Intervention's Negative Side

Today, the American-led establishment of a no-fly zone in Libya seems to be a success, with NATO set to take over imminently. The rebel forces fighting Qaddafi have easily taken many cities as Libyan forces are sued into submission.

But there remains a dark aura that could put a negative reflection on American involvement in this civil war. News came yesterday that the rebels are heading towards Sirte, hometown of Qaddafi and a bastion of support for him in the clan-based rivalries that his iron grip has blocked from view during his rule. This is eerily similar to two conflicts where outside powers have intervened and ended up allowing war crimes to be perpetrated that were the result of old rivalries that boiled over without the power structure that previously held the groups in check.

1. Sabra-Shatilla-The massacre at the two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut was done by the Maronite Christian militia, the Phalangists, that was the military wing of the party run by Bashir Gemayel, then-president of Lebanon. The Lebanese Civil War had started in 1975, catalyzed by the arrival of the PLO in 1968, which started launching attacks into Israel with a base in southern Lebanon and Yasser Arafat and the other leadership in Beirut. A consociational government had divided power between the Shia, Sunni, Maronites, and Druze, with little conflict. But the arrival of a great deal of Palestinians and their de-facto government was set to upset the instable peace.

Israel invaded in 1978 and 1982 to eliminate the PLO, and allied itself with the Phalangists who wanted to rid Lebanon of the PLO and sue into submission the Muslim populations. But in 1982, Israeli soldiers watched from a distance and heard the massacre in the camps, only seeing them the next day. The resulting trauma to Israeli soldiers present is shown by Ari Folman in his animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir, who were scared to remember what they witnessed during their deployment. The PLO left for Tunisia following the war, but Israel, and defense minister Ariel Sharon, created an even worse impression on Lebanon that has helped lead to the rise of Hezbollah into a leadership role in the government today.

2. Bosnia-Josef Tito was an excellent leader. Leading Yugoslavia, he insulted the Soviet Union, drawing the ire of Stalin, and helped start the first international organization for the developing world by the developing world, the Non-Aligned Movement. Tito played into an alliance with the United States, and kept down the strife between the Slavic groups that hated each other. Somehow, Tito kept them united through his rule. (An excellent analogy for this unstable union can be seen in the relationship between famous Yugoslavian basketball players Vlade Divac, a Serb, and Drazen Petrovic, a Croat, who trailblazed the Euro invasion of the NBA but died in a car accident during the peak of his career.)

But following his death, things started to change. The government began to weaken as ethnic groups pined for independence. Each group wanted autonomy but also to dominate the other, so civil war broke out. Serbs, under the leadership of Milosevic and Karadzic massacred Bosnians to ethnically cleanse the land they wanted to be theirs. American warplanes and peacekeeping forces ended the conflict, kept rivalry simmering with the Dayton Agreement making everyone unhappy.

The legacy of colonialism casts a long shadow in Libya, Lebanon, and the former Yugoslavia, but that shadow is neither as long nor as dark as that of the rivalries of ethnic groups, religious groups, and clans that were present before their arrival. Removing stability-creating forces, even as autocratic as Tito and Qaddafi, may benefit the country in the long-run, but it also opens up opportunities for these rivalries to play out so one group they can say they had the last laugh.

Please watch Sirte for the next few days, and watch how, if a new government does rise, it deals with clan tensions. Qaddafi may have been a terrible leader and an asshole to his countrymen, but innocent people associated with him because of clan ties should not be harmed to have revenge for his rule.

What really happened in Itamar?

Since Friday night, the biggest news stories out of Israel have concerned the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar, a settlement deep inside the West Bank. Only three members of the family survived, and the disgusting act was not discovered until midnight Saturday, when their daughter returned home to find no one answering the door and finally, with the help of a neighbor, entered to find five family members murdered.

Of course, there was only one way for the Netanyahu-led coalition to react: promise to build more homes and give Itamar recognition as a city, a sentiment cranked up by major stakeholder Eli Yishai. This seems a bit irrational, as it derails the peace process even more and gives the Palestinians cause to consider taking up arms. Right now, no one knows who perpetrated these murders. Mahmoud Abbas made a point of going onto Radio Israel to harshly condemn the attacks, and Saeb Erekat and other Palestinian Authority officials came out to harshly condemn the attacks as well. Of course, some Palestinians were disgusted with the announcement of new housing projects in the West Bank to reward the martyrdom of people who burn olive groves and desecrate Arab cemeteries.

