonym.
(Apr 17,'09)
The gods are stupid
We flatter ourselves that our idols are clever because they are not made out of
wood, but silicon, for example, the universally worshiped god "Google", the new
omniscient deity whose Mercury now is called "Gmail". The trouble is that
Google is stupid for taking everything literally. Literal language is a
failure, and that is why mankind communicates through metaphor. Try telling
jokes to your computer, and see if it laughs. (Mar
30,'09)
BOOK REVIEW
This almost-chosen,
almost-pregnant land
American Babylon by Richard John Neuhaus
America is "a country with the soul of a church", as author G K Chesterton
wrote, and by no accident, it is the only industrial nation (apart from Israel)
in which religion plays a decisive role in public life. The central role of
religion continues to polarize Americans and confuse foreign observers.
(Mar 16,'09)
Obama and his magic lamp
President Barack Obama was expected to adjust United States foreign policy to
the constraints of rising foreign debt and existing entanglements. Instead,
Obama has strode forth with a magic lamp in hand, namely the US's bottomless
capacity to borrow. Struggling countries - such as Turkey - will smile and nod
and take American checks, at least for the moment, while there still are
functioning governments to take American checks. (Mar
9,'09)
Sex, drugs and Islam
Recent studies have documented an explosion of social pathologies in Iran, such
as drug addiction and prostitution, on a scale much worse than anything
experienced in the West. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it appears that
Islamic theocracy promotes rather than represses social decay. Iran may be
fighting for its life. (Feb 23,'09)
Obama, an economic unilateralist
Claims that the financial crisis will dethrone the United States as the
dominant world superpower are merely silly. The crisis strengthens the relative
position of the US and exposes the far graver weaknesses of all prospective
competitors, China included. It also positions President Barack Obama as a
unilateralist president far beyond Ronald Reagan's dream.
(Feb 17,'09)
Benedict's tragedy, and Israel's
Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor John Paul II, has fought manfully
against prospective deserters within his ranks. The tawdry burlesque over
Benedict's decision to rescind the excommunications of the paranoid Jew-hater
and Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson is a sad gauge of his degree of
success. (Feb 9,'09)
Who are the 'extraordinary'
Muslims?
Most Muslims want to better their lives, as United States President Barack
Obama told an Arabic television channel last week, but their lives are getting
worse rather than better, and nothing they know can make things better. In
theory, there might be a future in which the Islamic world could live in peace
and prosperity, but today's Muslims cannot get there from here.
(Feb 2,'09)
Save less, breed more
As always, the inimitable Spengler has gone through his in-box in singular
style. This time he's got slices of sagacity for the leader of the world's
most-populous nation, the new president of a superpower struggling to
jump-start a sputtering economy in time for re-election, and a controversial
defense minister caught between national safety and international opinion.
(Feb 2,'09)
President Oxybarama
The inaugural address of President Barack Obama contained so many nods in so
many directions that the compass needle was sent spinning. Oxymorons abounded
because, in Obama's struggle to hold together so many disparate elements,
incompatibility popped to the surface. Now we fear at every moment that the new
president may be pulled apart. (Jan 21,'09)
Absolute power gets blamed
absolutely
Since Barack Obama, now still adored and still unknown, was elected to be
United States president, the S&P 500 index has lost 17% of its value, after
absorbing Obama's proposed cabinet and hearing the gist of his economic
stimulus plan. That can't be blamed on George W Bush as he leaves the
presidency. It counts as the "Obama crash". (Jan
20,'09)
What Obama knows, America forgot
Whether president-elect Barack Obama is a Western sentimentalist or a Third
World anthropologist who has talked his way into the leadership of the United
States is unclear. Confronted with multiple crises that threaten the power of
the US, this clever Luo from Hawaii by way of Indonesia may defend his
prerogatives more ferociously than anyone expects. (Jan
12,'09)
Suicide by Israel
What do you do when a group of people would rather die on their feet than live
on their knees? Hamas was formed to prevent a permanent Jewish presence in its
historic land, and now it has provoked war with Israel. As in any war, economic
pressure and military operations that kill civilians as collateral damage are
legitimate instruments. It is hypocrisy to pretend otherwise.
(Jan 7,'09)
Overcoming ethnicity
The decisive divide in today's world lies between nations that
have a future, and nations that do not. Samuel Huntington, who died last
December 27, reintroduced this radically tragic dimension into geopolitics, but
statesmen have yet to embrace it. The great question that Huntington left open
is why some civilizations are condemned to clash. (Jan
5,'09)
Waking from Lever-Lever Land
The financial crisis has been a wake-up moment for America's Peter Pan
generation as baby-boomers discover that fairy dust no longer entitles them to
fly. Now they are struggling to put something aside for a retirement that they
never may be able to afford. Harnessing the productivity of the world's young
people is the challenge for next year and the next decade.
(Dec 24,'08)
The devil and Bernard Madoff
Bernard Madoff's fleecing of the rich and famous in his apparent US$50 billion
swindle, along with supposedly savvy investment firms, exposes America's elite
as feckless incompetents who could not spot the wolf within their own
sheepfold. (Dec 18,'08)
The failed Muslims states to come
Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis
is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and
especially so for the most populous ones. From Pakistan to Indonesia, and not
excluding Saudi Arabia, the likelihood of states failing along the lines of
Somalia are increasing. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage.
(Dec 15,'08)
Benedict XVI is magnificently
right
Pope Benedict XVI argued when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger that an
unethical economy will destroy itself, and that economics cannot determine
whether any activity is ethical or not. If the present economic crisis helps
the West to reflect on its moral weakness, the cost well may be worth it.
(Dec 8,'08)
China’s six-to-one advantage over the US
With 36 million Chinese children studying piano, compared to just 6 million in
the United States, China is set to form an intellectual elite of unrivalled
proportions. By mastering the most elevated and characteristically Western
forms of high culture, China is proving that great empires can transcend their
roots to become originators rather than imitators. Anyone who doubts this
probably doesn't get Mozart's jokes either. (Dec
1,'08)
Obama's one-trick wizards
President-elect Barack Obama's prospective cabinet is being packed with bankers
who fouled their own nests and then secured bailouts from the US taxpayer. Now
they will be allowed to play with the federal government budget for the next
four years. If these one-trick leverage wizards are the best and the brightest
of 2008, America is in very deep trouble. (Nov
24,'08)
Scandal exposes Islam's weakness
In an odd little byway of academia, Professor Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a German
convert to Islam who teaches Muslim theology, has laid a Gnostic egg in the
nest of Islam by declaring that the Prophet Mohammed never existed, at least
not as Islamic tradition claims he did. It is another crack in the edifice of
Islam, but a most dangerous one, because it came from the inside.
(Nov 17,'08)
A Pyrrhic propaganda victory in
Rome?
After the fall of communism, the world's greatest barrier to freedom has been
the absence of religious liberty in the Muslim world. With this in mind, free
people everywhere took a profound interest in the outcome of Pope Benedict
XVI's encounter last week with Muslim scholars. The result may appear to be a
propaganda victory for the Muslims, but such pronouncements can be misleading.
(Nov 11,'08)
Lesson redux
When Rudyard Kipling set out to excoriate Britain's imperial entanglement in
South Africa, no one listened. As his biographers point out, he never lived to
say, "I told you so." If America's costly and tragic international adventures
could conjure Kipling from the grave, it would be interesting to hear his
thoughts, given perhaps to the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt.
(Nov 3,'08)
The world isn't flat, but
flattened
The financial crash has exposed the fragility of large swaths of the world, and
the political consequences will be terrible. Those who objected to America's
role as world policeman will get what they wanted, but they won't like it: a
religious war reaching from Lebanon to Pakistan, and a Colombian-style
narco-war spreading to Mexico and Brazil. Worse scenarios may affect the most
populous Muslim countries, and Russia's "near abroad". There will be no
winners. (Oct 27,'08)
Sharansky's mistaken identity
We must belong to cultures and nations, author Natan Sharansky asserts, rather
than to the insipid soup of global citizenship. The trouble is that some
identities are hostile to other identities by nature. From Ireland to
Afghanistan, for example, the identities of all tribes and nations have become
a response to Israel. (Oct 20,'08)
Gambling, growth and imagination
Paul Krugman this week won the Nobel Prize in economics for his "analysis of
trade patterns and location of economic activity". Reuven Brenner would have
been a more deserving winner. Rather than put bells and whistles on the
conventional economic model - now in cataclysmic breakdown - Brenner yanks
economics inside-out by placing risky behavior at its center.
(Oct 14, '08)
Hockey moms and capital markets
Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, derided outside
the United States as a mere country bumpkin unfit for higher office,
personifies why Asian investors continue to pour money into the US, even as its
financial sector nears breakdown. (Oct 6, '08)
Truth, lies and ticker tape
The world will not end if the US Congress refuses to pass a redrawn financial
sector bailout plan. Unfortunately, nor will it be the end of America's
financier caste, which will live to fleece another day. But when you hear that
there is no choice but a bailout, remember: it just ain't so.
