Sic Semper Tyrannis

MY PPT on the Military Orders

I spent the morning giving a lecture on the Crusader states and the Military religious orders.  Here are my slides.  There is no text.  Make up your own.  pl

Download the_crusader_states2.ppt

I was a bit tired yesterday when I put this up.  I felt something like that Templar to the left.  forthose who might want to reac something about this general subject I suggest:

Zoe Oldenbourg, "The Crusades," out of print but available.

Sir John Runciman "A History of the Crusades," 3 volumes

Anything by Joshua Prawer

There is some new research concerning the origins of the people of the 1st Crusade and the demographic pattern of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

I recommend the director's cut of the movie, "The Kingdon of Heaven,"  There are a number of ahistorical things about the film but I think it captures the spirit of the thing well.

I would welcome comments that add to the bibliography of this subject.  800 years ago wasn't really so long as one might think.  pl

The search for the "New South"

"Dickinson says you know you're in real Virginia "when the big issue is hunting. People who are for hunting and the Second Amendment are going to vote Republican to protect against radical socialist communist views. It's also about faith: I don't see how any person who believes in Jesus Christ could vote for Obama or any Democrat." "  Fisher

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"There's no such anxiety up the road at Northern Virginia Community College in Woodbridge in Prince William County. The "real Virginia" concept draws nothing but blank stares here. Most students feel no connection either to Southern culture or to the notion that Northern Virginia is an outpost of the District. They think of Prince William as generic suburbia, hardly different from similar settings in New Jersey or North Carolina."  Fisher

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Walker Percy wrote in "The Thanatos Syndrome"  that if there is such a thing as Southern culture, part of it consists in not talking about it.  Percy knew very well that the South abides, but his point was well taken.  Ron White says that he knows he should be quiet about some things, but "lacks the ability."  Amen, brother.

I learned long ago that people see what they want to see.  Marc Fisher drove south along I-95 all the way to Fredericksburg, fifty miles from Washington in search of "proof" that Southerners are inbred, mouth breathing, trolls.  He found what he was seeking.  He could have stayed in the District of Columbia and found equally bizarre, if slightly different folk.

This "controversy" over the blueness or the redness of places in Virginia is silly, but...

"Let's Vote!"

"Never have so many people in the region registered to vote, and with the intense interest in the presidential election, officials expect turnout rates as high as 90 percent. Virginia has added 500,000 registered voters to its rolls since the 2004 presidential election and now has more than 5 million. Maryland's list has grown 10 percent, to almost 3.5 million, and the District has almost 427,000.

"The numbers are going to be staggering," said Guy Mickley, president of the Maryland Association of Elections Officials."  Washpost

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On election day, my wife and I will walk a few blocks to "Matthew F. Maury School" to cast our ballots in the school gymnasium.  She was an election official for many years and the polling place will be filled with poll workers who are old colleagues of hers.  The people waiting in line to vote will be neighbors.  It will be a scene that Norman Rockwell would have liked to paint, but, in fact, the Rosemont neighborhood is altogether like that.

Until a few years ago candidates were not identified by party on Virginia ballots.  We do not register to vote by party.  Hell, until a few years ago you did not need an ID card to vote.  You certified as to who you were subject to prosecution if you lied.  In Alexandria, Virginia civic activism is a major participant sport.

Having said all that, I think that the level of public interest in this election is noticeably higher than anything I have seen before.  The turnout for this one is going to be massive.  There are candidate signs everywhere on lawns.

It is ironic that the NAACP is suing Governor Kaine over the issue of preparations for the election.  Kaine is a Democrat.  He is a co-chair of Obama's national campaign.  He is a former mayor of Richmond, a city dominated by Black Virginians.

As the man said last night on "The Daily Show," let's get this over with.

Let's vote!  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102801788.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008102803740&s_pos=

The Raid Into Syria

""Iraq is in contact with the American side about reports regarding the attack along the frontier with Syria. This region is a theatre of insurgent activities against Iraq using Syria as a launch pad," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

He said Baghdad was also asking Damascus to extradite members of an unnamed group it accused of killing 19 Iraqi security guards in a recent attack.

In Syria, the official press said Sunday's attack -- which the authorities say left eight civilians dead, including four children -- was a "war crime" by the administration of US President George W. Bush.

"The American forces from Iraq committed cold-blooded murder," government newspaper Tishrin wrote. "They committed a war crime in killing eight Syrian civilians in a quiet village."

Official media reported that American helicopter-borne troops from Iraq launched an assault on a building site Sunday in the village of Al-Sukkiraya, which lies just eight kilometres (five miles) from the border.

