Slashdot Mirror

Try asking anyone under 30 if they know what the phrase "Papers Please!" denotes

It's just two words... It's a lot of things.

It's when the Military place soldiers in a natural disaster area such as New Orleans after Katrina requiring you to show military ID or proof of government authorization, to avoid arrest, or having vehicles impounded

It's an attack onAmerican birthright citizenship

It's two words that succinctly describe America's dark future.

Personal and Professional Encounters with Surveillance

anti-state.com: May I See Your Papers Please?

It's what Mr. Hiibel of Nevada went to jail for refusing to comply with

It's what police do now to ordinary people minding their own business.

It's congress work on the REAL ID act

It's a name given to a section of an Arizona law upheld by the Supreme court.

It's the name of a complaint against changes the US is making starting this Fall 2013 to further restrict the free travel of Americans and greatly increase the difficulty of US citizens getting passports

It's the name of a dystopian video game about communist immigration control.

It's the name of an anti-TSA blog

It's a request you comply with when asked by the police; otherwise, you face immediate arrest.

• Texas 77 year old Grandmother arrested after refusing to show ID
• Police arrest for refusing to show ID while on private property
• Exhibit 1
• Exhibit 2: According to the Supreme Court, the police may arrest for failure to identify
• Arrested at Circuit City for refusing to show ID: "It all started when I refused to show my receipt to the loss prevention employee at Circuit City, and it ended when a police officer arrested me for refusing to provide my driver's license."
• I follow the blog of a guy who walked across the country (California to New York) last year. He was arrested in Greencastle, Indiana last summer, after a prison worker called the police to report him as a suspicious person after they exchanged words while he was walking past the prison complex.
• Florida Cops Tase man for refusing to show ID
• Refusal to show id in Georgia (arrest)
• Man in Arizona arrested for refusing to surrender firearm to officers who refused to show their own ID

The Indian Air Force embarrassed the USAF in Cope India 2004 and again at Red Flag in 2008.
The first time was against USAF F-15Cs and the second time, against the F-22.

I don't know about the 2008 exercise, but I do know that in Cope India it was a crock of horse shit since they were preventing the Viper from fielding AIM-120 slammers as well as other bullshit they didn't mention. Read about it here.

My money says in a shooting airwar we'd assrape the currymunchers with impunity.

It's Gen 4 and Russian? Care to look up combat stats over the last thirty years as to who rules the skies? Hell, even when India "won" using Russian hardware in Cope India 2005, they needed the odds stacked in their favor. The truth hurts, my vodka drinking friends.

Read up on exactly what Mugabe is doing

This idea that a group of civilians can enact violent revolution hasn't been valid for the past few decades. Dictators tend to have a monopoly on force in a country, they command the loyalty of military and police forces inside the country, and remain in power because no other force in the country has the capability to oust them.

I.E. Even if there were free elections in Zimbabwe, and the people DID elect someone other than this monster, he could simply say, "No." and carry on with his business.

-----------------------

Naturally, there's the flip side of this, foreign interference producing a government even WORSE than the last one. The list of Western-inspired coups that produced shitty governments in the end is pretty long, but without foreign assistance, rebel groups don't really stand a chance to create meaningful change.

Lets not even go into the fact that if the government wants you in chains, a hundred guns wont stop them.

Despite it's mass the US military hasn't been able to stop all the insurgents in Iraq. So you're right the US's thousands of "guns" hasn't stopped them. And that's in a foreign country, if the US military were to try pacifying the US population it's be even harder. I don't know how many /.es have served in the military but I have and I as well as a number of others who served with me would not follow any order to shoot on civilians, instead we'd more likely shoot whoever gave such an order. Fragging was not an uncommon action soldiers took when they were given an order they disagreed with. I can easily see it becoming popular if US troops were ordered to shoot on US citizens.

I actually would love to own a firearm in canada, because they probably do make you feel more safe and in control, but I dont get how they make you more free. Can you explain this elementary reasoning that non americans might not see as so elementary?

Do you think the NAZI would of been able to carry out the holocaust if the Enabling Act of 1933 hadn't been passed thus disarming the population? Do you think the genocide in Rwanda would still have happened if more people had been armed there? Or do you think firearms won't stop a possible genocide in Zimbabwe? A fellow Canuck, well Canadian, who once was against the right to bare arms now believes "The Right to Bear Arms is the only reliable way to prevent genocide in the modern world."