(Oct 1, '08)
US wealth in shrink mode
Leverage is the secret of American wealth, helping to triple over the past 40
years the proportion of wealth held by the average US family compared with its
annual income. With leveraging now broken, the bottom could be a long way down.
(Sep 29, '08)
E pluribus hokum or
When the gamblers bail out the casino
Americans are taxing themselves, hugely, to keep the US financial casino
running, even though it will not profit them. Why does the government not,
instead, let the Chinese, or the Saudis, take control of failed US banks?
Where, in fact, is the leader who will drive out the American oligarchs who
have stolen the country's treasure? (Sep 22, '08)
Lehman and the end of the era of
leverage
The failure of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns does not reflect the breakdown
of a particular kind of corporate culture. What took both firms down, rather,
is a sudden break in the chain of expectations between the present and the
future. Today’s savers no longer have any confidence that they will earn enough
to fund their retirements by putting money at risk. And so the Great Crash of
2008 enters a new phase. (Sep 15, '08)
A comedy of areas
If the late, great US stand-up comedian George Carlin were still with us and
offering insights on world affairs, he might be mightily amused that two of
Washington's beacons of liberty - Georgia and Ukraine - won't even exist in the
not-so-distant future. Not everyone is going to make it, Carlin always said,
and that goes for desert countries with no food and former Soviet republics
where there aren't any babies. (Sep 9,'08)
How Obama lost the election
Democratic candidate Barack Obama may spend the rest of his life wondering why
he rejected Senator Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential pick and lost a
surefire path to victory. As Obama marches to defeat, John McCain has made the
masterful choice of an Alaskan amazon with a steelworker spouse.
(Sep 2, '08)
The lady doth protest too little
The Democratic Party presented a sunny and smiling Michelle Obama for the
keynote slot of its national convention on Monday night - the first time any
candidate's wife has had that honor. The break in precedent will
help her overcome her image problem if she can maintain her sangfroid in
front of a hostile press corps. (Aug 26, '08)
Americans play Monopoly, Russians
chess
The Americans play chess for career and perceived advantage. Russia is playing
for its life, literally, as it has passed the point of no return in terms of
fertility - it is a dying population. This demographic predicament stands at
the center of Moscow's calculations in "accumulating" the millions of ethnic
Russians scattered in its near abroad. After Georgia, Ukraine is next.
(Aug 18, '08)
Putin for US president - more than
ever
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's swift and decisive action in Georgia reflects
precisely the sort of decisiveness that America requires. For the United
States, apart from a bad case of cream pie on the face, it has lost nothing -
Georgia never should have been an ally in the first place.
(Aug 12, '08)
Sufism, sodomy and Satan
Sufism seeks one-ness with the universe through
spiritual exercises that lead individual consciousness to dissolve into the
cosmos. But nothing is more narcissistic than the contemplation of the cosmos,
for if we become one with the cosmos, what we love in the cosmos is simply an
idealized image of ourselves. An idealized self-image is also what attracts the
aging lecher to the adolescent boy. (Aug 11, '08)
Israeli pre-emption better
than Islamist cure
The critical mass of three Islamist states - Iran, Turkey and
Pakistan - threatens to create an upheaval that can be contained only by wars
of attrition. The outlook is grim, not least because the US State Department is
repeating in Turkey the errors that helped bring Islamist governments to power
in Iran and Pakistan. Israel is the only player with the perspicacity and power
to stop the slide towards regional war. (Aug 4, '08)
Why do nations exist?
The sovereign nation-state as defined by ethnicity and language might be a
flawed experiment, Spengler speculates after studying new books by noted
thinkers Jean Bethke Elshtain and Wayne Cristaudo. Perhaps the future of the
world lies in the supra-ethnic state, represented in quite different ways by
the United States, China and India. (Jul 28, '08)
Turkey in the throes of Islamic
revolution?
A perfect storm of enmity has come down on beleaguered Turkish secularists,
leading to speculation that an Islamic putsch is possible, after the fashion of
the 1979 revolution in Iran. The United States views this Islamic drift
favorably, seeing Turkey as a leader of a regional bloc with the short-term aim
of calming Iraq and a longer-term objective of fostering a Sunni alliance
against Iran. This is a big mistake. (Jul 21, '08)
Midnight in the kindergarten
of good and evil
The invention of gadgets that show us which neurons light up when we think
happy thoughts has convinced some secular thinkers that they have found the
solution to a problem unsolved by thousands of years of philosophical
speculation. (Jul 14, '08)
America's special grace
To much of the world, America is the source of the plague of globalization, the
bane of the environment and the perpetrator of imperial adventures. To hundreds
of millions of others it is an object of special grace - as in the grace by
which God redeems, sanctifies and glorifies his people. Whether one subscribes
to the concept or not, America is one of world's great dividing lines, perhaps
its most important. (Jul 7, '08)
How to stop the Great Crash of
'08
The United States can still break out of its economic death spiral. Tax changes
and higher interest rates are a start. And let overseas funds buy American
banks. While investors are waiting for that to happen - it won't - they would
do best to sit back and watch the horrors unfold. (Jun
30, '08)
Worst of times for Iran
Despite a surge in oil revenues, Iran's Islamic kleptocracy has pushed
conditions in the country to the point of Dickensian poverty. The prices of
ordinary goods are soaring out of people's reach, property values in Tehran are
equal to those of Paris, and prostitutes and profiteers are everywhere. Not
only the theft of the oil windfall, but the manner of the heft, is making
President Mahmud Adhmadinejad's tenure the worst of times for Iran.
(Jun 23, '08)
The pope, the president and
politics of faith
As incongruous as it may appear, Pope Benedict XVI and US President George W
Bush are kindred spirits. Despite his position on Iraq, Benedict's critics
within the church regard him as a warrior as dangerous as the US president.
Bush denounces "Islamo-facism", while Muslims suspect the pope wants to convert
them, a threat they never have had to confront in Islam's 1,500-year history.
(Jun 16, '08)
The day the slacker died
Like the feckless Kung Fu Panda, America's youth think slacking is an
entitlement and that in two easy lessons they will be masters of the universe.
Sorry, dudes, things changed last Friday. Instead of a four-year party at
university, you will work during the day, go to night school, and save for a
dozen years to buy your first house. You will not complain about boring jobs
and oppressive bosses, you will feel grateful to have the work - as will your
parents, who will have to postpone retirement for 10 years.
(Jun 9, '08)
Tin-opener theology from
Turkey
There has been much praise for Turkey's so-called Islamic reformation, a
government-mandated move to modernize the faith and "fashion a new Islam". Too
bad it's all just a tempest in an ibrik and a triumph of hope over
fact-checking. (Jun 2, '08)
BOOK REVIEW
Life
and death in the Bible
The power of God for Christians and Jews by Kevin
J Madigan and Jon D Levenson
Theology should reclaim its lost throne as queen of the sciences because it is
a guide to the issues that decide the life and death of nations. In this
splendid book, the authors have done an enormous service to their own and to
many other disciplines by clarifying the Biblical understanding of life and
death. (May 27, '08)
The
monster and the sausages
Call it the missing "link" in deciphering German President Horst Koehler's
denouncement of the world financial market as a monster for making "massive
leveraged investments with minimal capital". Think of a sausage: the gross
parts of a pig are ground into an appetizing package. Just don't blame the
sausage-maker, Koehler, when it is time for financial heartburn.
(May 19, '08)
Why Israel is the
world's happiest country
At the 60th anniversary of its founding, it could be said that
Israel is the happiest nation on Earth. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and
best-educated; and it enjoys high fertility and life expectancy rates. The
light heart of the Israelis in face of continuous danger is a singularity
worthy of a closer look. (May 12, '08)
The
heart has its own unreason
In one of the weirder acts of recent diplomacy, a delegation of
robed and turbaned Iranian mullahs went to Rome to declare with due solemnity
they shared the pope's view that reason and faith are compatible. The eventual
outcome of the meeting will not be decided by the Iranian clergy or the Holy
See, but by people such as journalist Magdi Allam, who converted from Islam to
Catholicism. (May 5, '08)
Rice, death and the
dollar
For developing countries whose currencies track the US dollar and whose
purchasing power declines along with the American unit, catastrophe looms. So
China, for example, is exchanging its depreciating reserves of the greenback
for things of value, notably rice, with frightening consequences for dependent
countries and deadly consequences for American foreign policy.
(Apr 21, '08)
Ehud Olmert on the Damascus road
Guerilla movements require arms, money and intelligence from sympathetic
states. Hamas and Hezbollah would represent no threat to Israel without the
backing of Syria and Iran. Military and political logic requires Israel to
attack their sponsors, rather than their militants embedded among civilians.