It was the first confirmed US action of its kind into Syrian territory amid frosty relations between Washington and Damascus."  AFP

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How does one explain this operation?

At present; the Bush Administration and its perennial and unending hostility to Syria is about to disappear, negotiations between the US and Iraq are in a delicate condition, Syria has signaled a desire to improve relations with the US, Israel and Lebanon, there is a new US commander in Iraq.

Where in all of that is an explanation for this US commando raid into the Syrian border country?

Some thoughts:

- The US Special Operations Forces (USSOF) counter-terrorist forces may have been "off the leash" on this one.  These forces are exclusively focused on hunting down terrorist people and support group world-wide.  Rumsfeld made them largely independent of the regular military chain of command.  They amount to a global SWAT team.  They develop their own targeting intelligence and make their own plans.  The amount of control that the local US joint commander has over them is not very clear.  They are not noted for a great deal of insight into geopolitical niceties.

- General Odierno, the man who replaced Petraeus in Iraq, is not famous for nuanced reactions to frustrating situations.

Whatever the cause, the result of ham fisted actions of this kind can be disastrous for the chance of making something better emerge from the situation that Bush/Cheney is leaving for President Obama and his team.  pl

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5idcYqma-8uXPWUzIwI5oujhh03gg

GOP = Whigs?

Millard Fillmore was the last Whig president.  He succeeded Zachary Taylor upon Taylor's unexpected death.  There were a few more Whig candidates for president after Fillmore, but the game was really over for the Whigs.  The party broke up over the internal "contradictions" of its Northern and Southern factions.  Complicating the situation was the competition provided by the "Know Nothing" nativists, the "Free Soilers,' the "Anti-Masonic" party, and the small abolitionist movement.

David Frum is a Canadian born neocon who wrote speeches for "W" for a few years and now has taken root at the American Enterprise Institute.  He is a utopian in political thought who has consistently supported an aggressive pursuit of democratic westernization in foreign policy but has never shown much interest (so far as I know) in American domestic affairs.  A few years back, he wrote a book entitled "The End of Evil" with Richard Perle (you remember him). Got the picture?

In the article linked to below, Frum repudiates the strategy of the disastrous McCain campaign.  In doing so he also implicitly repudiates the coalition of forces that has made up the present composition of the Republican Party.  In recent years the GOP has become a party in which a right wing foreign policy elite has manipulated the voting power of a "base" increasingly made up of small town, rural, white, faith driven activists oriented towards "issues of conscience" such as; abortion, gay marriage, gun control, etc. 

The problem with that coalition is that the activists and the neocons do not make up a winning majority on a national basis and the mass of supporters of this coalition are only that, supporters.  They are not activists.  There are other potential priorities for them.

The country has now come on hard times.  The economy, the foreign policy mess into which the neocons led the public, the real estate losses of ordinary Americans, the growing hatred of the Wall Street "Masters of the Universe" (perceived as Republican insiders); all these factors are destroying the aggregation of numbers that has led to Republican victories for decades.

The neocon and nativist/rural factions of the Republican Party may be too deeply entrenched in power to be removed from control.  This may mean that the Republican Party itself is not salvageable. 

It will be a good idea to look very closely at the the "internals" of the coming election results.

The time may be coming when the centrist parts of both parties have more in common than they have with the existing party structures.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302081.html

Will OPEC production cuts work?

"Even the Saudis, who argued for keeping the markets well supplied at the last OPEC meeting, seemed to have been struck by the speed of the price drop.

When prices spiked this summer, the cartel’s leaders attributed the jump to speculation, and Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer and OPEC’s most powerful member, opened the taps and increased production to a record of 10 million barrels a day. The Saudis have since pared their output to around 9.5 million barrels a day, according to analysts.

As the lowest-cost producer, Saudi Arabia can afford to let prices fall for a while without hurting its budget. Most analysts estimate that the Saudis could live with oil at $55 to $65 a barrel. But other producers need higher prices. Nigeria’s oil minister said his country would be more comfortable with $80, Qatar has set a range of $70 to $90, and Iran’s representative said that prices below $90 a barrel would hurt.

For Iran and Venezuela, the drop in prices is particularly painful,"  NY Times

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OPEC agreements on production cuts are not going to halt the fall in the world price of crude.  The fantastic prices that prevailed in the Summer of 2008 were the outcome of trading in oil as financial investments rather than as commodities.  Deregulation led to this as it led to speculative excess in many other commodities (real estate derivatives being the most famous example).  A valuation of crude by the financial markets resulted that had little to do with short term demand and everything to do with the boundless "greed" espoused by Gordon Gecko.

