Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Parallels

An odd parallel occurred to me today. (Rich would call it a context switch).

Obama is being criticized by the vocal right for not labelling ISIL as Islamic Terrorists. His rationale is that he wants moderate non-violent Muslims to help in the fight against extremism and lumping them all together as some do (the "they're all to blame" crowd) doesn't help.

Ironically this is completely consistent with the other call from the vocal right; that it's time that the moderates distanced themselves from the extremists. That the vocal right doesn't see the contradiction in their rhetoric is nothing new - their comments, as John Stewart noted last night, often come more from the heart than the head.

But here's the parallel. I need to be careful not to lump all Republicans into the same category as the lunatic fringe (Bachman, Palin, Trump et al) or the s#*t stirring, hate-mongering loonies on Fox (Hannity, Gutfeldt and his acolytes). There are some decent Republicans (I happen to know one).

Perhaps, then the moderate middle will disown the virulent infection of unthinking "I'm not a scientist" blowhards. But I have to stop labelling Trump and his ilk "Republicans" - he may claim to be a Republican, just as ISIL claims the legitimacy of Islam. But tarring them with the same brush will help push the moderates (Muslims and Republicans) into the arms of the extremists.

Extremists, whether political hacks or disenfranchised angry youth, have both found a cause through which to find a sense of purpose, build community, and gain power and respect (or fear). And both are doing so by peddling an equally perverted and insane variant of their faiths, narratives that the moderates shouldn’t want anything to do with.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Muslims Extremists or Terrorists? What's in a name?

President Obama has been repeatedly criticized, mainly by Fox and friends, for not calling terrorist, who are also Muslim, “Islamic terrorists”. Protestants, Catholics (recall the “The Troubles”) and Jews (Irgun) have all resorted to terrorism to defend their religions.

Recall too, that many wealthy and prominent Americans not only didn’t call the IRA terrorists, they event raised funds for them; and some of those who gave money to the IRA have more recently called for the arrest and conviction on charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terror anyone funding mosques at which suspected terrorist may have worshipped.

Aside from the question of consistency and integrity, there is pragmatic reason for calling acts of terror just that and not labelling them with a religious moniker. Terrorists aren’t created in a vacuum. They can be tacitly encouraged or explicitly discouraged by members of their community and of their faith. This is all the more important as terrorists are increasingly “home grown” rather than part of secretive, well organized networks.

If you want those communities to discourage the use of violence rather than keep silent, it would be prudent to not tar them with the same brush as the terrorists, and to make it clear that this is not a problem with their faith but rather with those to use violence to get their way. Once you make it “an Islam problem”, (or, 30 years ago, a Catholic or a Protestant one) the people you need as allies become, at best, neutral and at worst, quiet apologists for the extremists’ actions.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Frustration

Some long running frustrations:

1) Commentators

Bob Schaefer began his program today by describing various trouble spots around the world (Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIL in Iraq and Syria, AQAP in Yemen, Putin in Ukraine), played a clip of Susan Rice calling for a sense of perspective and cautioning against being buffeted by the daily news cycle and then asked "Is this administration taking this seriously enough?". That's a new low in journalism for Face the Nation. First, it implicitly conflates seriousness with boots on the ground. Second, the comment itself contributes to the buffeting Rice talked about. 

2) Commentators and Panellists 

After two experts (Michael Morrell, Thomas Donilan) both provided a balanced view of the issues ("It is important to have perspective ... and to keep your eye on the long haul" Thomas Donilan. "Perspective is really important here, Bob" Michael Morrell ), Schaefer said "I'm still not sure that this administration is galvanized to fight this fight and do what's necessary to do it". By implication Schaefer is saying that military intervention is the answer (if history of our recent intervention in the Middle East teaches us anything, it's not).

Morrell then noted that without the air strikes, ISIL would be in Baghdad by now; that's an achievement. In sum, both Morrell and Donilan provided a wonderfully informed and well thought out insight into the issues; which Schaefer sought to over-simplify and sensationalize.

One of the commentators - I forget which - said later on: "Hilary isn't facing challenges from the left". Apparently she hasn't met Senator Warren, who is polling in second place at 16% in the Democratic primary race. She also appeared completely oblivious to any of the nuanced comments Donilan and Morrell had made on that same show 5 minutes before interpreting them as hawks. A better example of selective filtering I've not seen in a while. 

3) Republicans

After criticizing Obama for being "weak" and "leading from behind", they don't want to give him war authorization for taking on ISIL. That's either because they are hypocritical (very likely) or want to attach riders such as approving the XL pipeline or defunding the ACA (somewhat likely). Either would contribute the perception of politicians as conniving  and helps explain why the institution which they collectively are is held in such low regard.

4) Linux

Ubuntu had a reasonably reliable and stable desktop environment; in part this is probably a function of a large user base providing bug reports and a largish army of developers. Then it adopted Unity which sucks so I went in search of other distributions. I've tried many in the last 6 months (Crunchbang, Kubuntu, Ubunto with Gnome and now Mint). Mint has the desktop environment I find the most conducive to being productive; but it just doen't work well enough. The tendency of the open-source community to fork parts or all of the components leads to more incompatibilities, bugs and glitches. For example, Firefox won't launch Flash if it's not up to date but the updating channel isn't working. The file manager often hangs probably because of issues accessing the file system, a problem which afflicts other programs too.  So after 10 years, I am at the point of abandoning Linux as my desktop; I don't know what the next OS will be yet; I have OSX running but it relied on some hacks and I can't afford Apple hardware; so then it's Windows. Sigh!    

5) Fox 'News'

The usual mix of making shit up to fit its political agenda, an chronic irritation which woke me up this at about 5am this morning.