Iran is hard to reach, but Syria is a sitting duck. (Apr
14, '08)
Horror and humiliation in
Chicago
There is an uncanny parallel between young African-Americans of today and
the young white men of the slave-holding South in 1865. The appalling numbers
of violent deaths and suffering among both groups have spawned two genres
of American pop culture, which both try to turn the dead into folk-heroes. But
this is unfortunate, for America has a great deal of killing still to do
around the world, and might as well get used to it. (Apr
7, '08)
The mustard seed in
global strategy
With Pope Benedict's baptism of Magdi Allam, a prominent Muslim-born journalist
who converted to Catholicism during Easter services, the global agenda is
changed through the soul of a single man. Since September 2001, the would-be
wizards of Western strategy have tried to conjure variations of Islamic
"reform" or "democracy". None of this matters now, for as Magdi Allam tells us,
the matter is not to persuade Muslims to act like liberal Westerners, but to
convince them to cease to be Muslims. (Mar 25, '08)
The peculiar theology of
black liberation
US presidential nominee candidate Barack Obama belongs to a Christian church
whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the
chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity
than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.
(Mar 21, '08)
Should
Islam be blamed for 'barbaric' acts?
The issue of Muslim "barbarism", including honor killings, genital mutilation
and other forms of violence against women, has risen in prominence in Europe 's
political agenda. The question appears to be: Do Muslims commit barbaric acts
because they are bad Muslims or because they are good Muslims?
(Mar 10, '08)
Sing, o muse, the wrath of
Michelle
The release of Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis from Princeton has
revealed more about the woman who could be America's First Lady. Complete with
rage and guilt it is, among many things, a poignant cry from the heart of a
young black woman from a working-class Chicago home. It also furthers the
supposition that her wrath could keep her husband from the White House.
(Mar 3, '08)
Obama's women reveal his secret
The public knows less about Barack Obama than any other presidential hopeful in
American history. His career bears no trace of his character, and he
increasingly appears to be an empty vessel filled with the wishful thinking of
those around him. But there is a real Barack Obama - a man shaped by the
imprint of an impassioned mother, and the influence of a brilliant wife.
Ultimately, the probable next president is a mother's revenge against the
America she despised. (Feb 25, '08)
Blessed are
the pre-emptors
Geert Wilders is drawing violent jihadists out of the tall grass with his movie
denouncing the Koran. Along with courageous author Ayaan Hirsi Ali he also
further exposes the moral bankruptcy of European governments that refuse to
learn the lesson of John Brown - the importance of pre-emptive action against
those who contest legitimate governments' monopoly of violence.
(Feb 19, '08)
Europe in the house of
war
Not since World War II has British opinion been as outraged as it is over the
Archbishop of Canterbury's prediction that Muslim sharia law will eventually by
accepted in Great Britain. Rowan Williams' exercise in what might be termed the
Higher Hypocrisy shows how deeply Europe has descended into all that lies
outside the "house of submission". (Feb 11, '08)
Yes, Romney,
there's a Sanity Clause
Despite his recent reminder that America's constitution prohibits a religious
test, voters have every right to question the former Massachusetts governor's
Mormon faith. Sure, Romney should be judged on his own merits, not on the
dubious history of his church, but does he believe that he himself will become
God, as Mormon doctrine preaches? (Feb 4, '08)
Obama bin
lottery
Senator Barak Obama's thumping win in the South Carolina primary may
prove to be a turning point in modern American politics. Is it a coincidence it
occurred in the same week that financial markets showed their craziest
gyrations since World War II? Comparisons with Ronald Reagan abound, but if the
Gipper offered "voodoo economics", Obama is pitching its Cargo Cult cousin.
(Jan 28, '08)
Indiana Jones
meets The Da Vinci Code
An archive of ancient Islamic manuscripts thought destroyed by British bombing
in 1944 has resurfaced, and scholars suspect it will confirm evidence unearthed
25 years ago in Yemen that the Koran circulated in several versions. It's
dizzying stuff: crafty academics, ancient relics, religious leaders and Nazis.
It also poses existential questions for Islam.
(Jan 14, '08)
Putin for president ... of the
United States
Forget Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. There's still time to amend the
constitution, naturalize him as a citizen and elect the only sensible choice
for the next US president - Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He has restored
Russia's battered economy and global stature and he used a divide-and-conquer
strategy to subdue Chechnya. His ruthless means are worthy of Cardinal
Richelieu and the US could do a lot worse. (Jan 7,
'08)
At the Creation and at the manger
'Tis the season for children around the world to dress up as oxen, sheep and
donkeys to take part in Christmas pageants. But what of the real animals that
apocryphally adored the Christ child, and the correct intuition that placed
them at the manger? And what is it that makes us different from those animals?
(Dec 21, '07)
Iran: The wrong options on the
table
The neo-conservatives "idealists" in the US had an easy
, neat and plausible solution to the Middle East in the form of exporting
democracy to the region. They were wrong. Similarly, the "realists", who,
judging by the recent intelligence estimate on Iran, are in the ascendancy in
the Bush administration, have a neat and easy solution - balance of power and
deterrence. They are also wrong. There will not be a happy ending.
(Dec 10, '07)
Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam
Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of several high-profile such people to
have gravitated towards atheism. She is unequivocal that the West is - or
should be - at war with Islam. The reasons she has chosen atheism are less
clear, but, contrary to superficial impressions, Islam is much closer in
character to atheism than to Christianity or Judaism.
(Dec 3, '07)
BOOK REVIEW
Non compus POTUS
Shadow Warriors by Kenneth R Timmerman Intelligence is an
adjunct of war-fighting; it cannot compensate for a failed plan. Former US
president Ronald Reagan won the intelligence war against the Soviet Union,
while George W Bush is losing in the Middle East, because Reagan's overall war
strategy was successful, while the Bush strategy is flawed. Instead of finding
demons in the US intelligence world to blame for Bush's failure, author
Timmerman would do better to study some basic precepts of logic.
(Nov 26, '07)
Israel, the hope of the
Muslim world
The state of Israel embodies the last, best chance for the
Islamic world to come to terms with the modern world, precisely because it
constitutes a humiliation to Muslims. (Nov 19, '07)
Why Iran is dying for a
fight
Iran's declining fertility rate is likely to usher in a new era of stability,
argues Prof Philip Jenkins. It does not seem to have occurred to him that
things which make peace inevitable in the long run may propel countries into
war in the short run. (Nov 12, '07)
BOOK REVIEW
Inside story of the Western mind
Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians by Fergus Kerr
America's "war on terror" proceeds from a political philosophy that treats
radical Islam as if it were a political movement - "Islamo-fascism" - rather
than a truly religious response to the West. Few Western leaders comprehend
this, and by default, the only effective leader of the West, the man who has
drawn the line in the sand, is Pope Benedict XVI. For those who are concerned
about the West's future, this book is a godsend. (Nov
5, '07)
When you can't deal with
the devil
The West has no choice but to attack Iran, as the last chance
of making a deal with the devil has passed. It would have been better to have
attacked a year ago, as now it will be a case of war with Iran on the worst
terms. All President George W Bush can hope to do is to make it considerably
worse for others than for the United States. (Oct
29, '07)
Why does Turkey hate
America?
Washington's misguided promotion of Turkey as a model of
"moderate Islam" has enraged both the Islamist camp and the secular Kemalists.
Likewise, the spectacle of Washington trying to squelch a US congressional
resolution on the Armenian genocide points up fundamental failings in US
foreign policy, the stupidity of which is in large measure responsible for a
looming catastrophe. (Oct 22, '07)
Turkey fears Kurds, not
Armenians
“We did not exterminate the Armenians,” Ankara says in effect, “and, by the
way, we’re going to not exterminate the Kurds, too.” Turkey’s threat to invade
northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels is linked to its outrage over a US
Congressional resolution recognizing that Turkey committed genocide against its
Armenian population in 1915. Why the Turks should take out their rancour at the
US on the Kurds might seem anomalous until we consider that the issue of
Armenian genocide has become a proxy for Turkey’s future disposition towards
the Kurds. (Oct 15, '07)
The devil and Alan
Greenspan
Former US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan points a finger
at credit rating agencies for not knowing what they were doing and causing the
crisis in the financial world. It might just as well have been the devil, for
the world deserves just that sort of imp for its sloth, complacency and humbug.
