Dear friends,
What Col. Gaddafi had been saying from day 1, and what all too many observers have dismissed, now turns out to have been true: al-Qaeda elements appear to be in charge of the anti-Gaddafi insurgency. Furthermore, there is also a strong probability that Gaddafi and these Wahabis have struck some kind of deal allowing Gaddafi to flee from Tripoli. Check these last three posts for details:
Thus there is strong evidence that, just like in Bosnia and Kosovo, NATO has again put a toxic mix of Wahabis and criminal thugs in power. Whether the Libyan Wahabis will be as obedient to NATO commands as their colleagues in Bosnia and Kosovo remains to be seen.
I strongly suspect that the same type of elements are also heavily involved in the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria (the US Empire is always happy to use Wahabis against what it perceives as its worst enemy: the Shias, even of the Alawi sect).
I would say that the evidence that the US/NATO are still working hand-in-hand with al-Qaeda types is overwhelming. The demonic pact (this is not hyperbole) between the West and these Wahabis crazies which began in 1979 (at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) has never been rescinded since (after 9/11 it was just ‘buried” deeper) and it is still is one of the most crucial aspects of US imperial policies.
Do any of you disagree with this? If yes, please let me know what your reasons are.
The Saker
No I don’t disagree with it, one can’t in the face of the empirical evidence. I myself met a bunch of Salafists once in Northern Lebanon and they pretty much lived up to the cartoonish stereotype that is usually drawn by the Western media, and that you too draw, Saker. Still, if I have learned anything in life then it is to be very wary of quick-n-easy one-size fits all stereotypes. Somehow life always seems to be more complex than that, and people too. Just saying…
@Guthman: be very wary of quick-n-easy one-size fits all stereotypes
Agreed. So can you please fill in the image of what is going on in Libya with different “sizes”, to use your words? How is life, or the situation, more complex than the undeniable fact, at least in my opinion, that NATO/US is working hand-in-hand with what I called the “Wahabi crazies”, including in Libya
I can’t. I am not Libya, have never been there, am totally ignorant about it, have never met a person in my life who has even been there. That ignorance seems particularly widely shared when it comes to that country, however. So I say: Be ready for surprises!
@Guthman:I am not Libya, have never been there, am totally ignorant about it, have never met a person in my life who has even been there
LOL! Welcome to the club, I am the same situation exactly. Which is probably why I did not see this one coming *at all*. It took me months to realize that instead of being “another Egypt” Libya was turning into “another Bosnia” (to the extend that any such comparisons make sense, of course).
Well, at least you and I are totally open about our lack of expertise on this one :-)
But where are the experts?!
Cheers!
The Saker
see this isn’t all so straightforward: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jj6m9cMuH8ZXj5AgMQLjLVHFDhlA?docId=CNG.9b666507647200654b641466e2317b3d.501
@Guthman: well, Iran does, very unfortunately, a history of aiding Wahabis in certain circumstances, most notoriously in Bosnia. Look, for all my admiration for the Shia, I know that they have an occasional ‘blind spot’ about tactical alliances with Wahabis.
Hezbollah and Hamas have no love at all for Gaddafi, and I think that they hope that non-Wahabi elements will prevail in Libya and I can’t blame them for that. But if we look at what the US/NATO can deliver in terms of money, firepower, weapons and contacts, vs what Iran and its allies like Hezbollah can bring in, its a no-contest. I am not saying that Iran should have supported Gaddafi, only that its options are limited.
All I am saying is: it isn’t so straight forward. Meanwhile the Saudi press also warns about a Salafist take-over in Libya, which indicates that the evil Saudi princes don’t particularly want them running things either. Besides, not that I am a fan of the various Salafi fundamentalist currents within Islam (or within other religions for that matter – ahem… irony alert…), but Iran and Hezbollah are of course fundamentalists too. And believe you me, they would LOVE to make good with Sunni Salafists all over the world. The hatred the Salafists have for them is not at all reciprocated. The day the Salafists/pro-Saudi elements in Lebanon open up to an alliance, Hezbollah will sell the Lebanese Christians down the river. (Not that I would find that undeserved in light of Christian behavior there over the last 100 years…). But get it straight man: your heroes are highly sectarian fundamentalists. All alliances with other than Islamist parties are strictly tactical.