But the irrationality of this coalition will not allow for these feelings of sympathy to fall on hearing ears. The attitude is analogous to Sarah Palin: instead of "drill, baby, drill," it's "build, baby, build," in the name of a family of martyrs killed by an unknown suspect. The brother of the father, Motti, eulogized the family and asked that they not be made pawns in a national struggle, a call that seems to be falling of deaf ears. It is funny because the cabinet seems to be bypassing the courts' and police's responsibility to figure out who did this, having already found the Palestinian people guilty. No formal investigation has come up with a perpetrator, but no one is willing to say if it were a terrorist. It could have been a serial killer. No one knows, but Netanyahu is in to declaring, not letting this opportunity to rally around the flag be for naught. And while the Israelis focus on oppressing Palestinian leadership into a submissiveness similar to its people, they lose another ally in Uruguay who come to support Palestinian independence.

The next election will not be until 2013, unless there is a coalition breakdown. The religious parties will avoid a vote of no confidence at any cost, because that may play into the rise of a secular, left-leaning government. If Netanyahu were given a vote of no confidence, it is possible that Tzipi Livni would be given the chance to form a coalition, and Netanyahu, sick of the lack of diplomatic ability from Avigdor Lieberman, would accept a chance to govern in a national unity government, leaving the religious out of the fold. Kadima, with 28 seats in the Knesset, would lead, with Likud's 27 and Labor's 8 would give them enough of a majority (Let's leave the power-hungry Ehud Barak and Atzmaut out of this, as Labor wouldn't trust him and what's five members of Knesset worth?). The inclusion of Meretz's 3 would bring them up to 66 members. Possibly add in the Arab parties and you'd have 74. However, it is very unlikely that the Arab parties would join in a coalition with Likud, famous for oppressing the Arab Israelis (usually Christians and Muslims) that make up their constituents.

But could you imagine an Israeli coalition without any religious parties involved? The Interior Ministry would be able to accept so many more potential Jewish immigrants who would not need to have been converted by an Orthodox rabbi. Housing authorities would cater to building projects that do not claim more of the West Bank and instill confidence in the peace process among the Palestinians. This may be problematic in exposing the schisms between religious and secular in Israeli society, and launch a civil war that waits for the end of an Arab-Israeli conflict to be exposed, but the majority must take back the democracy it deserves sometime.

As Netanyahu clings to power, one may see the disaffected secular population finally show its power at the polls in the event of an election being called. As long as religious parties continue to be kingmakers, peace cannot be within reach. Instead, the government will continue to isolate Israel from an Arab world that is modernizing and beginning to see that the democracy they aspire to be is more oppressive than it claims.

Apocalypses Now

I love John Milius's work. As a screenwriter, there are few who can get close to him in terms of success rate. As a director, well, he made Patrick Swayze among others look like Tommy Wiseau in Red Dawn, and his terrible record in that position made his last few attempts at it TV movies. I do love him for the same reasons Vince Mancini does: he has a goatee that makes him look like Walter Sobchak and he satirized hippies through creating a rudimentary version of the Apocalypse Now symbol.

But Milius is a huge pessimist. His portrayal of the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now is known for its soldiers distancing themselves from the conflict in front of them via drugs and booze (PURPLE HAZE, MAN, PURPLE HAAAAZE!) and its use of imagery of Greek mythology's underworld, the onus of which could be put on Francis Ford Coppola:

But Milius' writing outside of his work on Rome and a future series about the Pharaohs, the man has a gift for momentary pessimism, by which I mean that he sees the worst thing possible happening very soon. This is probably what makes his movies so popular: he scares the shit out of people with ease because the man can envision the worst possible event to wreck your life. Red Dawn theorized that the declining Soviet Union would try to exploit the American breadbasket in the Midwest and obliterate the coasts. Even his Twilight Zone segment, which he didn't write but did direct, "Opening Day," had a man put into the body of a man he murdered, a day before said murder.

And now you can add videogames to that list. Tomorrow Homefront, a first-person shooter produced by THQ with a storyline straight from Milius, will be released in the US. Let's take a look at the speculative timeline employed:

• 2011: North Korea faces another UN sanction over its latest nuclear test.
• 2012: Kim Jong-Il passes away, he is succeeded by his son Kim Jong-un.
• 2013: Kim Jong-un is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and featured on the cover of Time Magazine for his accomplishment of Korean reunification.
• 2014: American military withdraws from the Korean Peninsula. General Motors declares bankruptcy for the second time.
• 2015: The effects of peak oil are felt as gas prices reach up to 20 dollars a gallon due to a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Russia cuts off all oil trade with Europe. Survivalist literature become bestsellers in America. China's influences diminish.
• 2016: America withdraws its military from Japan and other countries overseas, focusing on its instability back home. Texas splits from the United States, border bloodshed takes place as refugees from other states attempt to enter Texas.
• 2017: Martial law is declared in the United States as its infrastructure crumbles due to financial deficiencies.
• 2018: After the destruction of one its nuclear facilities by Korean special forces, Japan surrenders to the Greater Korean Republic and is capitalized into avassal state.
• 2019: The UN goes out of commission.
• 2020: Canada closes its borders to Americans. The US military takes over the functions of many emergency services, as well as the distribution of basic goods. This causes many Americans to abandon the suburbs in exchange of the military-managed urban centers.
• 2021: Korean forces succeed in annexing many countries in Southeast Asia. A new pandemic known as the Knoxville Cough, type of bird flu, begins to spread in the United States.
• 2022: To prevent the contagion of the Knoxville Cough, Mexico closes its borders to Americans. Hyperinflation pushes the US dollar to the edge of collapse.
• 2023: The Knoxville Cough ravages the American public. The Korean People's Army reaches 20 million total personnel.
• 2024: Using the captured M-V rockets at the Uchinoura Space Center, Kim Jong-un announces a new space satellite program, under the pretense of replacing the decaying GPS system, which America could no longer afford to maintain.
• 2025: A thermonuclear device is detonated by one of the Korean satellites 300 miles above Kansas, blanketing America with an EMP that wipes out its power grid and most of the electronics above ground. The US infrastructure is virtually in ruins. This is followed by the Korean seizure of Hawaii and landings in San Francisco. Korean paratroopers are dropped into central United States. The economic downfall in Europe prevents its nations from intervening.
• 2026: The United States is split into two as the KPA irradiate the entire Mississippi River, as a fortification for their control of the western side.
• 2027: The United States Armed Forces are completely scattered.

Damn, shit is going to go downhill. So is this useful? With many apocalyptic perspectives ringing in from all parts of the political spectrum, maybe this strategy will help for this inevitable invasion. It's also great entertainment, and engenders the same rallying around the flag mentality that leaders love to take advantage of at wartime.

Red Dawn was the quintessential Reagan movie: it instilled fear with its prophecies of a weak USSR invading to avoid implosion, and made Reagan's additions to defense spending seem reasonable. This game may lead to similar attitudes, but defense spending is getting cut in some way this year, as it is taking up such a great deal of our budget and even relative gains from China, who will be increasing their defense budget by 12.7% this coming year, will not close the gap enough to make a difference to the status quo.

There is one bone I would pick with any sort of reality that Milius thinks is created in this timeline: the diplomatic daft of Kim Jong-Un. The younger Kim has already been put into place as the heir, and will soon be visiting China to possibly learn something about diplomacy that his father never could. And an obvious lack of skill with the ladies is helping him get emasculated in front of the South Korean public over the internet is not helping. Hopefully, he'll be better at it than he is at holding binoculars (this photo of course brings back memories of Amir Peretz's failed transition from garbage man/union leader to defense minister). As many reports say he is exactly like daddy, expect this Kim to continue a tradition of megalomania, cult of personality, and health problems that has become a tradition dating back to his father's rule. The status quo seems likely to stay the same, and another John Milius prophecy of doom will go without manifesting itself in our world, but the dude is sure to do damage with the sales.

Will Anyone Ever Look in the Mirror?

I am not a huge fan of Daniel Ayalon, who has been the pet of Avigdor Lieberman since this coalition came to power, which is what one would do if one were the Deputy Foreign Minister and the other the Foreign Minister. But this Foreign Ministry's efforts have been marked by a bastardization of statecraft and the deterioration of relations with the rest of the world as Lieberman pushes his agenda despite the fact that it was Netanyahu's coalition to ruin. Even more ridiculous is that Ayalon is a career diplomat in the Israeli Foreign Service, having been Ambassador to the US from 2002 until 2006, but the chain of command has led him to do a lot of stupid stuff, like put the Turkish Foreign Minister in a small chair and mock him in Hebrew as relations between the allies deteriorated, and refusing to see Congressmen visiting Israel on a tour with J Street.

But Ayalon's article on Foreign Policy's website show that he still has the skill for statecraft and can write about the misuse of the UN that leads to criticism of Israel while other states operate without hearing a single word in response to their disgusting acts. Somehow, while on the Human Rights Committee, Libya even had a report filed to demonstrate how free and transparent they are. The report mentions that people were allowed free speech until it became harmful to the state. But who would notice all those secret detentions? Gaddafi's delusions were pushed to the margins because so many others are, like him, Muslim and Arab, so why should we really care? Instead they focus on the actions of one small group that makes up less than 1/1000th of the world population. It is true that Israel has committed violations of human rights, and it irks me that this admission continues to not enter the official position of the Israeli government, as it is a necessary step towards normalizing relations. Especially when in this context, where Ayalon seems to play Israel off as an archangel of human rights.

