Trent seems to have thought that the passages that I was quoting, from that TV show, were a draft article BY me. Actually, I know little about Qutb and was simply passing on these passages so people could go to the link if they wanted more. But yes, Qutb was clearly in part a creature made by the abuses of OTHER fanatics.
As the Shah helped make the mullah radicals and WE helped make Al Qaeda with our carelessness during the fight against Russians in Afgh.
Cycles of adversarial radicalism are the very things that radicals want. Modernist-pragmatists are stymied when such cycles surge. Indeed, that was the chief aftermath of 9/11. A single lapse by our professional protector class... and WE have subsequently had to deal with wartime disruptions and paranoia filling our media, airports, lives. Not because we are under threat - (the WORST possible terror scenario would not be a glimmer next to the worry of WWIII that we all endured in the 70s and 80s) - but because it serves the interests of manipulators to maintain a sense of panic.
Trent said: "Without fundamentalism there is no fanaticism and with no fanaticism, activism dies."
There is just about no level on which I could agree with this sentence. It is disprovable in every conceivable way.
Yes, relativism, as part of postmodernism, was a disaster for the left. as it was for conservatism, since neconservative platonists like Strauss - when you scratch the surface, are almost identical to those of the left. They are allies against pragmatism, modernism, the Enlightenment and science. Especially science.
But "activism"? Tell that to Martin Luther King. Tell that to all the people who quietly made, and still make, the world better daily. Like raising the % of girls in school so that Kenya has vastly more girls enrolled per capita than Saudi Arabia. That is activism. Pragmatic activism. And it is not driven by indignation-drug highs but the direct imperative of making a better world.
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Oh, today Gen. Richard Meyers, CURRENT chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - not a retiree - informed Congress that US troop readiness was at a severe low. Our ability to deal with any crisis or surprise has plummeted to extremely dangerous levels.
Retired officers have been making this case for several years... as have I... and democrats have utterly ignored this vital issue, leaving the administration to get away with it scot free. We are now VASTLY more vulnerable than we were on 9/11. We are frisked at airports and our military has been scattered to the winds. (That's an improvement?) They are less ready for a surprise blow than we were the day before Pearl Harbor.
Now ask yourselves, who benefits from this?
Who ALWAYS benefits?
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On a lighter note, see: http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/
I find this event especially worrisome. The organizers have made no provision for limiting attendance! We could all be destroyed by the ensuing black hole singularity, if too many visitors arrive all at once.
In any event, the organizers do not even discuss what PANELS will be held at the convention. Practical panels on paradox protection protocols might attract serious visitors. As it is, the thing seems planned to be content free. Just an invitation to hang around a courtyard. They aren't even promising refreshments!
See a similar - earlier - invitation that I have issued many times over radio, fictionalized at http://www.davidbrin.com/shortstories.html (the story "Those Eyes"), in which my character at least offers some real partying!
db
PS Stefan Jones sent the following:
Sometimes a pictures doesn't NEED PhotoShop to be really freaky:
http://www.syslog.com/~jwilson/pics-i-like/ups.jpg
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