You're right that it's custom hardware and software, and thus more expensive simply because there's not the economy of scale like in mass produced goods.

That said. Your GPS iPaq counter example struck me as ironic, as that's exactly what the prototype was. (Hell, that's what the prototype has been for Blue Force Tracking for years now.)

Since the Army felt comfortable with field testing an iPaq in a combat zone, I suspect the deployed system isn't going to be that much different

The geek in me loves the idea of tracking everyone one on the battlefield on and sending encrypted coordinates back and forth and everything. Wearable computing. Augmented reality. It's all good in da hood baby. But at the same time, whenever I read about Land Warrior, these words (which I believe was actually posted many years ago here on /. about Land Warrior) always echo in my head: "Get a bullet in a paper map, and you have a map with a hole in it. Get a bullet in your whizbang electronic map, you have a paper weight."

http://instapundit.com/archives/030693.php

June 01, 2006

RFK, JR. GETS A BAD REVIEW FROM DAN RIEHL: "NPR debunked it a week ago before it was even published."

Meanwhile, Don Surber comments: "Real journalism would have at least also looked at Wisconsin, where multiple-state voting likely cost Bush a state."

UPDATE: Armed Liberal notes that even Mother Jones is ahead of RFK, jr. When you're peddling conspiracy theories that have already been busted by NPR and Mother Jones, well . . . .

BTW, you can read: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007810.php [windsofchange.net] and http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/003045.html [murdoconline.net] if you still have illusions about US aircrafts.

3. Current stealth technologies (ALL of them) only protect from certain radio wavelength. For example, F117 can be detected using one-meter-wavelength radars (as it was demonstrated during the last Balkan war). But you need a fairly large antenna to transmit at such wavelengths, so fighter jets need to use either passive radar system or phased arrays.
1. So what? It has incremental improvements in engines and armaments. After all, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_launch_vehicle is still used today (though it was designed back in 60-s.

I'm sorry but I have to keep correcting your ignorance. You cannot install passive radar systems in fighter aircraft. Passive radar systems are huge and heavy and most are composed of multiple geographicly spaced platforms. Again your use of the term phased array is naive. A phased array is merely a trivial way of feeding antenna elements - there are millions of types of antennas which are phased arrays. The idea of phased array has nothing whatsoever to do with countering stealth per-se.

Nor has anyone claimed, righly so, that stealth makes aircraft undetectable. They merely reduce the radar cross section to a certain extent - and such reduction is indeed variable upon frequency as you pointed out. However VHF-radars, which have been used to detect stealth aircraft are slow, innaccurate and highpower (indeed because of the long wavelenght) and thus vulnerable to anti-radiation missiles and other countermeasures. They are ancient technology. The incident in the Balkan war was an exception that proves the rule. The enemy was incapable of threathing the air-supremacy of NATO and its operations, for all aircraft with or without stealth, because of the wide use of electronic warfare and planning of air-corridors. Stealth merely allows one to use such air-corridores more effectively.

As for Soyuz, nobody is suggesting that we should abandon the wheel because JSF is going to replace all our technology. We are going to see aircraft such as F16s, F18s, B52s flying well into the next decade and beyong because they are useful and econmical platforms. The JSF offers new capabilities, in addition to all the tech we have now and will only be produced in quantity that is required to meet these new special missions.

BTW, you can read: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007810.php and http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/003045.html if you still have illusions about US aircrafts.

3. Current stealth technologies (ALL of them) only protect from certain radio wavelength. For example, F117 can be detected using one-meter-wavelength radars (as it was demonstrated during the last Balkan war). But you need a fairly large antenna to transmit at such wavelengths, so fighter jets need to use either passive radar system or phased arrays.
2. And guess what was the first fighter to have it?
1. So what? It has incremental improvements in engines and armaments. After all, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_launch_vehicle is still used today (though it was designed back in 60-s.

BTW, you can read:
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007810.php and http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/003045.html if you still have illusions about US aircrafts.