Either way, Americans have to learn they cannot surf the wave of the world's
savings forever, and Asians must learn that they cannot avoid risk by placing
their savings in America. (Oct 1, '07)
National extinction and
natural law
Languages, and the cultures they represent, are becoming
extinct with a rapidity never before seen, but even more remarkable is that
this self-immolation is largely voluntary - human cultures all over the planet
are resisting the urge to self-propagate. It is no coincidence that in the
global South, we also see the fastest rate of Christian evangelization in
history. (Sep 24, '07)
It's easy for the Jews to
talk about life
Life as such is not that likable, yet the standard Jewish toast states, "To
life!" The Jews' love of life is a product of the Covenant, which they see as
having kept this tiny people alive despite the onslaught of empires, and later
the enmity of the Jewish state's Muslim neighbors. In effect the Jews' - and
the State of Israel's - success is a driver for Christian evangelism in the
global South. (Sep 17, '07)
The discreet charm of US
diplomacy
America's miserable performance in Iraq should not obscure the success of
Washington's efforts to align the West against Tehran. France, under its new
president, is only the latest to make clear that it will not tolerate a
nuclear-armed Iran, and even the ayatollahs are taking notice of the Western
front united around the US. The chances of avoiding war with Iran are still
slim, though. (Sep 10, '07)
Western grasshoppers
and Chinese ants
Unlike Americans, Asians are great savers, and in recent years they -
especially the Chinese - have chosen to put their savings into the once-great
US economic engine. But US financial engineering has tried to make a silk purse
out of a sow's ear, and it is a purse that still goes "oink" when opened. If
the US wants to remain the magnet for world capital flows, it will have to
allow the savers of the world to become partners in the US economy, that is, to
buy into its first-rank companies. (Sep 4, '07)
The biblical world of Luis
Bunuel
A surrealist and fellow-traveler of the Spanish Communist Party who abandoned
the Catholic Church as an adolescent, the great Spanish director might seem the
one least likely to succeed at religious cinema. Yet his 1969 masterpiece The
Milky Way, newly released on DVD, makes every other film on Christian
themes seem dispirited by comparison. If you don't laugh at the jokes, you
probably don't believe a word of what you profess. (Aug
27, '07)
It must be the end of secularism
...
... It's in the New York Times! In a despairing vision of the political future,
a Columbia University professor opines that secular liberalism stands helpless
before a new century of religious wars. But he cannot bear to surrender to
Western Christians; instead, he proposes to surrender to the Muslims.
(Aug 20, '07)
Christianity finds a fulcrum in
Asia
China is poised to become a driving force on yet another front, one that would
have seemed impossible just a brief while ago: the global spread of
Christianity. By the middle of this century, Chinese may comprise the world's
largest concentration of Christians, and the largest missionary force in
history. If democracy is ever to flourish in China, it will be at the behest of
its fearless grassroots evangelists. (Aug 6, '07)
In
defense of genocide, redux
It is a measure of how much the world has changed since September 11, 2001,
that the prospect of genocide shocks neither right nor left. Indeed, genocide
was the norm, not the exception, in the formative years of modern Europe and
America, and it will likely dominate the modern formation of the Middle East as
well. Still, genocide is not inevitable. (Jul 23,
'07)
What
they didn't say at Kennebunkport
 No
doubt Vladimir Putin's visit at the Bush family compound in Maine was a cordial
affair; a practical man like the Russian president would not waste words
explaining the unexplainable to someone as uncomprehending as his American
counterpart. But it is sobering to imagine how the conversation might go if
Putin were to tell George W Bush the unvarnished truth.
(Jul 2, '07)
I
told you so, essentially
"Essentialism" is the view that a people or country
displays "essential" characteristics that it can change no more than a leopard
can change its spots. While this mindset feeds stereotypes and is derided by
postmodern scholars, in some cases nothing else makes sense. The Palestinians,
for example, have no reason to be there, and so eventually will not be. This is
not only predictable, it has been predicted - right here.
(Jun 18, '07)
The faith that dare not
speak its name
While cloaking themselves in revealed religion, "presentable" Islamists such as
academic Tariq Ramadan are in fact neo-pagans. Pagan society is "totalitarian"
in character, subsuming the individual into the group and promoting a culture
of death. (Jun 11, '07)
Why
Iran will fight, not compromise
Massive inflation, even more massive unemployment especially among the nation's
young, and official economic statistics so distressing that the president
insists they are fabricated by his political enemies - that is the sad story of
today's Iran. There are very few ways out of this mess, and the most likely
scenario is a new Persian imperial adventure. (May
29, '07)
Those
pesky puppies of war
Persians are chess players, and recent geopolitical setbacks and internal
rivalries do not imply that the Iranians have abandoned the game. Real
conflict, however, is not a chessboard - the pawns have an unpleasant tendency
to move on their own. Trivialities have started devastating wars before, and
may well do so again. (May 21, '07)
The Koranic quotations trap
Islam-bashing, whether justified or not, is a waste of time. Critics may well
argue that the Koran is an incoherent muddle, and scholars may avoid the entire
issue because of threats of violence from fanatics, but the argument is beside
the point. A religion is not a text but a life. (May
14, '07)
Are
the Arabs already extinct?
Adonis, the only Arabic writer on the Nobel Prize short list, claims that the
Arab people, despite its numbers, has like the Sumerians and the Pharaohs
before it died out, for it "no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity
to change its world". He thus helps explain the remarkable willingness of Arabs
to kill themselves to inflict harm on their enemies.
(May 7, '07)
Why you pretend to like
modern art
We all - especially if we do not believe in a Creator - want
to be seen as creative, which nearly all of us are not. Are modern artists
creative? Modern art could not have succeeded without drawing on the patronage
of the wealthy, and very rich people like to flatter themselves that they are
geniuses. In a realm of self-worshipping "creativity", art descends into
extreme levels of artlessness. (Apr 30, '07)
BOOK REVIEW
Tolkien's
Christianity and the pagan tragedy
The Children of Hurin, by J R R Tolkien, edited by Christopher
Tolkien J R R Tolkien was the most Christian of 20th-century writers,
because he uniquely portrayed the tragic nature of the paganism that
Christianity replaced. This book, begun in Tolkien's youth and diligently
reconstructed by his son, is set 6,000 years before The Lord of the Rings
and sheds light on that famous work's greater purpose.
(Apr 23, '07)
The inconvenient Serbs
Washington's perverse push for independence for Kosovo to appease its Sunni
Arab allies in the Middle East is a prescription for disaster. The best
solution would be to take the minority Christian regions of northern Kosovo and
attach them to Serbia proper. Muslim Kosovo could then seek its own destiny.
(Apr 16, '07)
Cherry blossoms, the beautiful
and the good
 The
Japanese ritual of hanami - cherry-blossom viewing - coincides this year
with the Western feasts of Easter and Passover. Thus we see with clarity the
stark differences between Western and Eastern world views. Japanese culture
makes everything into art. Yet appreciation for beauty does not alone make one
good; Hitler, after all, loved Beethoven. (Apr 2,
'07)
The Most Un-Islamic
Republic of Persia
Iran's tantrum over the portrayal of the 5th-century BC
Persian Empire in the film 300 is very Persian, but not at all Islamic.
Iran's new imperial ambitions inspire its impassioned defense of the ancient
Persian Empire, whose demise the Koran clearly celebrated.(Mar
26, '07)
Why God lies and sex
objects object to sex
Across ages and cultures, women universally are said to be more libidinous than
men. Yet many Western women, especially in the US, agree with author Joan
Sewell that they'd "rather eat chocolate" than have sex. The supposed sexual
freedom of modern secular culture objectifies women, and eventually disgusts
them. (Mar 19, '07)
Europe is not the sum of
its parts
"Europe is the faith, the faith is Europe." The fact that European nations
exist in opposition to Europe itself - as seen in the inability to agree a
European constitution - is not a measure of Europe's political maturity but
rather of its decadence. It was the Church, not nationalism, that gave birth to
Europe, and its salvation may come not from Brussels but from its eastern
perimeter. (Mar 12, '07)
Snatching war out of the
jaws of peace
A three-way tragedy of errors is in progress, whereby Iran, Russia and the US
are all misreading one another's messages and intentions. Opportunities to
avert war between the US and Iran have been missed at every turn, and Moscow
and Tehran have failed to understand that the US can and will act to forefend a
nuclear-armed Iran, alone if need be. Stupidity and arrogance have made war the
most probable scenario. (Mar 5, '07)
Russia's hudna with
the Muslim world
Despite Vladimir Putin's recent harsh words against US
national-security policy and his cozying up with the Saudis, Russia does not
propose to ally with the Muslim world against the United States. Putin's
initiative should be thought of as a hudna, a brief truce in a long war
against the decline of non-Muslim European Russia. Hence the installation of
strongman Ramzan Kadyrov as acting president of Chechnya.
