Phony Culture

Russian citizens are joining IS. So are the citizens of other countries.

Russia Beyond The Headlines
Why are ordinary Russians joining the ranks of Islamic State?
June 11, 2015 Oleg Yegorov, special to RBTH 
http://rbth.com/society/2015/06/11/why_are_ordinary_russians_joining_the_ranks_of_islamic_state_46863.html

Like many European countries, Russia is encountering a new threat: Its citizens are being recruited by terrorists and are traveling to the Middle East to join radical Islamist groups such as Islamic State (ISIS). Russian experts believe that various factors are involved, including a misguided approach by law-enforcement agencies and a lack of opportunities for the young.

[...]

The majority of Russian citizens that join the ranks of the extremists are people from the country’s Muslim republics but sometimes they are ethnic Russians. This is not a new phenomenon: There have been cases in which Russians fought on the side of Wahhabists even before the appearance of ISIS.

For example, Said Buryatsky, one of the ideological leaders of the Caucasian terrorist underground at the end of the 2000s, was a Russian whose real name was Alexander Tikhomirov. Buryatsky was eliminated in 2010.

And even as far back as the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan during the early 1980s there were documented cases of ethnic Russians converting to Islam and going over to the side of the Mujahideen to fight against their former comrades-in-arms.


The lure of extremism

As Georgy Mirsky, an expert on the Arab world and Doctor of Historical Sciences, pointed out to RBTH, Russia is far from the only country whose young citizens are traveling to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS.

"In the last month 1,733 people alone left France to join ISIS, and statistically, one fifth of them did not come from Muslim families but were recruited,” said Mirsky, who pointed out that 30 percent of the women joining ISIS were “still not Muslim until recently.”

[...]

The world is dominated by Phony Culture, which is addictions and obsessions spread out like unconnected beads fallen from a rosary, yet still thinly held together by an overlay of scraps and pieces of meaningful life-bits.

There is no Story holding things together.

I use the symbol  σ   the small Greek letter sigma to denote "story".

People need a   σ   to hold things together.
When the time comes that the pressure and suffering on families and individuals is intense, things begin to break down. This is seen clearly in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.
It was noticed that the soldiers in World War I most susceptible to PTSD were those who felt they had no control over the situations they found themselves in. For example, balloon observers were subject to PTSD - essentially being sitting ducks - whereas pilots were not; pilots had "control" of their airplanes and the action of flying, no matter how dangerous the territory in which they found themselves.

 σ is how people maintain control over their lives. They have a story in which they are characters and thus have meaning.

Upon receiving sensations, the brain works at predicting what will come next.
The brain does not merely process sensation, but it tries to fit it into a structure that is meaningful enough that it may predict what is going to happen next, thus providing us with  appropriate route of action to follow.

There is a Bayesian Probability here, as the brain predicts based on existing probabilities, then modifies those probabilities based on the most recent outcomes of our actions.

This Bayesian process forms the basis for  σ , the story of our lives.

When things fall apart, and the center cannot hold, that is the time when our story falls apart and we find ourselves totally naked in the universe.
We find ourselves facing that which is totally The Other, so much "Other" that there is no way we can attempt to interact based upon prior experience.

Then we lose control.
Then we fall apart, too.

Unless,... unless we have a great  σ in place that we may invoke to hold things together.
This story may be faith, honor, loyalty, love, but its function is to maintain the Self.

In the midst of phony and trivial culture, people seek war.
They seek war to face the greatest threat, and thereby to destroy the meaningless story of culture which they despise.

They have a new story.

When faced with killing others and being killed oneself in war, they will find that the old self goes mute and begins to fall away, leaving them open to PTSD-like states.
However, they short-circuit the suffering of the loss of control over their environment by substituting their new story, the new  σ which will guide their new lives.

Thus, we see that ideology seeks war in order that the old ideology be killed off, thus providing a clean space to construct the new ideology.

Natural Selection and survival of the fittest... the ideas which face death in order to survive death.


Therefore, we have a glimpse how difficult it will be in the struggle against IS.
The nations opposed to IS will be forced to become meaningful and relevant and fulfilling, and that is a tall order.