As I've once or twice mentioned here, I used to be a staffer in a Congressional office. About seven years ago, I made a concerted effort to get my Member to do a Slashdot interview. It didn't pan out, but I can assure you of two things: first, that yes it probably would have been written by a staffer. And two, that the Member in question would have read it, deeply annotated and editted it, and then sent it back to be written, re-written and written once more before sending it back. That's just how it works: they have to respond in writing to thousands of requests from constituents, the media, government agencies, etc. Not to mention their colleages.

So you get your staffers to write stuff, which you then revise and approve. How much oversight goes into one of these letters? Well, mine reviewed a few thousand documents every evening, then gave them back in the morning. Each was heavily marked up with his Red Pen of Death, so I'm pretty sure that he read them all. Others, I know, don't. Some look at only the "important" correspondence, or spot-check, or more heavily use form letters (though we used those too). Ultimately, even a great representative has thousands of letters to write every day. You have to be realistic about what they can do.

As for a blog, you have to be realistic about what makes a good blog. Lots of good links (which means copious web browsing), and lots of good new content. No politician has time to generate all that and still attend to their duties. So of course they'd kick it over to their press secretaries-- that's what they're for.

If you don't believe me, check out Andrew Sullivan or Roger L. Simon or Winds of Change or any of our friends on the Advisory Board over at Pajamas Media. Their blogs are (or are nearly) full time occupations. A politician isn't purely a media figure. In fact, many of the best are guys you haven't heard of. Expecting them to drop everything to become full time bloggers is unreasonable, but most have known the influence of the blogs for some time now.

http://windsofchange.net/flashplayer.php?media=alq aeda&w=640&h=480

Al Qaeda is stepping up its efforts. We can't go back to when terrorism was a "nuisance," as John Kerry has described it.

http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007802.php

It covers: Bio, Electricity, Fossil Fuels, Geothermal, Hydrogen, Nuclear, Solar, Water, Wind

US biodiesel production will reach 75 million gallons in 2005

A former malting facility in Jefferson, Wisconsin will be converted to house an innovative, $200 million ethanol production plant that, in addition to 140 million gallons of ethanol a year, will produce 20 million gallons of biodiesel and, yes, 8 million pounds of tilapia fish filets.

an Illinois fertilizer plant that previously used natural gas as a feedstock is being converted to utilize gasified coal instead, and will produce 87 million gallons/year of synthetic gasoline and electricity to boot.

and with solar: Plans for large solar thermal power plants have recently been approved in Nevada and California, with a 64 MW plant planned near Boulder City and a 4,500-acre, 500 MW plant north of Los Angeles.

They include anti-war liberal Marc Cooper, pro-war liberal Roger L. Simon, and Michael Ledeen, a pro-war conservative. I'd hardly call them a conservative organization. I'm a regular reader of Roger L. Simon, and anyone with any familiarity with his work knows that he's an honest, bi-partisan type. He's got VERY strong opinions, but he's fairminded. He's not the type to pull a stunt, and I don't think he's HEARD of slashdot, let alone is courting its readership.

Bloggers on both sides see themselves as a reaction to and check on traditional corporate media. Certainly similar (though not the same) to RMS's view of free software as a reaction to corporate, profit-driven software.

Meanwhile, they also consider themselves to be a fact-checking organ. Certainly, bloggers drove the Rathergate scandal to public scrutiny-- I'm sure that will continue to happen, too. Many eyes make journalistic errors shallow, to paraphrase ESR. So there's a parallel to the Open Source model. Anyone who's read cooperative news blogs like Winds of Change can see the Open Source thinking that went into it.

So as a regular reader of some of the people behind Pajamas, I'm pretty confident that they're bipartisan, open-minded, and sincere of their imitation^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H flattery of the Open Source software movement. So no harm, no foul, and bonus points to them for changing their name back to protect your sensibilities.

Personally, I was fine with the name.

Some of us had little birds tell us the name early and pointed out it would not fly. Perhaps that's why they were prepared to pull it so fast. The name change to Open.... appears to be a request by their Venture Capitalist and not really their choice. Many of the Pajamas principals hang out at: http://www.windsofchange.net/ to discuss issues before blogging about them.

