Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted from Zenpundit ]
It’s riveting to follow the tweets on protests in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya or Iran on Mibazaar in real-time to be sure — but mash that capability up with the one Shloky found and Zen just mentioned with video…
As Zen says, I mean, “automatic face-recognition and social media aggregation raises serious concerns about the potential dangers of living under a panopticon state”.
Two dots, two data-points, two apps connected.
In the Al Jazeera live blog on Libya I looked at the comments and one of the commentors mentioned that we should bring in the UN to stop the carnage of Gadaffi using automatic weapons and rockets on his own people as well as employing out-of-country mercenaries to do his dirty work.
So I went over to the UN web site for the middle east and I can see that they are up on the situation; what is on their “breaking news” section except headlines chiding Israel and talking about Gaza and Palestine, a situation that they have done nothing to solve over the last 60+ years.
Why don’t they call out Gaddafi for his murderous activity? Where are the frenzied resolutions? Where is the outrage? Nowhere, I guess, since of course Gaddafi is one of the types of anti-Western media-friendly yet murderous and thug-like regimes that they adore.
I guess all the resolutions and outrage only apply to Israel; they just sweep the dirty news about their favorites under the rug.
Al Jazeera is often called out for their anti-Israeli and anti-Western tone. It is difficult for me to say as an outsider whether these incidents are occasional or systemic; and frankly when you are supporting Mubarak in his 80’s (as the US is doing) at some point this is going to blow up in your face. After all, the guy isn’t immortal.
What Al Jazeera DOES have going for them is credibility among the Arab populace, at least compared to the Western based networks like the US news organizations or the BBC. This is valuable because they are far closer to reality than the propaganda based coverage provided by their own governments.
When the protests become energetic all of Al Jazeera’s people on the ground or connections in countries where journalists aren’t allowed (like Libya) become more valuable because frankly that’s all we’ve got, other than Gaddafi’s lies. Those contacts probably weren’t going to talk to Western news organizations so it is either Al Jazeera or nothing.
If you look at their English language site, they are covering the unrest in Libya and appear to be pulling no punches. They seem to be acting like journalists, calling the facts on the ground, based upon whatever information they can get (I can’t read the Arab version of the site, so for all I know they could be saying something else).
Here is the main article calling out 200 or more dead and here is a live blog. The live blog is very interesting as it shows the apparent difference between the East and West sides of the country and that the military is coming down hard on protesters in Benghazi while the capitol in Tripoli is relatively calm.
I can’t tell if it is self serving but it makes me chuckle when I see this on their live blog
The attitude in Tripoli contrasts starkly with that in the Easy (sp he means “East”). Many people in Tripoli do not believe that what is happening in the East is real, they either attribute it to the ‘propaganda’ of al-Jazeera (against which have been directed several slogans) or say that Egyptians and Tunisians have infiltrated the country, that ‘real Libyans’ wouldn’t do such things. Historically, the two regions have not been great friends, and now whatever tension there was recently has been sharpening into open hate and disgust towards Eastern Libyans. Some people refer to them as ‘Zionists and Israelis’.
I guess now they are using their harshest insults (to them, at least) – calling their own countrymen Zionists for daring to question the leadership of that madman Gadaffi who has ruled the country since 1969 as absolute dictator.
The methods that Gaddafi’s military are using against what appear to be peaceful protests are overwhelming and completely out of bounds. From the BBC:
There were also widespread reports that foreign mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa – paid by the Libyan government – had been brought in to attack protesters. Another resident told the BBC that 40 people had been killed in a short space of time.
“Just about an hour ago, more than 40 people have been shot dead in the streets of Benghazi,” he said, blaming the violence on the country’s veteran leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi.
“Please, please tell the world – let the world know that he’s killing the people for no reason. They’re very peaceful protesters. He’s bringing foreigners from nowhere, from nowhere, Africans, black African snipers shooting the people in the streets of Benghazi, now he’s attacking Benghazi itself with rocket missiles.”
Gaddafi has generally gotten a free pass from the usual suspects because of his (relative to Mubarak) media antics and entertainment value (such as his tent stunt in NYC) and the fact that he ritualistically “stands up” to the west.
While US ties to the Egyptian military and US pressure on Mubarak helped to make that transition occur relatively peacefully, you can see how a “real” non-aligned nation treats its citizens while they attempt to do the same thing, protest peacefully. They bring in mercenaries and utilize machine guns and rockets against their own citizens.
Where are the protests in the US? In the UN? Of course the non-aligned nations don’t give the remotest crap about human rights; they want to be able to do whatever they want to their people if that’s what it takes to control the resources that provide the money for their personal gain. And since we feel guilty about colonialism or whatever else we don’t stand up and call out this type of brutal behavior the way we ought to.
Don’t worry; if he is able to wipe out the opposition (which he may be able to do) there will be plenty of nations ready to buy his oil, from China to Italy, since human rights are way down the scale when it comes to doing business.
Why would anyone believe, even for a moment, that any Western state could “pre-emptively” nuke the Muslim world when it cannot muster the will to secure its borders, balance its budget, get Pakistan to release a diplomat or get Argentina to release a C-17”²s cargo load of equipment? That would be like thinking that man who can’t run 50 yards can run the 100 meter dash in 9.5 seconds.
The path to nukes is far more probably going to take the path of use in desperation. And in fact a country which secured its borders, drilled for its own oil, got Pakistan to release diplomats, and did the normal things would be the only kind of country which might use nukes pre-emptively because it conceive of such a strategy. Yet ironically it would be the kind of country that wouldn’t have to attack pre-emptively. The idea of country going straight from supine behavior to nuking pre-emptively is a fantasy built on the awareness of weakness. Solve the weakness and then your enemies will consider you capable of pre-emption. But guess what: solve the weakness and you won’t have to pre-empt. They will back away.
This is all elementary game theory; and tried, true and hoary deterrence theory. Be strong and you won’t need to use nukes. Be weak and you’ll use them for sure.
The problem of radical Islam is the problem of Western weakness. That is the problem to which the policy nuking Muslims is an impertinent answer. Who’s going to do it? Obama? And yet if Obama lost the next election in favor of someone who might actually resist, then the probability of having to pre-empt declines dramatically.
The logical problem is that any strategy which requires pre-emptively nuking the Islamic world implies a President who is too weak to do it anyway. But that doesn’t mean it might not happen. As I’ve argued ad nauseam, the biggest danger to nuclear use, in both the Israeli and general Western case, is via the act in desperation.
As long as Israel’s strategic position is strong, it will not unleash the nukes. But only in its dying gasp will that be certain. So what do the geniuses at State do? Bring Israel to the point of strategic death.
For the same reasons, the weaker Obama makes America the more its enemies are emboldened. Yet this does not bring pre-emption closer. That becomes more and more unthinkable until the last push, when desperation takes hold. Then the probabilities go from near zero to near 1.
The Pakistanis and even the rapists in Tahrir Square are testing, testing. And they are finding no resistance. Therefore they will push and sooner or later, they will push too far. Why not since no stop signal will be received from the Smartest Man in the World.
Then when things go too far, desperation, not calculation, will unleash the Apocalypse. It’s happened before. In 1939. It’s not impossible, just conveniently forgotten. The Western elite are like the Bourbons, who remember everything and have learned nothing.