(Feb 20, '07)
The lighter side of
national extinction
Laughter at death is found in many literary examples, and in films such as
Monty Python's Life of Brian. We can do this because most of us -
including atheists - believe in immortality, in one form or other. The death of
an entire culture, people, nation or language, however, is less of a laughing
matter. There is no consolation in being the last Mohican.(Feb
12, '07)
Hopeless, but not serious
If individuals or indeed entire peoples are determined to destroy themselves,
as they clearly are in Iraq and Palestine, it is extremely difficult to prevent
them from doing so. And while such self-destruction is tragic on a human level,
it makes little real difference to anyone outside the conflict, and certainly
not to Western markets. (Feb 5, '07)
Admit it - you really hate modern
art
The ideological message is the same, yet the galleries are full, while the
concert halls are empty. That is because you can keep art at a safe distance
when it hangs on the wall, but you can't escape it when it crawls into your
ears. In other words, your visceral hatred of atonal music reflects your true,
healthy, reaction to abstract art. In the same way, you may admire communism -
but you wouldn't want to actually live in Moscow. (Jan
29, '07)
BOOK REVIEW
Faith and
risk in the Cold War
The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister by John O'Sullivan
This account of the Western victory over communism should have a place in
the medicine cabinet of every literate family, as an antidote to stultifying
academic drivel and self-serving bureaucratic memoirs. Who could have predicted
that a broken-down movie star, a grocer's daughter, and a Polish priest would
become the protagonists of the great conflict of the 20th century's second
half? (Jan 22, '07)
Jimmy Carter's heart of dorkiness
The same sanctimonious ineptitude that made Jimmy Carter the least successful
president in US history has prompted him to wager the remains of his reputation
on advocacy for the Palestinians, precisely when the Palestinians have shown
themselves to be their own worst enemies. It all points to a parallel between
the saga of the US south and that of Palestine. (Jan
16, '07)
If you so dumb, how come you ain't
poor?
There has been an inordinate amount written about US decline,
complete with Russian and Chinese designs to benefit from America's
embarrassment in Iraq. The reality could not be more different. The US holds
all the economic aces, and civil carnage in Iraq and Palestine works to
Washington's advantage as it counters Iran. (Jan 8,
'07)
Jeb Bush in 2008?
Largely because of the foreign-policy fiascoes that
have plagued his presidency, George W Bush has endured a negative turnabout in
popularity even worse than that experienced by his father. But a year is a
lifetime in US politics. If George W can focus his foreign policy where it
matters - China and Russia - fortunes could once again favor the Bush dynasty.
(Jan 2, '07)
Sympathy for Scrooge
Christmas is not the quintessential Christian holiday; Easter, which celebrates
Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, is. At Christmas Gentiles become children of the
world, and their affinity for the occasion is the most natural thing in the
world. Jews are too old to revel in the adoration of a child, which in a way is
a cross they have to bear. (Dec 15,
'06)
BOOK REVIEW
A new
Jerusalem in sub-Saharan Africa
The New Faces of Christianity
by Philip Jenkins
Westerners have spent the past 400 years in a grand effort to make the
world seem orderly and reasonable without, however, quite suppressing the
strangeness and wonder of life. Now come the new Christians of the Southern
Hemisphere, choosing Christianity over Islam, who confound enlightened Western
prejudice. (Dec
11, '06)
 Civil
wars or proxy wars?
The emergence of an Iranian threat to Saudi Arabia has dropped the Palestine
problem to the bottom of the Arab priority list, and the Palestinians will
become cannon fodder in a proxy war. As long as Iran does not go
nuclear, the Sunnis and Shi'ites will fight a war of attrition, fueled and
prolonged from outside. (Dec 4, '06)
Jihadis and whores
A nation is never really defeated until it sells its women, and Iran is doing
that in great numbers, at least abroad and probably within the Islamic Republic
as well (thanks to penny-a-marriage mullahs). Prostitution is a form of
collective suicide, and indeed, prostitutes are sometimes used as suicide
bombers. Trafficking of women and trans-migration of jihadis go hand in hand.
(Nov 20, '06)
Halloween
came late in Washington
President George W Bush has conjured up the undead in the form of the
Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group and new defense secretary Robert M Gates. Like
all ghosts, they are condemned to reenact the delinquencies of their past
lives, and just as they got it hopelessly wrong about the Soviet Union,
they will do the same about Iran. (Nov 13,
'06)
Lessons
from classical warfare
In Alexander's day, whole civilizations melted away before the onslaught of
superior forces. The great error of Western policy and well-meaning
American Christians is to imagine that anything fundamental has changed.
(Nov 6, '06)
The fallen bridge over the
Bosporus
Exiled Turkish writer (and now Nobel laureate) Orhan Pamuk,
who once waxed eloquent on his homeland as a bridge between Asia and Europe, is
himself a victim of the failure of that bridge. Turkey's Western loyalties were
founded on a secular nationalism that sought to bury Islam under modernizing
reforms. Pamuk evinces profound sympathy for the Islamic loyalties of the
Turkish poor, as well as the terrible attraction that political Islam holds for
Turkey's disappointed elite. (Oct 30,
'06)
Frailty, thy name is Tehran
It is silly to portray the United States as
a declining imperial power, but the word "decline" hardly begins to
describe what is happening to the leftovers of imperial design in the Middle
East, including the would-be Persian Empire. The US needs to stop treating the
Middle East conflict as an Iraqi matter and extend it to the whole region,
beginning with Iran.
(Oct 23, '06)
Reason to believe, or not
Pope Benedict XVI's controversial address of September 12, in which he stated
that Islam rejects reason, caused an outcry. In response, 38 Islamic leaders
have signed an open letter to him, in which they state that there is no
dichotomy in Islam between reason and faith. Spengler reasons that the
letter shows the pope is right. (Oct 17, '06)
Not
what it was, but what it does
Western policy toward the Muslim world appears stupid and clumsy because its
theological foundations are flawed. It is not what it is, nor what it was,
but rather what it does that defines a religion: How does a faith
address the paramount concern of human mortality, and what action does it
require of its adherents? No one gets this right, not the neo-cons, not the
left, not even the pope. (Oct 2, '06)
What do you do with all the
farmers?
In every era, economic and industrial upheaval has resulted in
mass redundancies and human displacement, creating hardship and, more often
than not, war. China has demonstrated an almost unique ability to handle the
massive migration that has accompanied its economic transformation, but its
success is both good and bad news for the rest of the developing world. War on
a horrifying scale remains all too possible. (Sep
25, '06)
Jihad,
the Lord's Supper, and eternal life
Pope
Benedict XVI's denunciation of jihad on theological grounds is a blow at the
foundations of Islam, in effect a papal call for the conversion of Muslims. The
Islamic world now views the pontiff as an existential threat, for jihad is the
fundamental sacrament of Islam, the Muslim cognate of the Lord's Supper in
Christianity, that is, the unique form of sacrifice by which the believer
attains eternal life. (Sep 18, '06)
Fundaresentalism
By insisting that the Bible must be taken "literally", many evangelical
Christians condemn themselves to the same sort of silliness that infects other
Americans. They claim to accept the Bible's authority, while in fact they are
accepting the authority of the ignoramus who reads it superficially. (Sep
11, '06)
Sistani and the end of Islam
Warning that he "no longer has power to save Iraq from civil war", Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has withdrawn from politics. But the "moderating
influence" Sistani is purported to have had on the chaos in US-occupied Iraq is
overblown, and the shift in Shi'ite alliance to the Iranian-controlled warlord
Muqtada al-Sadr reflects how desperate Muslims are to save their faith.
(Sep 7, '06)
American
Idolatry
No other nation rejects the notion of a high culture with such vehemence, or
celebrates the mediocre with such giddiness, as the US. Thus the popularity of
the self-pitying drone of country music, followed by the resentful adolescence
of rock 'n' roll, all culminating in the actual idolatry of the mediocre on a
popular television program. America's evangelicals should be able to rise above
all this, but have failed to do so. (Aug 28, '06)
The peacekeepers of
Penzance
Dwindling birth rates have turned Europeans into the walking dead, which goes a
long way toward explaining why they are so reluctant to send troops to Lebanon:
a people without progeny will not accept a single military casualty. Europe's
role, then, is irrelevant: all that matters is the coming confrontation between
the United States and Iran. (Aug 21, '06)
Devil
dislikes the stink of brimstone
Iran's complaint that the US has thrown the Middle East into chaos in order to
reshape the region is a man-bites-camel story. True, Israel's onslaught on
Lebanon has presented its ally the US with a geostrategic opportunity, but it's
doubtful that President George W Bush has either the brains or the stomach to
press America's advantage. (Jul 31, '06)
Fight a democracy, kill
the people
A real war - that is, a war that is fought to a decisive conclusion - finally
may have begun in the Middle East. It is easy to say that the war between
Israel and Hezbollah has unleashed chaos, but the question is: Upon whom?
(Jul 24, '06)
The Gumps of
August
US policy has turned to dust and ashes, and
President George W Bush resembles the slow-witted Everyman traipsing oblivious
through great events in Forrest Gump - but without the lucky streak of
that 1994 film's protagonist. The proposition that democracy could thrive in
Lebanon under current circumstances is just one US self-delusion coming to
disastrous fruition. And a US attack on Iran is the inevitable consequence.