You may love them, but believe me, they will never love you and your kind.
@Guthman:your heroes are highly sectarian fundamentalists. All alliances with other than Islamist parties are strictly tactical.
You may love them, but believe me, they will never love you and your kind.
First, I don’t ‘love’ them, I admire them. Second, I don’t expect any love from them. Third, what I hope for them is to realize that the Wahabis are a far bigger threat to Shia Islam than they are to any other religious or-secular group on the planet. Fourth, I do strongly believe that there are only two ways to deal with the Wahabis: have them give up their sick ideology or have them dead. In other words, I consider Wahabi Islam as an existential threat to pretty much everybody. I don’t believe that at all in regards to Shia Islam which, I would submit, shows exactly *zero* symptoms of threatening anybody. I would add that I don’t believe that non-Wahabi/Salafi/Deobandi/Takfiri/etc (WSDT/e)Sunni Islam is a threat to anybody either, as long as it is clearly, unequivocally and truly anti-WSDT/e.
Let me add here that I consider orthodox rabbinical “Judaism” every bit as inhuman, evil and dangerous as WSDT/e.
What I will not do is conflate all of Islam with WSDT/e. This would be as factually wrong and historically unfair as conflating all of Christianity with the Papacy or all of Hinduism with the BJP.
I don’t think that any of the above amounts to some naive form of “love”. Do you?
Granted (ahem…). This reminds me of a particular evening in Texas where I was sitting with my end-times obsessed evangelical in-laws, who let loose on all sorts of topics. I remember thinking that the day may come where the only way of dealing with these people will be to shoot them like rabid dogs. A terrible thought, but there it was…
@Guthman: I don’t have any animosity towards folks with silly beliefs, after all, many folks would consider my own beliefs just as silly, nor to I feel particularly threatened by crackpots. The Wahabis are not just crackpots, they are crazed, bloodthirsty lunatics who find ‘piety’ in slitting throats. I don’t think most evangelicals are up to that kind of atrocities :-)
Didn’t say they are there yet, and hopefully they’ll never get there, but they sure are moving in that direction. The galaxy you call WSDT/e also took a while to get to where they are today.
Guthman: The galaxy you call WSDT/e also took a while to get to where they are today.
I don’t agree. Look at the early history of Wahabism:
In 1801 and 1802, the Saudi Wahhabis under Abdul Aziz ibn Muhammad ibn Saud attacked and captured the holy Shi’a muslim cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, massacred parts of the Shi’a muslim population and destroyed the tombs of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, and son of Ali (Ali bin Abu Talib), the son-in-law of Muhammad. In 1803 and 1804 the Saudis captured Makkah and Medina and destroyed historical monuments and various holy Muslim sites and shrines, such as the shrine built over the tomb of Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad, and even intended to destroy the grave of Muhammad himself as idolatrous. In 1998 the Saudis bulldozed and poured gasoline over the grave of Aminah bint Wahb, the mother of Prophet Muhammad, causing resentment throughout the Muslim world
(that from Wikipedia)
IMHO the Wahabis were crazed nutcases literally from Day 1. And they are still at it today. Just one recent example I came across:
http://www.islamdaily.org/en/wahabism/607.victims-of-wahabism.htm
I say they make the worst of the evangelicals looks like tamed, demure, peace-loving sheep…
That’s only the W of your WSDT/e construct. There is nothing inherently violent to Salafism any more than there is violence inherent in Evangelical Christianity (or any of the other strands). Even Salafism as taught by Abd Al-Wahhab can be read in an anti-authoritarian way, because he rejects clerics as an undue interjection between man and creator. Of course there is an irreducible violent core to all Abrahamic religions, since they all worship the same ghastly supervillain they call God/Yahwe/Allah. Tellingly enough, before the early chaos of Christianity was ordered cleaned up by Constantine, among the myriad of conflicting beliefs, there was a group that believed that Jesus had come to earth to rescue humanity FROM the clutches of this monster THROUGH his sacrifice. Fables all, but that would have been at least a coherent one.