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Casting Call

It is hard to get the right people for the role.

Fifty Shades Of Grey had a lead actor, then lost him, only to replace him soon after.

Fifty Shades Of Grey....

I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but did not read any later books. I knew where it was headed.

Then there is our government:
Washington Post 
Inside former NSA chief Michael Hayden’s ‘interview’ with an Amtrak live-tweeter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/24/inside-former-nsa-chief-michael-haydens-interview-with-an-amtrak-live-tweeter/

But why would a sitting official be talking so openly about CIA black sites and rendition?

It took nearly half an hour, but then it clicked for Matzzie, a former Washington director of the political group MoveOn.org. He whipped out his phone and began tweeting.

“Former NSA spy boss Michael Hayden on Acela behind me blabbing ‘on background as a former senior admin official,’ ” Matzzie wrote. “Sounds defensive.”

Rendition.
Guantanamo.
Torture...

Abu Ghraib combines a lot of these threads:  torture, degradation, sex...

Some say Abu Ghraib was an exception.
Not really. It was a facet of the culture. Not to my taste, but it was tasty to some.
Most find it a wretched affair, but there are some who enjoy it. It is a facet of our civilization. Not a big facet, thank God, but there it is.

What we see in the mirror may suddenly frighten us.

We do not know whether to laugh or scream.

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It's a Gift to be Complex...

 

Shark Near the Beach

How Much Information is in a Particle? 

The information humans are interested in is however always finite, since they can hardly remember even 20 decimal digits seen only once. And the amount of information humans are capable of retrieving by experiment is still limited, since each experiment has only a finite accuracy.
Thus they simplify things to the point that all they want to know about an electron is its mass, charge and its state to a small number of decimal places.


Humankind and their simplification: to take the entire starry universe and collapse it into the eye of the beloved.

We may swim in the ocean of creation, then we walk up onto the beach and towel off and dry in the sun. Later, when it is too hot, we go back into the water. We should be living our lives between the Simple and the Complex, the One and the Many, the Limited and the Boundless.

For the most part, however, we grow out of complexity and let our fascination with complex unities to be broken up into compartments: job, family, one-day-a-week-religion, scholastic studies, professional associations, and political affiliation. We keep our lives simple and discrete, easily put into separate boxes.

Separate boxes and broken threads...
Ripped yarns in the carpet of reality where we cut off pieces of rugs from Ifsahan and walk away with souvenirs, thinking the remnants are holographic, and we can re-create the whole...

Nothing in excess. We do not like the complete evisceration of family life at the holidays when the kids spend their time mesmerized by glowing screen of electronic toys, but their autism is the aboriginal experience of Unbrokenness.

We no longer understand the Unbroken Fascinations, because we have left them behind in a ceaseless obedience to all the bosses and necessities that make demands upon our time. We resent the ease of total enchantment which our children throw into our faces with their engrossing pursuits.

The only Unlimited Enchantment these days is narcotic, and it is outlawed. People are forbidden to swim in that particular ocean. They remain on the beach and scan the horizon for sharks.

What enchantments we have left, we have commercialized into box-office receipts or weeks on the NY Times Book List or "learned criticism". Thus, we make everything mundane and tedious, so life becomes a matter of picking among  the drab alternatives.

My New Year's Resolution is to go swimming now and then.
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A New Insight Into The Mind

I am instituting two new ways to investigate personalities - sort of psychotherapy in which we seek insight into our own selves by our identification with symbolic characters of our culture.

Thus far, I have worked on the following:

1) which House character are you?

2) which John Hughes character are you?

3) which Coen Brothers character are you?

4) which of the 2011-2012 Republican presidential candidates are you?

and am setting up discussion groups - modeled after Fight Club - which will meet once a week.
Each participant will state his own answers, and then the group will state their opinions. Hopefully, a heated argument will ensue...

Be not afraid !

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The Pornography of Despair

Ruined buildings... Ground Zero, Manhattan seen as Wounded Knee.

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pix
Planet Comics
John Hilgart at HiLo Brow
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Why Are Short Sales Bad? Why Are Heroes Good?