...with all the effectiveness and ethics exemplified by Oil for Food and the "Toyota Taliban", right? Perhaps sex in exchange for Internet access in developing countries?

http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/005512.php

Here's the complete series:

1. The Big Change in Islamic Societies
2. Muslims & The Clash of Civilizations
3. The Mentality of Violence... and the Games Nations Play!
4. A Movement Bred in the Isolation of the Desert
5. The Fall of the Oppressors and the Emergence of the Sword
6. The Crisis Facing Non-Wahabbi Islam

The man who founded Wahhabism was not a theologian but a proselyter who was determined to convert the faithful to his harsh brand of Islam. Intellectually close to the dialectical Islamic theologians who asserted the primacy of tradition (naql) over reason (aql), Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab was a disciple of ibn-Taymiyah, a strict traditionalist who allowed little scope for reason or independent thinking. He was also a product of his geographical environment, a remote outpost of history.

Unlike Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where ancient civilizations had flourished and made their mark on human history, or places like Dubai and Hijaz, which lay on trade routes and dealt extensively with the outside world, the desert of Najd in the Eastern Province of what is now Saudi Arabia had no civilization to speak of before Islam. Nor did it ever become a cultural centre like the capitals of the Caliphate, Medina, Damascus and Baghdad. Thanks to its arid, barren landscape, Najd remained a cultural backwater, its sole contribution to the arts a traditional form of poetry that spoke of narrow tribal matters.

The harsh and unforgiving environment in which the Najdis lived explains why Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab found a receptive audience for the equally harsh and unforgiving brand of Islam he preached. The same environment that produced the founder of Wahhabism later produced the radical Ikhwan movement which challenged the authority of King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud. In the nineteen twenties, the king took on the Ikhwan, who were openly accusing him of deviating from the true faith. When he returned to Riyadh after joining Hijaz to his kingdom, the Ikhwan said he had left on a camel and come back in an American car!

This was just one of many clashes between the movement and the king over such issues as whether the radio was sinful or the telephone an invention of the devil, in short, over any of the fruits of modernity which threatened their fundamentalist vision of the world. It is a vision that can only be understood by studying what is known as the secret sects of Islam (radical fringe movements that never became part of mainstream Islam), as well as the message of Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab, the product of many factors, including the sociological and geopolitical environment of the deserts of Najd.

These factors allowed the Wahhabis, after they invaded Hijaz, to impose their austere understanding of religion throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Among other things, they banned headstones and any structures identifying burial sites, insisting on unmarked graves flush with the land. They combated Sufism in Mecca and elsewhere as contrary to the teachings of Islam. They even entered into an armed clash with the Egyptian mahmil, a splendidly decorated litter on which the Egyptians sent a new cover for the Ka'bah every year. The mahmil ceremony was a merry occasion celebrated by the Egyptians with their traditional love of music, dancing and revelry. For the Najdis, who had launched their puritanical revival movement to purge Islam of what they saw as deviations from the straight and true path of orthodoxy, such unseemly displays of levity could not be tolerated.

What I want to cast light on here i

Here's the complete series:

1. The Big Change in Islamic Societies
2. Muslims & The Clash of Civilizations
3. The Mentality of Violence... and the Games Nations Play!
4. A Movement Bred in the Isolation of the Desert
5. The Fall of the Oppressors and the Emergence of the Sword
6. The Crisis Facing Non-Wahabbi Islam

The man who founded Wahhabism was not a theologian but a proselyter who was determined to convert the faithful to his harsh brand of Islam. Intellectually close to the dialectical Islamic theologians who asserted the primacy of tradition (naql) over reason (aql), Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab was a disciple of ibn-Taymiyah, a strict traditionalist who allowed little scope for reason or independent thinking. He was also a product of his geographical environment, a remote outpost of history.

Unlike Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where ancient civilizations had flourished and made their mark on human history, or places like Dubai and Hijaz, which lay on trade routes and dealt extensively with the outside world, the desert of Najd in the Eastern Province of what is now Saudi Arabia had no civilization to speak of before Islam. Nor did it ever become a cultural centre like the capitals of the Caliphate, Medina, Damascus and Baghdad. Thanks to its arid, barren landscape, Najd remained a cultural backwater, its sole contribution to the arts a traditional form of poetry that spoke of narrow tribal matters.