@Guthman: LOL! Nope, I am not going down this road again, not after my experience with another Western ‘expert’ on Christianity (aka Sean) recently :-)
I am not, and surely don’t want to be, an expert on the labyrinthine subject of Christianity. I do love however how you tag people: “Wahhabi” “Al Quaeda” “Western”… it’s all so very neat and clear for you. The sect, however, existed.
@Gurthman: I am not, and surely don’t want to be, an expert on the labyrinthine subject of Christianity.
But you are, I assure you. Only an expert could have stated with absolute certainty that Of course there is an irreducible violent core to all Abrahamic religions, since they all worship the same ghastly supervillain
I do love however how you tag people: “Wahhabi” “Al Quaeda” “Western”
Fair enough. “Wahabi” and “al-Qaeda” are, of course, approximations. But “Western” – that is the one tag which really says it all :-)
“But “Western” – that is the one tag which really says it all :-)”
I strongly disagree. Is Latin America “Western”? Is Russia “Western”? Is Israel “Western”? Is Japan “Western”? All these countries are put among the “Western” by some ideologues, though usually they are not considered among the Western core.
Though I confess that I myself have used this term sometimes, it is obscure. For guys like Huntington and Fukuyama, it means “we the rich and free and white and clean and illustrated countries, against them the barbarian, poor, tyrannic.” But for guys like Chomsky, it means “they, the white, rich, militaristic and imperialist countries, against us, the poor, oppressed, occupied, exploited”.
I know exactly how you will define Western, Saker, so I ask: considering that Latin America is mostly Catholic (or Papist, call as you like it) or Evangelical, is it Western? According to the definition I am pretty sure you are going to use (which is very different from the two most common ones described above), Latin America IS Western mixed with some remains of native culture.
@Carlo: Is Latin America “Western”? Is Russia “Western”? Is Israel “Western”? Is Japan “Western”?
No. No. No. No. At least not according to what I refer to as “Western”.
All these countries are put among the “Western” by some ideologues
Yes. As any tag/label a one word “Western” needs to be defined to make sense. And for any intelligent discussion it probably needs to be set aside and not used at all. I was just pulling Guthman’s leg a little since his broad sweeping judgments about something which does not even exist (abrahamic religions – plural) is, IMHO, typically “Western”.
Latin America is mostly Catholic (or Papist, call as you like it)
That is the 2nd time you seem to be frazzled by my use of the word Papist. Why? “Catholic”, as you well know, means “universal”. Why would any Christian in his/her right mind call “universal” a religion which appeared roughly 10 centuries later than original Christianity? Neither is the Papacy “universal” in its way of functioning since it has replaced the original catholic method of using councils as the highest authority in the Church with the decision of one, super-bishop. Would you call the Papacy “соборная”? Of course not? Lastly, is it not ironic that a religion which makes a claim to universality also refers to itself as “Roman” thereby implying some special geographical charisma?
The Papacy is neither catholic nor Roman. It is Papist in its essence and it is Frankish in its cultural roots. One can deplore that, or laud it, but not deny it, IMHO.
As for why I use the term Papacy rather than some other logically sound expression (“Frankish heresy” comes to mind here) it is because submission to the Pope is the one and only condition which is required to be considered quote – “Roman Catholic” – unquote. If the Papist have reduced the Christian dogmatic theology to the recognition of the super-powers of the Pope then they should not be offended at being call Papist. Is that not simply logical?
Now, of course terms like “Papist” can be used in a derogatory manner. Any term can. But when discussing theology a strict and accurate use of words matters. Heretic is generally considered an insult. But in the theological discourse it is not. It is a diagnosis, just like “lapsed” or “schismatic”.
Carlo – let me ask you this, honestly: does the term “Papist” disturb you because it is inaccurate or, precisely, because it accurately conveys the essence of the reality it describes?
Latin America IS Western mixed with some remains of native culture.
Latin American, IMHO, has been victimized, abused, exploited and vandalized by representatives of what I would call the “West”, but in its deep cultural and social reality it is not Western at all. I think that Latin American broke free from the Western orbit following the collapse of all the (terminally pro-Western) military dictatorships. Frankly, I find Latin America already more “Bolivarian” than “Western” already, and that is a very good thing!