There is a temporary ban on short sales, and it gives the impression that they are some sort of rogue process that undermines equity markets. Treasury Secretary Paulson created a storm when the government took over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The government could have made a point to China, Japan, Russia, and others that the bonds of these 2 institutions were equivalent to US Treasuries. ( China, Russia, etc. are the foreign owners of the bonds, and they were becoming jittery about just what the heck was going on with real estate mortgages.) The government could have taken a bit of the companies, say 25%, thus making the shareholders pain large enough, but not total.

Once the government took over the entire institutions, the shareholders lose everything. Once shareholders see shareholders loosing everything, they do not invest. So after that time, no one in their right minds would invest a penny in Lehman Brothers, nor any other financial stock which may possibly get into trouble and need the kind attention of the government. Since no one would invest, stocks went begging for buyers. Thus stocks declined quickly. The short sellers took advantage of this and facilitated it, but did not cause it. They offered to buy stock from panicky shareholders who would rather loose 50% by a short sale than 100% to the government. Who else would buy Lehman Brothers, other than a gambler? No one.

The ban on short sales actually will assist in the bail out, since we have forbidden the only potential buyer of distressed stocks to purchase anymore for a while. Thus, there is no exit until the bail out is made law. The bail out now proposed will put an end to this process. It does not look to assign blame, but that can wait. It should wait since (1) we already know who built the playground: Republicans and Phil Gramm, and (2) it will take a bit of time to scour all the spider-holes in the Hamptons for the miscreants.

However, no matter how it turns out, America has changed forever. I think for the better. Why? Because of the incredibly complex scenario of heroism we see before us. It was not enough to have idiotic Republicans going into an election against Hilary Clinton, who would then sweep to the White House. No. We have a contender who was a relative unknown until 2 years ago. No only is he new to the national focus, but he is a black man. So now America must deal with its racism. It wasn't enough to deal with war-mongering and lieing and torturing and those ethical issues and well as bread and butter ones; now we must deal with our own racism!  

We actually have to go into this election and confront ourselves. We actually have to choose whether we shall continue to give overt or covert support to the diseases which bedevil this country. That does not happen too often. We shall see what happens. Shall we be heroes and overcome our baser selves? Or shall we not. And what is the future for failed heroes? Philoctetes. He is the future of failed heroes. Philoctetes sits on his island in his nauseating misery.

The Washington Neoconservative Memorial Design 6:Intel And Ashes

This is one of the the designs under the title "Douglas Feith"

It is tentatively called "Intel and Ashes ", "Rumors in the Dust", or "Ramaadi" ( since 'ramaad' is 'ashes' in Arabic)

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 5

This design is the Condoleeza Rice inspired Barber Shop, known to Beltway wags as Secretary Powell's close shave.

...Now That Football's Done

It was some Romantic poem; something, something, in the Sun; something, something, what's to do now that football's done? I think it was written by Sir Walter Raleigh. By circumventing 99.9% of the build up to the actual game, I found it vaguely enjoyable.

I began to regret that I had seen absolutely nothing of the NFL this season. I found Prince to be a bore. The special effects of rain were pretty darn good, however. If I were a performer, I do not think I would encourage the support team to do rain effects. It would be like encouraging my Foley editor to experiment with flatulence noises. It would come back sooner or later and bit you somewhere unpleasant

The closest I came to pre-game hoopla was reading Joe Namath rate the Quarterbacks, then subjecting his interview to a Bible Code analysis.

Amazingly, the result was " INDIAN CITY BY TWELVE "!

Since 'Indianapolis' is literally Greek for "Indian + City", this looked like a hit.

I went to dinner at my brother's. He is a fine cook. We had a very good pot roast which had marinated for 4 hours in a beer and red wine marinade. Heady stuff. They live in a condo high-rise on the 25th floor. I have a fear of heights, so I shy away from the windows. It was a cold day-about -15 degrees wind chill-and the snow showers zipped through the sky like my fingers at a sushi buffet. We spoke of all things. My brother spoke of our society's nasty habit of defining a process by its failures.

For example, the mistakes and problems of doctors lead to malpractice to high insurance premiums, resulting in a shortage of Obstetricians: the practice of medicine is delimited by its failures, not its successes.