(Jul 17, '06)
Cry havoc, and let slip the
puppies of war
Iran's power rests on its ability to threaten destabilization,
especially in Iraq, and Tehran is counting on this to keep the Bush
administration at bay over its nuclear program. The old dogs in Tehran will
(even if they could) do nothing to satisfy the deeply felt and long-frustrated
aspirations of their pups in Baghdad's Sadr City. Escalation of tensions is
inevitable. (Jul 10, '06)
The fraud of
primitive authenticity
Popular culture portrays primitive peoples such as native Americans and tribal
Africans as peace-loving folk living in harmony with nature, as opposed to
their rapacious and brutal reality. A new book debunks the warm and fuzzy
popular myth, and reminds us of the precarious existence of the few remaining
primitive races. But we also think of another imperiled species: the American
post-Christian. (Jul 3, '06)
Prisoner's
dilemma in Tehran
As US Republicans
nervously eye the calendar and congressional elections get nearer, and Tehran
nervously watches the situation in Iraq unravel, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad
has no choice but to play for time, and the White House to feign impatience.
It's an unstable game that cannot last. The result: August will be a very
interesting month. (Jun 26, '06)
BOOK REVIEW
You don't need
to be apocalyptic, but it helps
Standing with Israel by David Brog
The importance of evangelical End Time beliefs in shaping US attitudes toward
Israel disturbs enlightened world opinion, and this book will inflame these
concerns. Still, this work is of great use both to critics and to supporters of
US policy. Jews and evangelical Christians are on parallel and complementary -
although utterly different - paths. (Jun 19, '06)
Military
destiny and madness in Iran
Both US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki sincerely believe that a compromise is in their mutual
interest. Nonetheless, they will fail - for Iran is driven by strategic
mysticism, and when there is no retreat, nothing to which to return, the army
leaves its trenches and flies forward into the cannons.
(Jun 5, '06)
The Da
Vinci Code's success secret
 Why
should an American novel depicting Christianity as a hoax command such a
readership while Christian faith is resurgent? People wallow in doubt only
because they begin with the premise of faith, and author Dan Brown struck a
nerve by linking the epitome of Western genius to doubts about the authenticity
of Christian revelation. (May 30, '06)
BOOK REVIEW
This
time the crocodile won't wait
Londonistan by Melanie
Phillips
Britain, the author warns, is reaping what it has sown. A large minority of
British Muslims are disaffected at best and seditious at worst. The West
inevitably faces a religious war with Islam, and this book provides
indispensable background to why this is so, and why the warnings are unheeded,
as were warnings in the leadup to World War II. (May
22, '06)
Put a stake through Freud's
heart
On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud, it is
worth remembering that no one did more to reduce women to sexual objects, a
condition against which women rebel by seeking to destroy the objectified body.
Epidemic self-destructiveness has reached proportions that are difficult to
grasp. (May 8, '06)
Why war
comes when no one wants it
Neither Washington nor Tehran wants military confrontation. Nevertheless it
will come, just as many great wars came despite the desire of the belligerents
to avoid them. If Washington delays, it will risk a conflagration in the Middle
East at least as terrible as the one that hit Europe in 1914.
(May 1, '06)
Katrina and
China's whirlwind growth
China's spectacular economic growth arises from the mass migration of poor
people from the depressed interior to the vibrant coastal cities. On a smaller
scale, Hurricane Katrina has displaced New Orleans' poor to more prosperous
areas. The best thing the US could do for the poor people of its urban ghettos
is to expel them. Not that it would do the culture much good.
(Apr 24, '06)
Bush's October surprise -
it's coming
Things may not look too bright for the US president right now, but George W
Bush is poised for the strongest political comeback of any US politician since
Abraham Lincoln. Republicans will triumph in November's congressional elections
because by then Bush will have bombed Iran's nuclear installations, and
Americans will rally around him again. (Apr 10, '06)
Cat and mouse with Muslim
paranoia
 According
to an adviser to the Iranian culture minister, the cartoon Tom and Jerry
was the result of a Jewish conspiracy. That, like most paranoid conspiracy
theories, is nonsense, but it is true that the Hanna-Barbera cartoon not only
distorted reality but forbade desirable outcomes. The US must turn the tables
on Iran - Tom must finally eat Jerry. (Apr 3, '06)
The West in an Afghan mirror
 Philistine
hypocrisy pervades Western denunciations of Islamic law and the Afghan court
that may well have hanged the Christian convert Abdul Rahman. Death everywhere
and always is the penalty for apostasy, in Islam and every other faith, and the
practice of killing heretics has nothing to do with what differentiates Islam
from Christianity or Judaism. (Mar 27, '06)
BOOK REVIEW
Memo to China: Careful what you wish for
Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher
A generation from now, hundreds of millions of Chinese will have lived with
prosperity long enough to ask whether there is more to life than shopping. This
book will leave them wondering whether the US is a role model, a horrible
example, or a bit of both. (Mar 20, '06)
I learned to stop worrying and love
chaos
Pessimism has become unfashionable in the United States but like it or not, the
US faces the specter of chaos, and cannot do anything to forestall it. The only
question is what to do about it, and not only are America's pundits in deep
denial on the point, the US has the wrong sort of military to engage the
enemies it currently confronts. (Mar 13, '06)
The case for complacency in Iraq
No country fears civil war in Iraq more than Iran, which has been able to
use the threat of a Shi'ite uprising as leverage against the United
States. And a stable, constitutional, Shi'ite-dominated government
in Baghdad is in the US's worst interest: the Iranization of the
country would be inevitable. So all in all, what's happening in that
hell-hole, Iraq, right now could be seen by Washington as a gift - from
the devil. (Feb 27, '06)
Devil's
sourdough and the decline of nations
When life's pains are too much to swallow, even deeply religious people forget
how to laugh, and thereby the existence of a whole culture can fall into
jeopardy. Even Jews, whose sense of humor is famous, may as well be Catholics
if they forget how to joke; what, then, is to become of the Muslims?
(Feb 21, '06)
War with Iran on the
worst terms
Iran cannot be persuaded to abandon its
nuclear ambitions. The government cannot be overthrown or derailed. But
militarily, it can be beaten handily. Washington is unwilling to act now
for various compelling reasons, but war is inevitable and the longer it's put
off, the worse it will be. (Feb
13, '06)
Why can't Muslims
take a joke?
The Jyllens-Posten cartoon affair is even worse than it looks. With freedom of
choice and access to information come doubt. Christianity and Judaism are
bloodied - indeed, drained almost dry - by nearly two centuries of scriptural
criticism; Islam's turn barely has begun. (Feb 6,
'06)
No true Scotsman
starts a war
Since "the power of democracy", in the Bush idiom, is necessary for
peace in the Middle East, the democratic election of Hamas in Palestine
presents a paradox. In fact, contrary to American dogma, history proves that
democracies are just as capable of starting wars as dictatorships. The way out
is to distinguish between "emerging" and "true" democracies.
(Jan 30, '06)
Why the West will
attack Iran
 From
Jacques Chirac to Mohamed ElBaradei, the Western establishment has rapidly
formed a consensus on the eventual use of force against Iran. This is because
Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons is based on its goal of imperial expansion
through energy-rich Southwest Asia, something the West and its allies will do
anything to prevent. (Jan 23, '06)
When even the pope has
to whisper
Islam was founded as a theocracy, and the values the US hopes to
impose in the Middle East are alien to that culture. But can Islam reform and
embrace democratic ideals? No less a man than Pope Benedict XVI has said he
does not believe so, but even for him the very suggestion is one that must be
made quietly. (Jan 9, '06)
Victor Davis Hanson
goes to the seashore
As shown ages ago by Athens' suicidal Peloponnesian War, democracy
does not necessarily promote peace and stability. The Greek historian
Thucydides understood this tragedy, but Hanson, purveyor of White House bedside
reading, strives to exonerate democracy by finding alternative explanations for
the Athenians' disaster. George W Bush should be careful what he wishes for in
the Middle East. (Jan 3, '06)
When self-immolation is a
rational choice
Why do political leaders believe that democracy fosters peace,
despite examples that a broad electorate can be as bellicose as the most
bloodthirsty tyrant? Look at the American civil war, the result of Southerners
electing Jefferson Davis for what might be termed rational reasons. Now look at
Iran, where Mahmud Ahmadinejad has been elected for similar reasons.
(Dec 19, '05)
The gay, the bad and the
Israeli
Liberal Hollywood is the heart of America's Democratic Party,
and its offerings for the Christmas season explain why the opposition to the
present administration remains weaker even than the flailing White House.
Steven Spielberg's Munich - a Palestinian "prayer for peace" - and Ang
Lee's gay cowboy film are as limp as the opposition.