Regarding Latin America, you are using two very different definitions of what contitutes “Western”, that is why I asked you. According to the two most common definitions, (the pro- and anti-imperialist ones), Latin America is, of course, not Western: it is either a region of failed, oppressive, undemocratic states; or a region struggling to liberate itself from external imperalism. But according to the other one you frequently use (let’s call it the Frankish heresy, that give birth not only to Papism, but also to Protestantism and Evangelicalism) then yes, it is clearly and undoubtedly Western, except for some remains of Native and African rituals that still exist (and heavily mixed with Christian influences).
@Carlo: I suppose that tuse the world “Western” in a personal, subjective way. First, I don’t give any geographical sense to it. Rather, its a psychological-cultural syndrom, really. It has its roots in the Frankish ideology which overtook Europe after the fall of the Roman civilization in the West. One of its characteristics is a deep sense of superiority towards other, presumably ‘inferior’, cultures, combined with a fundamental lack of understanding of these presumably ‘inferior’ cultures. It is highly agressive, prone to violence and wars. The Arabs are not wrong when they compare US/NATO soliders to crusaders – the latter are very much the descendents of the former. Call it “manifest destiny”, the “white man’s burden”, or “right to protect” – the West’s ideology is deeply imperialistic, bordering on the messianic and it sees all other cultures and civilizations as an exiestential threat which must be engaged and defeated. Ideologically, it gave birth to monarchic absolutism, masonic liberalism, socialism, communism, national-socialism, and Fukuyama-style turbo-capitalism (I wonder what next “ism” it will come up with to justify further agression).
As for Protestantism and Evangelicalism, they are superficial reactions to Papism, but they are not fundamentally different. The Papacy has one Pope. Protestantism makes every person a “personal Pope” (everybody is a Pope). The Papacy has substituted the catholic/соборная Church with one Pope, the Reform has subsituted the catholic/соборная Church with the “sola scriptura”. Fundamentally, Western ‘Christianity’ does not believe in the existance of the Church as the theandric Body of Christ, the Pillar and Foundation of Truth. Whether you substitute the catholic/соборная Church with one man or all man really makes no difference. In one case one super-bishop gets to define the truth and his decisions are accepted as infallible, the the second case every person gets to define the truth for him/herself. The former defines “one true Church” as “in communion with me” (meaning under my authority) while the latter defines the “one true Church” as whatever the hell I choose to believe. Neither of them has ANY interest in what Christianity actually taught during the first 1000 years of its existance. And, of course, neither of them could even conceive of possibility that true Christianity could have been preserved somewhere else on the planet, in a different country, or a different continent. While Christianity used to teach that “outside the Church there is no salvation”, the Westerner *knows* that “outside the West there is no truth”.
to be continued…
… continued
And that is the link between them all: Papists, Protestants, Evangelicals, Crusaders, US Marines, etc. They will never ever seriously consider a mind-boggling possibility: that they are the heretics, the barbarians, the brutes, the un-cultured, the un-cilivized, the ugly bloodthirsty aggressor, the ones that are wrong today, and who were wrong yesterday. That ultimate crimethought will be rejected with equal vehemence by the pious Papist and the militant atheist. By the Nazi, the Communist and the “free markets” “democrat”. And any suggestion to the contrary will be dismissed and denied-away at any cost.
Fundamentally, the Westerner will always place his ego over the truth, be it a historical truth, a dogmatic truth or even a simple logical truth.
And let me stress here that, again, this is not a geographical category. Not only is Latin America a victim of this, but even the “West” in a geographical sense is a victim of the “West” in a cultural-psychological sense of the word. I don’t think I need to explain this or give examples. Lastly, there are plenty of folks in the geographical West which have totally rejected the cultural-psychological West. It is even often the case that geographical Westerners are fare more aware of the perverse nature of the “cultural-psychological West” than people born in the East or South.
Does that make sense?
You don’t have to be a “James Bond expert” to know what Dr. No is like. All you have to do is take a little time and actually read the damn novel.
Re your diatribe on “Western”: No it does not make sense. It is logically circuitous gibberish and structurally replicates what racist German (and Russian) thinkers wrote about “The Jew” as immutable enemy, what British Imperialists wrote about “The Babu” (Hindi male) and what Sunni Salafists write about “The Shi’a”. What you are inadvertantly describing is universal human conceit.