The collapse of the stock and credit markets that has occurred has started an unwinding of the fantasy of the false short term valuation of crude oil.  At the same time the actual economic slowdowns that are happening around the world are reducing real short term demand for oil to even lower levels.  This produces a downward spiral that has a certain built in momentum.

The oil producing countries need the revenues that they were earning at the inflated prices of oil that prevailed last Summer.  In many countries the governments themselves are the principal owners of the oil producing companies.  A loss of revenue by the oil companies is a direct "hit" on the governments' budgets.  Political stability in these countries is to some extent dependent on budgets.  Cutting production is a gamble that many of these governments will hesitate to adopt.  Cheating on OPEC established quotas for production is an old feature of the oil supply situation.  In addition, there will be countries who will simply not "play ball" with OPEC in this.

Conclusion:  Production reduction efforts on the part of OPEC will not be fully effective.  Demand will continue to fall for some unforeseeable period of time. Therefore, crude oil prices wil continue to decline.  To what level will prices decline and for how long?  That is not knowable at this time, but It is likely that price will decline to below 50 dollars a barrel.  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/business/worldbusiness/25oil.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&bl&ei=5087&en=e931bc5317323329&ex=1225080000&oref=slogin

Tribe on tribe - Pakistan

"The wounded men, and many others in the hospital, were supposed to be the backbone of a Pakistani government effort to take on the Taliban and its backers, Al Qaeda, with armies of traditional tribesmen working in consultation with the Pakistani military.

The tribal militias, known as lashkars, have quickly become a crucial tool of the Pakistani strategy in the tribal belt, where the army has been fighting the Taliban for more than two months. Their emergence is a sign not only of the tribesmen's rising frustration with the ruthlessness of the Taliban, but also of their traditional desire to run their own affairs and keep the Pakistani Army at bay, Pakistani officers and law enforcement officials say.

But even though some in Washington have pointed to the emergence of the lashkars as a hopeful parallel to the largely successful Sunni Awakening movement in Iraq, the tribesmen, armed with antiquated weaponry from the 1980s Afghan war, are facing better-equipped, highly motivated Taliban who have intimidated and crushed some of the militia.

Unlike in Anbar Province, one senior U.S. official said, where the Iraqi tribes "woke up to millions of dollars in government assistance and the support of the 3rd Infantry division," the support by the Pakistani Army and civilian government for the tribal militias has been "episodic" and so far "unsustained.""  IHT

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"Four things greater than all things are,

Women, and horses, and power and war."

R. Kipling

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This will work.

The takfiris and the Taliban are irritants in Pakistani tribal territory just as they were in Anbar and Diyala.  The lives of the tribesmen have a certain rhythm, a rhythm that has developed over hundred of years.  They may well be fanatics of some sort within the larger Islamic galaxy of communities, but  they are their own kind of fanatics.  Their lives are ruled by their conception of Islam, their tribal customary law and their allegiances to family, clan and tribe.  As in Iraq the Sunni takfiri jihadis seek to "reform" the lives of the tribesmen, to make them "pure" as they imagine the early community of the Muslims was "pure."  Nobody wants to be made "pure" according to someone else's conception of "purity."

This is the great weakness of the international movement of the takfiri jihadis.  They are vulnerable everywhere to armed rejection by those they wish to "save." 

I have no specific knowledge of this but I would wager that the "episodic" nature of the support these tribesmen have received will be a lot more dependable soon.

This may bring on civil war in tribal territory?   Quite possibly.  pl

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/23/asia/militia.php

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/ballad_of_kings_jest.html

The McCain/Palin Administration - Not!

Sarah Palin started calling it the "McCain/Palin Administration" immediately after her coronation at the Republican convention.  Most of us "inside the beltway" creatures knew right away that this was a bad thing.  For the vice-presidential nominee of any party to claim that he or she will exercize executive power during the administration of the presidential nominee is an act of unconstitutional bravado unsupported by history or law.

"W" gave Cheney delegated power, power based not in law but in his own willingness to sign over function and authority.  It should be understood that "W" could have delegated the same authority to "Joe" Wirzelbacher (or whatever his name is).  So long as he was a citizen, the same powers that "W" gave Cheney could have been "loaned" to "Joe."  The point is that the "loan" of powers by Bush to Cheney was a personal matter, and the loan does not endow future vice-presidents with similar or indeed any powers or functions other than to succeed to the presidency and to act as the president of the senate.  Former vice-presidents have not claimed that the presidency of the senate involved anything other than an occasional appearance in the chamber and the casting of tie breaking votes.  Sarah Palin's apparent belief that she could inject herself into the business of the senate seems to be unprecedented.  It would have been interesting to watch.

Alas, it will not be.