The harsh and unforgiving environment in which the Najdis lived explains why Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab found a receptive audience for the equally harsh and unforgiving brand of Islam he preached. The same environment that produced the founder of Wahhabism later produced the radical Ikhwan movement which challenged the authority of King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud. In the nineteen twenties, the king took on the Ikhwan, who were openly accusing him of deviating from the true faith. When he returned to Riyadh after joining Hijaz to his kingdom, the Ikhwan said he had left on a camel and come back in an American car!

This was just one of many clashes between the movement and the king over such issues as whether the radio was sinful or the telephone an invention of the devil, in short, over any of the fruits of modernity which threatened their fundamentalist vision of the world. It is a vision that can only be understood by studying what is known as the secret sects of Islam (radical fringe movements that never became part of mainstream Islam), as well as the message of Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab, the product of many factors, including the sociological and geopolitical environment of the deserts of Najd.

These factors allowed the Wahhabis, after they invaded Hijaz, to impose their austere understanding of religion throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Among other things, they banned headstones and any structures identifying burial sites, insisting on unmarked graves flush with the land. They combated Sufism in Mecca and elsewhere as contrary to the teachings of Islam. They even entered into an armed clash with the Egyptian mahmil, a splendidly decorated litter on which the Egyptians sent a new cover for the Ka'bah every year. The mahmil ceremony was a merry occasion celebrated by the Egyptians with their traditional love of music, dancing and revelry. For the Najdis, who had launched their puritanical revival movement to purge Islam of what they saw as deviations from the straight and true path of orthodoxy, such unseemly displays of levity could not be tolerated.

What I want to cast light on here i

Here's the complete series:

1. The Big Change in Islamic Societies
2. Muslims & The Clash of Civilizations
3. The Mentality of Violence... and the Games Nations Play!
4. A Movement Bred in the Isolation of the Desert
5. The Fall of the Oppressors and the Emergence of the Sword
6. The Crisis Facing Non-Wahabbi Islam

The man who founded Wahhabism was not a theologian but a proselyter who was determined to convert the faithful to his harsh brand of Islam. Intellectually close to the dialectical Islamic theologians who asserted the primacy of tradition (naql) over reason (aql), Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab was a disciple of ibn-Taymiyah, a strict traditionalist who allowed little scope for reason or independent thinking. He was also a product of his geographical environment, a remote outpost of history.

Unlike Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where ancient civilizations had flourished and made their mark on human history, or places like Dubai and Hijaz, which lay on trade routes and dealt extensively with the outside world, the desert of Najd in the Eastern Province of what is now Saudi Arabia had no civilization to speak of before Islam. Nor did it ever become a cultural centre like the capitals of the Caliphate, Medina, Damascus and Baghdad. Thanks to its arid, barren landscape, Najd remained a cultural backwater, its sole contribution to the arts a traditional form of poetry that spoke of narrow tribal matters.

The harsh and unforgiving environment in which the Najdis lived explains why Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab found a receptive audience for the equally harsh and unforgiving brand of Islam he preached. The same environment that produced the founder of Wahhabism later produced the radical Ikhwan movement which challenged the authority of King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud. In the nineteen twenties, the king took on the Ikhwan, who were openly accusing him of deviating from the true faith. When he returned to Riyadh after joining Hijaz to his kingdom, the Ikhwan said he had left on a camel and come back in an American car!

This was just one of many clashes between the movement and the king over such issues as whether the radio was sinful or the telephone an invention of the devil, in short, over any of the fruits of modernity which threatened their fundamentalist vision of the world. It is a vision that can only be understood by studying what is known as the secret sects of Islam (radical fringe movements that never became part of mainstream Islam), as well as the message of Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab, the product of many factors, including the sociological and geopolitical environment of the deserts of Najd.

These factors allowed the Wahhabis, after they invaded Hijaz, to impose their austere understanding of religion throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Among other things, they banned headstones and any structures identifying burial sites, insisting on unmarked graves flush with the land. They combated Sufism in Mecca and elsewhere as contrary to the teachings of Islam. They even entered into an armed clash with the Egyptian mahmil, a splendidly decorated litter on which the Egyptians sent a new cover for the Ka'bah every year. The mahmil ceremony was a merry occasion celebrated by the Egyptians with their traditional love of music, dancing and revelry. For the Najdis, who had launched their puritanical revival movement to purge Islam of what they saw as deviations from the straight and true path of orthodoxy, such unseemly displays of levity could not be tolerated.