I think a similar process works through the entire national subconscious. It is our failure in Vietnam that haunts us, and thereby is present to mind more than the good things we've done.

World War II is the exception that proves the rule, for it is now so long ago, that the present generations cannot claim it as their own. It was a victory of a golden past

And we cannot define our objectives.

What was our objective in Iraq? Weapons of Mass Destruction.

They did not exist. What was our objective then?

Getting the really, really bad guy in prison.

O.K. Got him. What then?

Export freedom and democracy.

O.K. What then?

Try to keep from getting killed..

There were no objectives in any rational sense of the word; they were just steps in a series of blunders.

Look now at Health Care. What are our 5 main objectives in a Health Care Program?

We don't know.

Maybe, just maybe we will say all kids should have health care, and maybe, just maybe, we shall actually accomplish something by 2012. Maybe.Do you think the present bunch of leaders and would-be leaders can bring Health Care off?Do you think the leaders and would-be leaders can do anything about Social Security?

The future is in the young. I do not think anybody over 30 has escaped being degraded into a useless, resentful ideologue in search of something to believe in.

Now the bad news...

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 4

This design is called the "Richard Cheney"

It is intended to evoke a plaintive wail that the media does not cover all the good that is going on on Iraq, outweighing the slaughter of innocents by far.

In Iraq, mistakes were made, but on the whole things are just dandy.

This a soupcon of the Military-Industrial-Lobbyist complex in the signs labelled 'money orders' and 'check cashing'.

The lottery sign is a reference to Borges' story 'The Babylonian Lottery'.

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 3

This one is called "The Douglas Feith"

It is also termed "Iraq-Hawks", with a slight reference to "Nighthawks" diner scene.

The idea was "We buy [oil], you [Iraqees] fry." The builders got it wrong, and we have to read "You buy [our notion of democracy], we fry [your sorry a.] " photo: tEdGuY46

What's Going On At The Mosque?

My correspondent at the mosque has slipped me some secret information about what the radicals are up to: 1) If you are going to the Hajj this year or know someone who is, then please send an e-mail to our Social Committee providing their fullnames. ...[the Committee is] preparing a small party for those who are going to Hajj this year, and would like to plan ahead as usual. Please do duaa for those who have left already. May Allah accept their Hajj and their duaa. Hmmm. Obviously code. Rep. Goode was right! Dennis Prager was a beacon of truth! 2) Eid Mubarak Eid Aladha will be on Saturday December 30, 2006. There will be two Eid prayers: first one at 8:30 AM the second one at 10:30 AM. Eid Breakfast will be served at 11:00 AM. Tickets are: $10 per person for advance purchase and $15 at the door Children 3 and under are free. This year the breakfast will be served in the banquet hall and the GYM. Children program starts at 11:00 AM 3) entitled High School Halaqa Target age: 11-13 years When: every wednesday from 6-8 P.M Start date: Wednesday January 10th , 2007 Subjects to be addressed: 1) Basic fiqh, 2) Hadith, 3) Seerah, 4) The lives of the Companions, 5) Aqeedah, 6) Other topics may be added at the discretion of the teacher. These subjects will be covered systematically and not simultaneously,utilizing traditional books such as Al-Maqasid, Al-Arba'inAl-Nawawiyyah, Muhammad (M. Lings), and others. Purpose: to convey to young children the basics of Islam and empower them to understand their religion in a deep and profound way. Also,to give the children tools which allow them to study Islam in thefuture. Fees: None, except for field trips which will be covered individually. Very suspicious! No wonder the Rev. Franklin Graham sees Islam as such a threat! And I do not want to hear any of this nonsense of talking with other cultures! If you talk to your enemy, he may bamboozle you! And puhhh-lease, if I hear any twaddle about other-cheek-turning and loving-neighbor-as-oneself, I may vomit! 4) Now the very, very worst: *CROCHET 101**** *LEARN THE BASICS OF CROCHET WHILE MAKING A BABY BLANKET * FRIDAYS ** 7PM-9PM ****$ 45 * *January 12**th** to February 2nd** ***(includes 4-weeks of instruction, crochet needles and yarn) One may as well say, "Learn the basics of Jihad..." Bible Forever! Quran Never! (this also goes for Buddhist clap-trap; I believe there's a couple of Boddhisattvas comin' inter tha Congress !! Mahayana, shmahayana!)