(Dec 12, '05)
Iran's strength in weakness
President Mahmud Ahmedinejad is acutely aware of the weakness
- indeed hoplessness in the longer term - of Iran's position. Much like Adolf
Hitler, who bluffed a weak hand into a nearly winning game, he evinces a
superior cunning born of the knowledge that he has nothing to lose. So Iran is
already close to gaining control of Iraq's oil-rich Shi'ite regions, and
continues its nuclear program, as the US approaches Tehran cap in hand.
(Dec 5, '05)
BOOK REVIEW
Indispensable guide
for global theopolitics
The Star of Redemption by Franz Rosenzweig
With the return of religion to world politics, today's intellectual elite feels
something like Marx's mad Englishman in a lunatic asylum. To such perplexed
people, this book, in a new English translation, is recommended, but with a
caveat: it might cure them of secularism. (Nov 21,
'05)
Why Western governments fall
apart
The punditry dismisses US President George W Bush as dumb, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair as smarmy, President Jacques Chirac as arrogant and Italy's
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as bent. But they are not the reason the West
cannot field a single functioning government. It's the people who elected them
into office who are the problem. (Nov 14, '05)
CRISIS OF FAITH IN THE
MUSLIM WORLD
PART 1: Statistical
evidence
Negotiating the demographic decline of the 21st century will be treacherous for
countries that have proven their capacity to innovate and grow. For the Islamic
world, it will be impossible. That is the root cause of Islamic radicalism, and
there is nothing that the West can do to change it. (Oct
31, '05)
CRISIS OF FAITH IN THE MUSLIM
WORLD
PART 2: The Islamist
response
The fact that prominent Islamist academics offer more than
moral support for Islamist terrorism is a leading indicator of cultural despair
- despair that will lead to terrible and prolonged war with the West as Islam
fights to perpetuate itself. Europe will be the likely battlefield, and Paris
is already burning. (Nov 7, '05)
A Syriajevo in the making?
The Syrian affair and its dabbling in Lebanon is a diversion. The flashpoint in
the Middle East is Iran, where Tehran's leaders single-mindedly pursue a
strategic objective, namely nuclear power status, while the Bush administration
frets about Iraqi exit strategies and opinion polls.
(Oct 24, '05)
The blood is the life, Mr Rumsfeld!
 Intra-confessional
strife among Shi'ites represents a nastier obstacle to constitutional democracy
than the Sunni insurgency. That is why Iraq's constitution will be defeated.
More than ever, Shi'ites will bathe in their own blood rather than submit to
the subjugation of their tribes. (Oct 11, '05)
BOOK REVIEW
Do you call that an empire?
Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan
The tattooed, tobacco-chewing, iron-pumping soldiers who make up much of the US
Army simply cannot be compared to the soldier-scholars who made the British
Empire. Therein lies the great difference between America's global police
exercise and a true empire. And as Americans have no empire, there is nowhere
to extract wealth. (Oct 3, '05)
China must wait for democracy
Forget China's "flowering of democracy" - promised direct-level township
elections. China must rather learn to rule cities that are mushrooming into
gigantic urban concentrations populated by poor rural migrants. This great
transition places a terrible responsibility in the hands of a very few, and
America would be better advised to offer practical suggestions, such as how to
develop internal capital markets, rather than grandiose and self-serving
advice. (Sep 26, '05)
Demographics and Iran's imperial
design
Between 2005 and 2050, the shift from
workers to pensioners will comprise 21% of Iranians. Tehran's ultra-Islamist
government has no hope of ameliorating this impending crisis through
productivity growth. Instead, it proposes totalitarian methods at home and
imperial expansion as a solution.
(Sep 12, '05)
BOOK REVIEW
Deep in denial (or in de
Mississippi)
Hurricane Katrina should put us in the right frame of mind to consider two new
studies on the fall of the Roman Empire. Roman society was as vulnerable as the
Louisiana levees and needed only a smart blow to crumble. What's next? (Sep
6, '05)
Lessons for Islam from Quebec
Falling fertility rates go hand in hand with rising
nationalism, as they did in Quebec in the 60s and 70s. As with Quebecois
nationalism, Islamism welled up from a profound and well-placed sense of
fragility, and likewise, its days are numbered.
(Aug 29, '05)
The
demographics of radical Islam
The Muslim birthrate is the second highest in the world but it's falling
faster than that of any other culture. Thus, the Islamists have 30 years to
establish a global theocracy before the pool of unemployed Arabs -
expected to reach 25 million by 2010 - becomes too small to fight a war.
(Aug 22, '05)
Why
nations die
The topic of mass extinction,
particularly through environmental neglect, commands the attention of the
reading public, but books that compare the present to bygone civilizations do
not tell the whole story. We might be gone today, but somehow the world will
survive tomorrow. (Aug 15, '05)
Death by secularism: The
statistical evidence
 Infertility
is killing off the secular world, whose ideologies - socialism, positivism, and
so forth - promised an unending vista of peace and prosperity. Statistical
evidence strips secularism of its progressive mask and reveals the death's-head
underneath. (Aug 1, '05)
Dien Bien Phooey
"Iraqification" is turning out to be a dog's breakfast. Washington is
embarrassed, and has no other choice than to adapt by removing American troops
from the line of fire. The nation-building program can hit the wall with an
arbitrarily high degree of splatter, without perceptible consequences - a far
cry from Vietnam War days when potential nuclear confrontation with the Soviet
Union had to be considered. (Jul 25, '05)
Harry
Potter and the Decline of the West
 The
Harry Potter series, like the "Star Wars" films, are popular because they
appeal to complacency and narcissism. The reader is invited to imagine that he
is something different, while remaining just what he is. All Harry has to do to
be a hero is draw from his inner well of emotions. This is supreme narcissism
and the hallmark of decadence, and besides, whoever one is, one's inner
feelings are commonplace, dull, and tawdry. That's why there are plenty of
cheap thrills thrown in - cheap because they cannot possibly be real.
(Jul 19, '05)
Do Muslims worship idols?
Pope Benedict XVI does not say that Muslims worship idols, but he says quite
plainly that the "martyr ideology" of Islamist terrorists amounts to an odious
form of idol worship, in which "morality and law become instruments of partisan
policy". He adds that the West is not blameless in this respect.
(Jul 5, '05)
The living fossils'
vengeance
Rural Persia voted with one voice to hold the world at bay by electing Mahmud
Ahmadinejad as Iran's next president. Poverty is not the issue; the poor voted
to remain in poverty. But by clinging to traditional society, the humblest
Iranian farmer retains the pride of a conqueror in his heart, and he may soon
have nuclear weapons to boast about too. (Jun 27,
'05)
Why is good dumb?
The United States of America is uniquely good, and thus uniquely dumb. So,
against the radical evil that the US now faces, its good has no natural
defenses. It can only hope that its opponents lose the war, because President
George W Bush is not going to win it. (Jun 20, '05)
Why Sunnis blow themselves up
 Blowing
oneself up to kill one's enemy is not the sort of gesture one would expect from
people who have given serious thought to parliamentary democracy. But for many
Iraqi Sunnis it is not about democracy, despite what the Bush administration
might believe. It is about a fight to the death. (Jun
13, '05)
Muslim anguish, Western
condescension
US attempts to engineer an Islamic reformation may be the silliest initiative
in foreign policy in the history of the world. Muslims will not be persuaded to
loosen their grasp on the living presence of Allah on Earth. In its tragic
encounter with Islam, the West cannot help but inflict humiliation, just as
happened at Guantanamo. (Jun 6, '05)
The Laach Maria monster
In response to the French Revolution, the Catholic
Church invented the methods of historical falsification - let's call it the
"Laach Maria monster" - that the Nazis applied with such horrifying success.
The new pope is trying to set things right.