After watching the developing dynamic of the election state by state, I have come to think that this election will be a landslide of historic proportion.  This is a "perfect storm" for the Republicans.  There are many cyclones that have produced this typhoon; revulsion against the proto-fascism of the neocons, the muddle that is the Bush Administration, "Darth" Cheney and his henchmen, the two wars, the failure to capture bin Laden, the stock market crash, the rumors of a coming depression/recession, etc.  Add some more disasters to the list if you like.  There are many possibilities.

It looked for months as though the deep seated racism of many Americans might be enough to hold back the wind, but that ancient sin and defect has not proven to be effective this time. 

Obama will be president.   The Democrats will hold both houses of Congress so strongly that they will be tempted to govern unwisely, pushing the country farther to the left than its nature will allow.

McCain will be finished.  Perhaps he can find some peace in that.  Palin will become queen of the Northwest and prophetess of the Evangelicals.  Unfortunately for her, there are not enough votes in that base to elect her president.

We will see what the new adminsitration will be like.

It would be a good thing to have a government made up of human beings.  pl

Fortunato's Creed

"Pat Army Specialist Stephen R. Fortunato (25) passed away in Afghanistan this past week. He wrote the following recently and if you see fit please pass it on as it is especially poingant considering his short time here. He was from my hometown, though I did not know him I knew his family and he came from fine stock. All the Best Bobo " ""If I may … I’d like to say something….Just to get it out there so it is clear. To all the pampered and protected Americans who feel it is their duty to inform me that I am not fighting for their freedom, and that i am a pawn in Bush’s agenda of greed and oil acquisition: Noted, and Fuck You. I am not a robot. i am not blind or ignorant to the state of the world or the implications of the “war on terrorism.” i know that our leaders have made mistakes in the handling of a very sensitive situation, but do not for one second think that you can make me lose faith in what we, meaning America’s sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers in uniform are doing. I am doing my part in fighting a very real enemy of the United States, i.e. Taliban, Al Qaeda, and various other radical sects of Islam that have declared war on our way of life. Unless you believe the events of 9/11 were the result of a government conspiracy, which by the way would make you a MORON, there is no reasonable argument you can make against there being a true and dangerous threat that needs to be dealt with. I don’t care if there are corporations leeching off the war effort to make money, and I don’t care if you don’t think our freedom within America’s borders is actually at stake. I just want to kill those who would harm my family and friends. it is that simple. Even if this is just a war for profit or to assert America’s power, so what? Someone has to be on top and I want it to be us. There’s nothing wrong with wishing prosperity for your side. I am a proud American. I believe that my country allows me to live my life more or less however I want to, and believe me, I have seen what the alternative of that looks like. I also believe that our big scary government does way more than it has to help complete fuck-ups get back on their feet, a stark comparison to places where leaders just line their own pockets with gold while allowing the people who gave them their power and privilege to starve. I have chosen my corner. I back my country, and am proud to defend it against aggressors. Also, if you dare accuse us of being inhumane, or overly aggressive because we have rolled into someone else’s country and blown some shit up and shot some people, let me remind you of just how inhumane we COULD be in defending ourselves. Let me remind you that we have a warhead that drops multiple bomblets from the stratosphere which upon impact, would turn all the sand in Iraq to glass, and reduce every living thing there to dust. Do we use it? No. Instead we use the most humane weapon ever devised: the American Soldier. We send our bravest (and perhaps admittedly craziest) men and women into enemy territory, into harms way, to root out those whom we are after and do our best to leave innocent lives unscathed. …One last thing… A proposal: I know it has been stated time and time again but I just think it is worthy of reiteration. If you find yourself completely disgusted with the way America is being ran, and how we handle things on the global stage, you can leave. Isn’t that amazing? No one will stop you! If you are an anarchist, there are places you can go where there is no government to tell you anything. That’s right…you are left solely to your own devices and you can handle the men who show up at your door with AKs in any way that you see fit. Just don’t try good old American debate tactics on them because you will most likely end up bound and blind-folded, to have your head chopped off on the internet so your parents can see it. However, if you insist on staying here and taking advantage of privileges such as free speech and WIC, keep the counter-productive shit to a minimum while the grown ups figure out how to handle this god-awful mess in the middle east. Stephen R. Fortunato 26th Infantry Regiment US Army"'

Schedule

I will be gone until Wednesday.  I am on a panel at Fordham University Tuesday.  It is at the Manhattan Campus of the law school from 1 to 5 PM.  Subject "Torture and American Culture."

For those who might be interested, I have fnished a draft of my next novel, "Death Piled Hard."  pl

http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/Public_Affairs/topstories_1379.asp