@Guthman: thanks for so convincingly illustrating my point ;-)
Saker: yes, it does make sense, though there are some points which I don’t agree and I don’t want to discuss. Anyway, this doesn’t matter for what I am arguing now. The thing is: if you consider Western the culture that adopted the Frankish heresy, then Latin America is Western. I think there can be no discussion about this, it is pretty clear. Not pure, as other elements were mixed (Native, African), but in the US the same happened, and it doesn’t change the fact that, culturally and religiously, the Western (Frankish heresy, Papist) elements predominate all over the American continent, from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego. To try to revive a pure Native American culture is as impossible as to bring back pre-Christian Europe.
What I think is: you do like and have hopes about Latin America, so that in order to justify it, you use another completely different definition of Western (the one used by the lay left, the anti-Imperialist one), so that the countries south of Río Grande are excluded from the West.
Carlo, you are trying in vain. When Saker is in religious-fanatic-mode he tags anything and everything just as he likes. Reason has nothing to do with it. It’s the privilege of the fanatic.
@Carlo: ok, but I want to stress two small things here:
a) while the Papacy is at the historical root of the Western civilization, it is far from being the only factor so I would not just put an equality sign between the two.
b) the Papacy itself has changed, immensely so, in the past 100 years. If Vatican I was the inevitable culmination of almost 1000 years of Papist though, then Vatican II was the expression of a comprehensive internal collapse reminiscent of a “spiritual auto-immune disease”.
Nowadays the modern West is really “post Papist” and even “post Christian”. Spiritually, it is dead. While all its old ideologies (monarchy, liberalism, socialism, communism, etc.) had some type of ethics, some kind of concept of right and wrong, the modern Wests stands for nothing at all besides consumption, hardly a spiritual or moral value. This spiritual degeneracy has made it widely accepted that the sum of everybody’s greed yields the best possible social and economic order: capitalism. Again, none of that has any roots in the Papacy, any other form of Christianity or even any other type of spirituality. The West civilization has devolved into a toxic mix of spiritual morbidity and technological dynamism. The archetypical Western man is a “high-tech Neanderthal” whose mental anguish Roger Waters so well described in his song “Empty Spaces” (from the live version of the album The Wall):
What shall we use to fill the empty spaces
Where waves of hunger roar?
Shall we set out across this sea of faces
In search of more and on applause?
What Shall we do Now?
Shall we buy a new guitar?
Shall we drive a more powerful car?
Shall we work straight through the night?
Shall we get into fights?
Leave the lights on?
Drop bombs?
Do tours of the east?
Contract disease?
Bury bones?
Break up homes?
Send flowers by phone?
Take to drink?
Go to shrinks?
Give up meat?
Rarely sleep?
Keep people as pets?
Train dogs?
Raise rats?
Fill the attic with cash?
Bury treasure?
Store up leisure?
But never relax at all
With our backs to the wall
Carlo: here it is, the modern West’s national anthem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ZU3qOmAks
Powerful stuff, I would say.
@Carlo: I want to add here that Roger Waters has always been a personal hero of mine and his music has accompanied me throughout my life, both this work with Pink Floyd and, even more so, his solo work. If you don’t know it, I highly recommend his most amazing album called “Amused to Death” which I think you can download from these locations:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1jnlmxbly3x
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5OTHP0FK
http://rapidshare.com/files/138005427/1992_-_Amused_To_Death.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/264012127/Roger_Waters_-_Amused_To_Death__1992_.zip
I did not check these downloads, so for your reference, here is the Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Amused-Death-Roger-Waters/dp/B0000027I6/
Its a beautiful, deeply moving album, which really crowns years of fantastic art and reflexion by Roger Waters about where Western civilization has brought us all.
I remember the very first time I heard “Amused to Death” I was lying on my bed in the dark, listening through my headphones, and I had tears in my eyes from the sheer pain of it all. I am 48 years old now, and that is still one of the most powerful albums I have ever listened to.
“Nowadays the modern West is really “post Papist” and even “post Christian”.”
Except for Latin America, where these values are stronger than in Europe, and still alive though also weakened.