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 2

This one is "The Wolfowitz"

Photo: tEdGuY46

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 1

Plans are underway to memorialize the Neo-Conservatives. This design is tentatively called the "William Kristol".

Send in your designs, kids!

photo: tEdGuY46

Christmas Scuffles

I have been reading of numerous scuffles in this Christmas season. The have been problems with menorahs, manger scenes, trees, and inflatables. Where I live, no one seems to bother to become incensed by someone else's seasonal display. I wonder why that is? Within a 4 mile radius, there is a Hindu Temple and school, 4 mosques, numerous churches - orthodox- Greek, Rumanian, and Russian, RC, Korean Baptist as well as Southern Baptist, Anglican, Unitarian, Lutheran, Methodist...the list goes on. We have an Albanian RC Church. It is the only church I know of that had a shooting in the parking lot between members of the church. Where I had previously lived, there was an Albanian mosque 3 blocks away. I recall everyone dressed in black. The men had white shirts under their black coats. They wore black fedoras. A couple of days ago there was a Menorah Motorcade held by a group of Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews not too far away. There are many Jewish Temples. We have great food from India and Pakistan. We have no problem finding kosher. Halal markets abound. The greatest olives in the world are plentiful and fresh bread to go with them is made every morning in Jewish and Arabic bakeries. Sweets of every ethnic description abound. Even I, not known for my largesse, dispense Hannukah gelt ( chocolate inside ) to children. There is Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese. We have a at least three Chinese markets. We have a Polish grocery store and a German bakery across the street. There are Chaldeans, Kurds, Lebanese, Yemenites, Palestinians of all kinds. French pastries and Scottish scones, Italian, of course and Greek, Jordanians and Syrians. Say whay you may about Diversity, it tastes extremely good.

Las Cucarachas Que No Tienen Nada Que Fumar

I was going to post a little note about Pat Robertson's saying all religions except his are demonic. Then I thought, what's the point of that? Hot Congo, boss! And in this case, the boss is Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness...only here's Pa-a-a-a-t! ...with his crazed, smiling ( seemingly emblamed ) face leering through the TV like Jack Nicholson through a battered door in The Shining.

So I shall talk about something else. I shall talk about the dregs that Conservatives and Liberals have to drag around behind them. Now, I consider my self a Conservative. I supported Goldwater back during the gold rush. I read Pat Buchanan. I read a whole lot of other things, too, but I ENJOY reading Pat Buchanan - although we do not always agree.
Now look. Here comes Bill O'Reilly and says something like he wishes all the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq would kill each other. Then we could have a nice country there. Possibly we could vacation there. We could import labor from the Philipines to wait on us Americans. When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phones,writes Bernd Debusmann of Reuters, lit up with favorable reactions.
Until Klein revealed it was a hoax: "I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed...(to this)."

Then there was a poll at some sort of Blog where the respondents voted that the best remedy in Iraq is to "unleash hell".
Firstly, we do not seem able to make up our minds whether to think the Devil a bad guy, one who should be condemned, or a good joe, one who should be praised.
Secondly, why do these blokes, who - for all the world - appear to be in some sort of Moral ReHab, have to be packed into the Conservative side? Surely the Left has some room for them. I mean, really, why in heavens does the Conservative side have to open the door to a bunch of fellows who are unwashed, unshaven, unkempt ( in an ethical sense ) ... who come in and stand around picking at their spiritual scabs and talking about how their ethical hepatitis is causing a bloom of arthritic pain in their joints!?

I mean, Killer Clowns from Outer Space type stuff going on here! Only the killer clowns are a tad more sympathetic than Bill O'Reilly. And it's only a matter of days before that Dreamer of Death will be simpering piously about the true meaning of Christmas! Really! The Left has its own radicals that drag along after it. However, they are not as obvious as they were back in the 60's and 70's.
 There were Bader-Meinhof ( I think...), Weathermen, Symbionese, etc. Back then, it seems like all the crazies were lefties. The righties - heavily influenced by Eisenhower - had not yet made up their hormones about whether rock 'n roll was devil music or not.
But the righties watched the crazed lefties go on their rampage.