Let's run through the highlight nations of human rights abusers on the Human Rights Council (Note: I remember the Nakba and other events that affected the Palestinians, it's just that I aim to show how bad everyone else is too):

Saudi Arabia: Yes, you can still get the death penalty for numerous offenses, including anti-government rhetoric (which I would assume doesn't have too high a bar to jump over), adultery, theft, and homosexuality.

Cuba: Where technology can't be introduced until the government figures out how to control it. And even after the introduction, people are scared to use them.

Pakistan: Two government officials have recently been killed in Pakistan: one for trying to protect a Christian woman from being convicted of blasphemy, the other for being a Christian.

Bahrain: They're essentially engaged in the same situation as Libya, except with less fighter jets bombing their people. Of course, the Human Rights Council would never condemn one of its own members until Libya was suspended.

China: The worst one but with the most economic clout, so who really cares? Critics of the government get to enjoy house arrest and harassment from police. Also, does anyone remember the suppression of Tibetan activism and assault on Buddhist monks and how the Chinese started to censor foreign singers from criticizing their imperialism?

United States: Name one state that hasn't violated human rights. Even as an American, a balanced lens is a patriotic lens when looking at the history of your own country. Remember when we deposed Saddam Hussein and catalyzed a civil war in Iraq? How about Grenada? What about the occupation of the Philippines for 48 years and the violent putting down of any insurrection against American rule or independence from it? And what about using those atomic bombs at the end of World War II? Were they really necessary?

How does the UN think it can uphold human rights to its standards when there is no accountability on the committee that decides who has violated these rights? Or let a conference on racism turn into a pseudo-academic pursuit of claiming that Zionism is racism? The UN is extremely messed up, and it will continue to be because it requests no accountability within nations, only that they show up to the General Assembly and pay their dues. This is why I could never get enthused about Model United Nations, because it was pipe dreams of an effective international body that can never exist in the real world.

Fox News Poops on the Truth

Let's get one thing straight on Megyn Kelly. First off, she needs to learn how to spell. What a cruel, Freakanomics-like joke of a spelling of a first name. Second, this woman believes anything put on the teleprompter and fed to her. So, of course, this absolutely nonsensical story is going to be broken by this idiot.

Luckily, the Washington Times does not take this report as complete fact, but it's important to note that Ms. Kelly seemed very enthusiastic about it, and even had the report's author, who works for a Pentagon subcontractor, on to discuss how correct it was.

This is fear-mongering on another level. Linkage theory is already considered asinine by conservatives, in its use by Arab states to explain their problems as being due to Israel's existence. This feeds into a twisted conspiracy that foreign entities worked to put Obama into office, and that George W. Bush had no responsibility in making the government's relationship with the economy as laissez faire as possible so that the subprime mortgage crisis could derail what was an economy on steroids. The Republicans want to turn back the clock and change the story to say that it wasn't them who allowed this to happen, in the way that Bush introduced tax cuts and blamed the Clinton administration for inflating a debt that Bush produced all by himself.

Revisionist history like this disgusts me. While the Republicans whine about Obama's socialist programs that would actually be beneficial to poorer people, they extol the legacy of Ronald Reagan on his 100th birthday, when Reagan was the man who, as Andrew Bacevich put it in the HBO documentary about him, asked us to relax and not worry because there will be oil forever, while turning around and giving huge tax cuts to the rich expecting their spending to trickle down to the lower class, which never happened.

And if there is one person who you shouldn't trust on financial matters, it is a Pentagon subcontractor. The Pentagon is notorious for going over budget, and this is mainly to pay subcontractors like this. The American Intelligence Community is split up so that agencies focus on different aspects of keeping the US safe and ahead in the game of international politics. When there is overlap, they should work together, but as we saw in the failure to prevent terrorist attacks along with counterespionage operations by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, cooperation does not always work out. And if anyone should be investigating, there is an Intelligence unit within the Treasury who would be monitoring

But what does Megyn Kelly know? Here's a list:

1. What's on the teleprompter-she reads this

2. Coming up with questions that lead herself and whoever she is leading through questions to bash Democrats-she ignores any other questions, like:

a. Isn't there an intelligence agency within the federal government that is supposed to look into financial or economic warfare?

b. Why are you engaging in economic research for the Pentagon? It may be part of the Unconventional Warfare Program, but aren't there more important economic research topics to look into, like the theft of technology?

c. Isn't it kind of ridiculous that we call it economic terrorism when China actually owns such a large share of our debt?

But Ms. Kelly has no reason to ask the questions, because they are not part of the Fox News agenda. And of course, who is watching Fox News at 1:30PM? Unemployed people, who are probably pissed that they don't have jobs. Just fanning the fire, Ms. Kelly. Rupert Murdoch thinks that's good hustle.