What I want to cast light on here i

Here's the complete series:

1. The Big Change in Islamic Societies
2. Muslims & The Clash of Civilizations
3. The Mentality of Violence... and the Games Nations Play!
4. A Movement Bred in the Isolation of the Desert
5. The Fall of the Oppressors and the Emergence of the Sword
6. The Crisis Facing Non-Wahabbi Islam

The man who founded Wahhabism was not a theologian but a proselyter who was determined to convert the faithful to his harsh brand of Islam. Intellectually close to the dialectical Islamic theologians who asserted the primacy of tradition (naql) over reason (aql), Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab was a disciple of ibn-Taymiyah, a strict traditionalist who allowed little scope for reason or independent thinking. He was also a product of his geographical environment, a remote outpost of history.

Unlike Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where ancient civilizations had flourished and made their mark on human history, or places like Dubai and Hijaz, which lay on trade routes and dealt extensively with the outside world, the desert of Najd in the Eastern Province of what is now Saudi Arabia had no civilization to speak of before Islam. Nor did it ever become a cultural centre like the capitals of the Caliphate, Medina, Damascus and Baghdad. Thanks to its arid, barren landscape, Najd remained a cultural backwater, its sole contribution to the arts a traditional form of poetry that spoke of narrow tribal matters.

The harsh and unforgiving environment in which the Najdis lived explains why Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab found a receptive audience for the equally harsh and unforgiving brand of Islam he preached. The same environment that produced the founder of Wahhabism later produced the radical Ikhwan movement which challenged the authority of King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud. In the nineteen twenties, the king took on the Ikhwan, who were openly accusing him of deviating from the true faith. When he returned to Riyadh after joining Hijaz to his kingdom, the Ikhwan said he had left on a camel and come back in an American car!

This was just one of many clashes between the movement and the king over such issues as whether the radio was sinful or the telephone an invention of the devil, in short, over any of the fruits of modernity which threatened their fundamentalist vision of the world. It is a vision that can only be understood by studying what is known as the secret sects of Islam (radical fringe movements that never became part of mainstream Islam), as well as the message of Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab, the product of many factors, including the sociological and geopolitical environment of the deserts of Najd.

These factors allowed the Wahhabis, after they invaded Hijaz, to impose their austere understanding of religion throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Among other things, they banned headstones and any structures identifying burial sites, insisting on unmarked graves flush with the land. They combated Sufism in Mecca and elsewhere as contrary to the teachings of Islam. They even entered into an armed clash with the Egyptian mahmil, a splendidly decorated litter on which the Egyptians sent a new cover for the Ka'bah every year. The mahmil ceremony was a merry occasion celebrated by the Egyptians with their traditional love of music, dancing and revelry. For the Najdis, who had launched their puritanical revival movement to purge Islam of what they saw as deviations from the straight and true path of orthodoxy, such unseemly displays of levity could not be tolerated.

What I want to cast light on here i

Here's the complete series:

1. The Big Change in Islamic Societies
2. Muslims & The Clash of Civilizations
3. The Mentality of Violence... and the Games Nations Play!
4. A Movement Bred in the Isolation of the Desert
5. The Fall of the Oppressors and the Emergence of the Sword
6. The Crisis Facing Non-Wahabbi Islam

The man who founded Wahhabism was not a theologian but a proselyter who was determined to convert the faithful to his harsh brand of Islam. Intellectually close to the dialectical Islamic theologians who asserted the primacy of tradition (naql) over reason (aql), Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab was a disciple of ibn-Taymiyah, a strict traditionalist who allowed little scope for reason or independent thinking. He was also a product of his geographical environment, a remote outpost of history.

Unlike Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where ancient civilizations had flourished and made their mark on human history, or places like Dubai and Hijaz, which lay on trade routes and dealt extensively with the outside world, the desert of Najd in the Eastern Province of what is now Saudi Arabia had no civilization to speak of before Islam. Nor did it ever become a cultural centre like the capitals of the Caliphate, Medina, Damascus and Baghdad. Thanks to its arid, barren landscape, Najd remained a cultural backwater, its sole contribution to the arts a traditional form of poetry that spoke of narrow tribal matters.