By the way, great song from The Wall, this version comes from the movie and not the original album.
About Roger Waters: fully agreed. Though I don’t know his solo work, but mostly when he was in Pink Floyd. I consider this band ceased to exist when he left in the early 1980’s: the other members are very talented musicians, but Waters was really the soul of the group.
I will surely listen to Amused to Death.
@Carlo:Except for Latin America, where these values are stronger than in Europe
Yes, I remember seeing the people praying in Lujan, and I have relatives in Colombia whose spirituality is genuine and deep. And yet I am unable to connect it to either the pre Vatican II period or the one which followed it. It seems to be that Latin America followed a distinct spiritual path which somehow detached its Christianity from what it became in the ‘West’: Europe and the USA.
I remember once attending a Christmas service in a French village where they had only one priest for many parishes so the poor man had to drive around, celebrate as fast as possible, and then drive to the next parish. When he came to where I was, a small place called Laffrey in the Vercors mountains, they had no wine or bread for him. So he told them to get some fruit juice and some pastries. And that is what was used for the Mass. Now would something like that be possible in the parishes you have seen in Latin America?
As for the USA, the big thing here are “non-denominational” services. Basically, one person’s presumably deep held faith has been reduced to a “denominational idiosyncrasy” as irrelevant as the color of your hear or your shoe size.
I can just imagine what the Church Fathers would have said if they were shown any of that…
Carlo: and let me ask you this:
How many people do you know who call themselves Roman-Catholic and who actually know what their faith teaches. Do they. for example know and understand
a) what the dogma of the Papal infallibility really means?
b) what the expression “Immaculate Conception” really means?
My Godson lives in Spain where he was told by, of all people, a JESUIT that “Immaculate Conception” refers to the virginity of the Mother of God. Now if a Jesuit, which used to be the “elite of the elite” of the Papacy does not even know the basics of his own faith, can we still speak of the Papacy at all?
In my own experience the vast majority of the “Roman-Catholics” are completely ignorant of their own religion and of what it actually teaches. In my entire life I met only ONE Papist who really new his stuff, and he was so far into the reactionary wing of the Papacy that he considered Monsignor Lefevre and his “traditionalists” in Econe as a bunch of liberal apostates, LOL! Speaking of Econe, I visited them once and I asked a seminarians “how can you possibly accept the Vatican I formulation about the Papal infallibility and say that John-Paul II is an apostate”? You know what they replied to me? That only a “real Pope” is infallible and that JP2 was a “fake Pope”. They never even saw the glaring circular fallacy of that “logic”. Yet, these are the hardcore “traditionalists”, with masses in Latin, rightwing politics, hatred from immigrants and the obligatory phobia of Islam.
So what kind of “traditionalists” would you encounter in Latin America?
Well, unfortunately I can’t answer what you asked me, because I am just beginning to go to church, as my family is almost entirely agnostic. One thing I fully agree with you: these reactionary, ultra-conservative, are uncommon in Latin America. Bishop Williamson was some years ago giving classes in a seminary here in Argentina, but he was asked by the government to leave the country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Williamson_%28bishop%29#In_Argentina
@Carlo: these reactionary, ultra-conservative, are uncommon in Latin America
Exactly. The fall of the various neo+fascist dictatorships heralded the end of the “Western” version of the Papacy in Latin America. Or, put differently, the influential “theology of liberation” was deeply rooted in a denunciation of the neoliberal and neofascist worldview which used to characterize the reactionary Papacy. Again, this goes to show that Latin America is not in the “West” in socio-psychological terms. I think that even while Latin America is still looking for its true identity (Bolivarianism has only had that much traction with the majority of people) it is most definitely in an open and direct confrontation with the West.
I have a relative in Argentina who was an officer of the Argentinian Armed Forces during the “Dirty War” and who recently told me “you know, we won the military battle, but we lost the ideological one”. Now, even he sees how mistaken, misguided and frankly evil the rule of the “milicos” was. It is not a coincidence that so many former union and guerrilla leaders have now come to power in democratic elections. Yes, the Left did loose the military battle in Latin America, but it won the ideological war against the Western cultural-social model. This is why I simply cannot call “Latin America” part of the West.