(May 31, '05)
Why the beautiful is not the good
The beautiful, within the Catholic "theology of aesthetics", forms the earthly
visage of the unearthly good. Yet the good is not quite the same as the
beautiful. It is well for Benedict XVI to think of the angels in heaven playing
Mozart for their own enjoyment, as he has said, but it is just as easy to
imagine the devils in hell doing the same thing. (May
16, '05)
The pope, the musicians and the
Jews
In an effort to raise the Catholic Church out of the ruins of
European secularism, Pope Benedict XVI is looking to the biblical background of
Christianity and the high culture of the Christian West. In this respect he may
be one of the most innovative popes in history; the trouble is, little is left
in Europe, either of high culture or of the Jews. (May
9, '05)
The crescent
and the conclave
Now that everyone is talking about Europe's demographic death, it is time to
point out that there exists a way out: convert European Muslims to
Christianity. The reported front-runner at the Vatican conclave that began on
Monday, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is one of the few Church leaders unafraid to
raise the subject. (Apr 18, '05)
Africa, Islam and the next pope
There is much speculation that the next pope might be African
- one out of every eight Catholics is African. Yet this is unlikely, as is the
recruitment of African Catholics. An even greater exercise in frustration will
be the Church's dialogue with Islam. (Apr 11, '05)
Ratzinger's mustard seed
The Vatican's chief theologian, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, may
be the successor to the late pope John Paul II. Ratzinger is one of the few men
alive capable of surprising the world, and if he does become the next head of a
seriously weakened Catholic Church, he could become a unifying figure in the
Christian world. (Apr 4, '05)
COMIC
OPERA
 The
Jihadis of Penzance
Much of what US
President George W Bush and his representatives have said lately might have
been extracted from a W S Gilbert libretto. To put the matter in context, we
present the sort of libretto that Gilbert might have prepared for Arthur
Sullivan were the pair alive today, and embedded in it some of these
utterances. So, sing along with Spengler. (Mar 21,
'05) |
 The
beast that slouches toward democracy
No woolier
idea ever found its way into foreign policy than the premise that democracy
will promote Middle East peace. Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrullah has laid a cuckoo's
egg in the nest of US policy, conjuring up the specter of a terrorist
democracy. (Mar 15,
'05)
They made a democracy and
called it peace
This year's 60th anniversary of the
Anglo-American victory in World War II will call forth innumerable orations
about the triumph of liberty. Yet the real defeat of the Germans, Japanese and,
later, the Russians is that those peoples are dying out. It seems, then, that
the Middle East would be well advised to shun democracy.
(Mar 7, '05)
The unmaking of the neo-con mind
 The
neo-conservatives are not malign but irrelevant. They play at faith rather than
live it, and a world dominated by faith politics has passed them by. Professor
Gertrude Himmelfarb's fascination with the High Modernist apostle T S Eliot
sheds light on the neo-conservative state of mind. (Feb
22, '05)
The Dead Peoples Society
The EU has awarded more than US$32 million to assist the 50
or so "minority languages" still spoken in one form or another in Europe, but
such sentimentalist nostalgia is not new: the Roman Empire itself was a casket
in which the ghosts of extinct tribes were interred. Americans have abandoned
this "Western civilization" for an entirely different throwback.
(Feb 14, '05)
BOOK REVIEW
Abraham's promise and American
power
Abraham's Promise by Michael
Wyschogrod, edited by R Kendall Soulen
Not since Abraham Lincoln has the United States felt itself to be a "nearly
chosen" people, with a religious mission like that of ancient Israel. This
astonishing book reminds that the spirit of American Puritanism might once
again become flesh: US evangelicals might awaken one morning as a New Chosen
People. (Feb 7, '05)
The dotage of Iraq's
democracy
In the case of Iraq, democracy was born already in its old age, hooked up to
intravenous devices and breathing tubes and kept alive on the fiscal equivalent
of an iron lung - oil. This can in no way be confused with
self-determination. (Feb 1, '05)
Whatsa martyr with you?
The ingenue of Tom Wolfe's new novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, by rights
should have been a martyr to debauched university life. By sparing his
protagonist from martyrdom, Wolfe, rather than holding up the mirror of tragedy
to his public, ultimately gives us a smiley-face - and thereby comes close to
the literary ideal of US neo-conservatives. (Jan 24,
'05)
Two cheers for hypocrisy
The blue-state metrosexuals ridicule as "hypocrites" church-going folk who
re-elected US President George W Bush. Yet apart from the saintly, only the
unashamedly wicked are guiltless of hypocrisy. The rest of us give lip-service
to standards we cannot or will not live up to. It is what makes life, which is
by definition a failure, livable. (Jan 18, '05)
For whom the
chopper lands
For the aborigines of the
Sentinel Islands, the last stone-age people to resist contact with the world,
an Indian Coast Guard helicopter landing on their shores seemed a direr threat
than the tsunami: it appeared as an exterminating angel. The Sentinelese, for
the time being, have kept the chopper at bay. Others are not so fortunate.
(Jan 10, '05)
Is
'Americanism' a religion?
Islamists and neo-conservatives concur in calling "Americanism" a religion, for
entirely different reasons. And they are both entirely wrong, for both confound
American religion with the Bush administration's strategic agenda.
(Jan 3, '05)
Santa Clausewitz,
a minor Chinese god
 Santa
Claus, were Christianity to disappear, would live on in China as a minor
prosperity god. The Chinese love to shop, so do Americans, exemplified by the
Santa symbol of Yuletide acquisitiveness. The US contribution to Chinese
prosperity and success goes beyond symbols, however. The result will be
Sino-American global duopoly. (Dec 20, '04)
Writing off
Europe
Europeans hate and fear the United States, but Americans barely can summon the
energy to ignore Europe, which they have written off as a decadent and
soon-to-disappear civilization. Indeed, Western civilization, as the heritage
of great Europeans of the past, may be harder to preserve than America's
pension system, or the "Hooah!" of the US Marine Corps.
(Dec 6, '04)
What makes
the US a Christian nation
Few people doubt that the United States is a Christian nation.
But discontinuity makes American Christianity a baffling quantity to outsiders;
only a small minority of American Protestants can point to a direct link to
spiritual ancestors a century ago. Yet is the very nature of America that
allows Christianity repeatedly to re-create itself there.
(Nov 29, '04)
Muslim
anguish and Western hypocrisy
Smugness oozes from European politicians who
demand that Muslims repudiate violence as a precondition for residence in the
West. To repudiate the death sentence for blasphemy, as meted out to Dutch
filmmaker Theo van Gogh, would be the same as abandoning the Islamic order.
(Nov 22, '04)
The assassin's master sermon
Horrified though they may be by the thought, Westerners have
something to learn from the letter that Mohammed B pinned with a knife to Theo
van Gogh's corpse after he murdered the Dutch filmmaker this month. The
message: antagonistic modes of faith underlie the conflict between the West and
the Islamic world. (Nov 15, '04)
Power
and the evangelical womb
What we have observed in the
demographic shift in the US in favor of "red" (Republican) versus "blue"
(Democrat) is only the thin end of an enormous wedge. Religious ("red")
Americans will continue to have children, and secular ("blue") Americans will
continue to extinguish themselves. "Red" America, characterized first of all by
evangelical Christianity, is thriving. (Nov 8, '04)
'It's
the culture, stupid'
Liberal commentators blame the high voter turnout of
evangelicals - whose numbers plausibly were the factor that won George W Bush
re-election - on bigotry. On the contrary, parents become evangelicals, and
evangelicals become political, precisely in order to draw a line between their
families and the forces of moral decay. (Nov 4, '04)
What
Osama might have told America
Everyone is talking about rejuvenated Osama bin
Laden's videotape, but television channels aired only four minutes of it. What
was in the remaining 14 minutes of it? Plenty. By the time an American child
reaches the age of 18, he will have seen on television 40,000 murders and
200,000 other acts of violence. And plenty of sex. This is why Islam will
prevail. (Nov 1, '04)
In praise of premature war
Rarely has the West suffered by going
to war too soon. On the contrary: among the wars of Western history, the
bloodiest were those that started too late. The West, therefore, should be
thankful that it has in US President George W Bush a warrior who shoots first
and tells the CIA to ask questions later.
(Oct 18, '04)
When
you forget why you hanged yourself
Frits Bolkestein is the newly notorious member of the European Commission who
warned that Europe would implode like the Austro-Hungarian Empire if Turkey
were admitted into the EU. But he, like many Europeans, forgets why
Austro-Hungary choked on the poisons of its own culture, and so cannot see why
Europe is doing the same today. (Oct 5, '04)
Squeegee
men and suicide bombers
The anti-terror
strategy of the US Department of Homeland Security has criminalized not only
terrorists, but also their ideological sympathizers. What this means is that
individual Muslims will suffer. Remember, either you are with us ...
(Sep 27, '04)
Bush,
Marshal Foch and Iran
 The
situation in Iraq might look hopeless for the US. In fact, as Marshal Foch
famously said, "Situation excellent. I shall attack." The target will be Iran,
and Iraq will no longer be a problem as it will cease to exist.
(Sep 20, '04)
Why Americans
love George
 Outsiders
can see clearly that Democrats are cleverer, better dressed and better looking
than those currently running the White House. But it is just the sort of
Americans who know they are neither clever nor good-looking who will vote for
President George W Bush in November, and that is why he will win.
(Sep 13, '04)
BOOK REVIEW
Faith,
fertility and American dominance
The Empty Cradle by Phillip Longman
This American journalist is not the first person to be horrified by declining
birthrates among "modern" civilizations, and to extrapolate that
anti-modernists such as evangelical Christians will eventually breed themselves
into a position of global dominance. In this book, he hatches schemes such as
tax incentives to encourage bigger families and save modernity from itself.
(Sep 7, '04)
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