The harsh and unforgiving environment in which the Najdis lived explains why Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab found a receptive audience for the equally harsh and unforgiving brand of Islam he preached. The same environment that produced the founder of Wahhabism later produced the radical Ikhwan movement which challenged the authority of King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud. In the nineteen twenties, the king took on the Ikhwan, who were openly accusing him of deviating from the true faith. When he returned to Riyadh after joining Hijaz to his kingdom, the Ikhwan said he had left on a camel and come back in an American car!

This was just one of many clashes between the movement and the king over such issues as whether the radio was sinful or the telephone an invention of the devil, in short, over any of the fruits of modernity which threatened their fundamentalist vision of the world. It is a vision that can only be understood by studying what is known as the secret sects of Islam (radical fringe movements that never became part of mainstream Islam), as well as the message of Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab, the product of many factors, including the sociological and geopolitical environment of the deserts of Najd.

These factors allowed the Wahhabis, after they invaded Hijaz, to impose their austere understanding of religion throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Among other things, they banned headstones and any structures identifying burial sites, insisting on unmarked graves flush with the land. They combated Sufism in Mecca and elsewhere as contrary to the teachings of Islam. They even entered into an armed clash with the Egyptian mahmil, a splendidly decorated litter on which the Egyptians sent a new cover for the Ka'bah every year. The mahmil ceremony was a merry occasion celebrated by the Egyptians with their traditional love of music, dancing and revelry. For the Najdis, who had launched their puritanical revival movement to purge Islam of what they saw as deviations from the straight and true path of orthodoxy, such unseemly displays of levity could not be tolerated.

What I want to cast light on here i

Here's the complete series:

1. The Big Change in Islamic Societies
2. Muslims & The Clash of Civilizations
3. The Mentality of Violence... and the Games Nations Play!
4. A Movement Bred in the Isolation of the Desert
5. The Fall of the Oppressors and the Emergence of the Sword
6. The Crisis Facing Non-Wahabbi Islam

The man who founded Wahhabism was not a theologian but a proselyter who was determined to convert the faithful to his harsh brand of Islam. Intellectually close to the dialectical Islamic theologians who asserted the primacy of tradition (naql) over reason (aql), Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab was a disciple of ibn-Taymiyah, a strict traditionalist who allowed little scope for reason or independent thinking. He was also a product of his geographical environment, a remote outpost of history.

Unlike Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where ancient civilizations had flourished and made their mark on human history, or places like Dubai and Hijaz, which lay on trade routes and dealt extensively with the outside world, the desert of Najd in the Eastern Province of what is now Saudi Arabia had no civilization to speak of before Islam. Nor did it ever become a cultural centre like the capitals of the Caliphate, Medina, Damascus and Baghdad. Thanks to its arid, barren landscape, Najd remained a cultural backwater, its sole contribution to the arts a traditional form of poetry that spoke of narrow tribal matters.

The harsh and unforgiving environment in which the Najdis lived explains why Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab found a receptive audience for the equally harsh and unforgiving brand of Islam he preached. The same environment that produced the founder of Wahhabism later produced the radical Ikhwan movement which challenged the authority of King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud. In the nineteen twenties, the king took on the Ikhwan, who were openly accusing him of deviating from the true faith. When he returned to Riyadh after joining Hijaz to his kingdom, the Ikhwan said he had left on a camel and come back in an American car!

This was just one of many clashes between the movement and the king over such issues as whether the radio was sinful or the telephone an invention of the devil, in short, over any of the fruits of modernity which threatened their fundamentalist vision of the world. It is a vision that can only be understood by studying what is known as the secret sects of Islam (radical fringe movements that never became part of mainstream Islam), as well as the message of Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab, the product of many factors, including the sociological and geopolitical environment of the deserts of Najd.