The Righties watched, their mouths agape, their crewcuts bristling, and their thick, black Buddy Holly eyeglasses fogging up. And the righties learned. So today, the crazies have skedaddled from the Left and INFEST the house of the Right! Infest...like so many cucarachas from the circles of hell! And just like the cucaracha of the song, they have no gift of pleasure, legit or otherwise. (Note: a lot of this depends on whether you have learned the original version of La Cucaracha or not.)

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On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts: 1

On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts was the title of a pamphlet by Thomas DeQuincy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater fame. I never read it entirely. At the time I came across it, I was in a quandary as to how to evaluate the morality of Art and individual expression. I was stuck in a mire and my analytic neurons were beginning to look for work elsewhere. I have heard that Art is subservient to the State, to a Class, or it is above and beyond such things and is independent of earthly concerns. Certain tasteless representations of religious objects in proximity to waste products, I think, were in our view at the time. When I read the title of DeQuincy's essay, there was an immediate "ah-ha!" I realized that anything under the sun that a man can do may be considered to be Art if only enough of mankind believes it to be. Even Murder may be a Fine Art if there are artists of Murder, and if there are critics of Murder, and IF there is an audience for Murder. And there is. Murder is a Fine Art. The audience is ourselves. There is an Industry which caters to our perversity. From the Bombing of Baghdad and Son of Bombing of Baghdad to the Unpleasantness in Aruba, Murder is an Art which ranges from High to Low and intrudes into our homes.

Conservatives and St.Paul

 Pat Buchanan

My daughter called to let me know that she had subscribed to Mr.Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative. She said that she agreed with him on every issue, except pro-choice and gay rights. I think she wanted to shock me. If not me, then certainly my brother. In fact, she made a point of saying that we should tell her uncle. Then she laughed. In the letter. In writing. A long delicious laugh. Ha!, she wrote.

Well, I could not be happier. I like Mr. Buchanan. He does not exhibit the mania of many political writers. Some women writers on the right are positive Lamia. I, too, agree with Mr. Buchanan on most issues, except gay rights. Abortion, however, is a word I can barely write without repugnance.
(When one talks about gay rights, someone usually mentions St.Paul. I'm not sure I agree with the usual interpretation of Paul's epistle's. I learned Ancient Greek in order to be able to read the New Testament. I also read Plato and Homer, but was never accomplished enough to be in St.Jerome's dilemma between immersion into Classical Lit. versus Patristic Lit.  I Learned enough to have a suspicion why he changed his name from Saul, however. I have some problems with St.Paul's writings, and I have some problems with Paul himself. This has happened recently and rather suddenly. Two months ago, I was writing a letter to my daughter about St.Paul, and as I was writing, from out of nowhere this problem presented itself. I have promised myself to devote some time to it. My daughter is the only person with whom I have communicated this. And so it will remain until I satisfy myself as to its validity. So I won't say too much about St.Paul now, leaving it to a later date.)

Let us return to The American Conservative. I defined myself as a conservative when Barry Goldwater ran for President in 1964. The only thing I admire about Neo-Conservatism is the hyphen in the middle. This year I will turn 60. The previous President was 3 days younger than I. The present incumbent is older. How do you like the Boomer Generation so far? Pretty good leaders, right?

My daughter once asked me what I don't like about the Boomers. Our parents fought wars and won. They created the threat of nuclear destruction, fought against mutually assured destruction, and won.The Boomers rejected their values. Then, mirabile dictu, the Boomers abandoned their own values and adopted values which were not exactly those of their parents, but a soulless simulacrum. We used to make fun of our parents values.
However, no matter how bizarre, funny, goofy, and nonsensical those values appeared, they had a real basis in belief in religion and morality. Compare that to the generation that brought back torture. The first George Bush was the last WWII individual to be President. He was followed by two Boomers. The emblem of the Boomers thus far is a sneer of hypocrisy from a generation of serpents.
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