These factors allowed the Wahhabis, after they invaded Hijaz, to impose their austere understanding of religion throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Among other things, they banned headstones and any structures identifying burial sites, insisting on unmarked graves flush with the land. They combated Sufism in Mecca and elsewhere as contrary to the teachings of Islam. They even entered into an armed clash with the Egyptian mahmil, a splendidly decorated litter on which the Egyptians sent a new cover for the Ka'bah every year. The mahmil ceremony was a merry occasion celebrated by the Egyptians with their traditional love of music, dancing and revelry. For the Najdis, who had launched their puritanical revival movement to purge Islam of what they saw as deviations from the straight and true path of orthodoxy, such unseemly displays of levity could not be tolerated.

What I want to cast light on here i

Yeah I have to agree, Fact Check is pretty good.

MensNewsDaily.com collects pretty good commentary from a number of contributers on a number of issues that aren't forefront on the MSM. Their articles are short and poigniant. They have a forum you can discuss the articles in, so I would call that a blog.

Powerlineblog.com is pretty reasonable for commentary and was one of the big players in Rathergate. INDCJournal might be less reasonable but they have the quickest footwork in the business. They'll be the ones to call the sources, call experts, etc... Footwork that is a lost art in journalism. But their commentary is a bit off-balance and can often trip themselves up.

Little Green Footballs is often misunderstood, but I like them. They do their job very well. Even better though is Watch which is devoid of the sophmoric commentary.

But then there is an upper eschelon, which FactCheck belongs to, as does Belmont Club. When Belmont treats an issue, you've got gold.

But the absolute MOAB of the blogosphere is Bill Whittle. He posts seldomly, and when he does it is incredibly long. But there is no better writer on the Internet that I've found. As it says on his website: If Steven den Best is Spock, he is the Captain Kirk. Seriously there is no finer work on the internet than his "Strength" series, followed closely by "Empire".

For humor, Scrappleface and CoxandForkum are great. They not only give you the humor but they give you the stories that inspired it.

The short version might be: Al-Quaeda looks for conflicts between Muslim and non-muslim states, and sees to inflame them and entangle them with Al-Quaeda's larger goals. Chechnya is one example where they have done so successfully.

We certainly are in agreement, though, that Russia's actions in Chechnya over the last decade have been astoundingly brutal. It's worth stating in Russia's defense that when they tried to pull out, Chechnya came to resemble Afghanistan as more of a "terrorism-sponsored state" than the other way around. But nevertheless, they've leveled Grozny twice in a decade - the response to last week's massacre is going to be exceedingly ugly.

He doesn't care about borders, period. In his mind the issue is (his kind of) muslims vs. infidels (which includes Shi'ites and insufficiently observant Sunnis as well as all Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, animists, Christians, agnostics and atheists).

His idea of "spiritual pollution" includes the cultural influences of radio and TV. Are you willing to get rid of comsats and the Internet to satisfy the likes of him?

Take a look at this bit of insight and tell me if it doesn't ring true. Then tell me if there is any way to coexist with such lunatics on the face of this planet. (I don't think that they have any business running around loose, and the quicker they are in prison or dead the better.)

Christopher Hitchens has a strong record for high quality attacks on major government figures, notably producing the article/book/movie "The Trial of Henry Kissinger". He's around twice as smart than Michael Moore, and a hundred times more honest, he's also personally debated Moore in the past.

I'm just going to post the excerpts posted by winds of change. But as they say, read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, leftist enfant terrible Chris Hitchens (no friend of Stalinists either) annihilates Farenheit 9/11 right to its foundations in "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore." Some choice excerpts:

"There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery."

Come on, Hitch old boy, stop holding back. Tell us how you really feel. But seriously, why should this matter?

"Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft."

Unless your craft is to be the next Leni Riefenstahl. Or Lillian Hellman. But on to some of Hitchens' more substantive beefs:

"It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all--the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002--or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that the

The very thought of trusting Metallica seems sort of, um, crazy? in the first place. Have you taken a look at those guys lately?

As to the Model Rocketry problem, it really all boils down to the BATFE wetting their collective pants over the thought of someone building a homebrew SAM missile, which is fairly easy anyway.

The big thing as I see it is the same thing was done to Black powder, which means that making your own rocket engines, or even reloading your own ammunition, just got REAL hard AFAICT.

Nope. It's really not worth my time. Try this for a start, and this for a bit more depth. I could go on, but won't, because it's really not worth my time. I would add, though, that it will be interesting to see how much of Said's influence survives with so many of his disciples being arrested for aiding terrorist organizations.